Spinning Plates

"Middle Managers are the unsung heroes of organisations."

- Henry Mintzberg, Canadian Academic, and Business and Management Author

Dear C-Suite

There is always so much happening within and outside of your organisation, constantly competing for your attention:

• realising the strategic plan in the most cost-effective and results-oriented way.
• keeping profits and performance up, and costs down.
• balancing competing agendas on a shrinking budget.
• employee engagement scores worse than they've been in decades.
• the great resignation, quiet quitting, the great flattening and whatever the next fad term is, all really alluding to the fallout of COVID-19. The hunt for great talent is not new, it is ongoing.
• pushing for economic growth and becoming recession proof, while sustaining and growing your customer base.
• the ever-increasing costs of being cybersecure.
• even globalisation, stalled supply chains and geopolitical conflict, depending on your organisation and market.
• and the rest, right?

The day-to-day demands on a senior executive and C-Suite leader are relentless.

When it comes down to it, leaders sometimes fear the risks that come with the decision-making required to meet those demands. The risks can be almost too high, leaving them to question what will happen if their decisions backfire, resulting in blame, or worse, job loss. The burden on the CEO's shoulders is heavy and at times, directions and decisions can come under fire, risking the leader's and the business's reputation. This can quickly lead to losing good people and valuable resources.

Having skilled and productive middle managers means strategic plans are realised effectively and efficiently. Having engaged middle managers who feel valued often leads to far more value being added to the business's bottom line. They demonstrate their worth tenfold.

Beyond the quality of the company's robust recruitment process, your engagement as CEO with your middle managers and the quality learning and development provided to them, are two winning ways of ensuring skilled and happy people at that level. How you engage with your middle management team and the individuals in the middle ranks can make or break your business in so many ways.

The strategies shared in my newest book: The Middle Matters: Ten Strategies Successful CEOs Use to Lead High-Performing Middle Managers are proven. They are based on real situations where humble, vulnerable and fallible CEOs and senior executives--real humans--have strived to find effective ways to connect with their middle managers, so those middle managers go on to deliver positive results through their respective teams.

Investing in learning and development also contributes significantly to fostering an engaged and productive workforce. That being said, CEOs often share with me their concern--sometimes verging on healthy scepticism--for learning and development agendas, particularly the budget. As one CEO said: "Learning and development is like insurance. I know we need it, but I hate having to make sense of it and discuss it; and I definitely detest paying for it."

With some deeper exploration, what the CEO really detested was paying for junkets and what they referred to as 'one hit wonders,' that is, one-day workshops that were too light on content, knowledge transfer and skill development. Essentially, there was no real return on their investment.

In his words, "I paid good money for two of my management team to attend the one-day workshop to only find a week later they couldn't recall much from the day, let alone tell me what they wanted to implement or do differently. I was disappointed, to say the least."

Let me assure you, as someone in the learning and development industry, this also frustrates me no end. Programs and workshops that are all show and no substance give my beloved industry a bad name and do buyers like you a disservice. It's one of my pet peeves!

Likening the cost of learning and development to the cost of insurance is a good metaphor. While I begrudgingly pay my insurances each year, I know I need to have that insurance in place. I might encourage others to see learning and development, like insurance, as an investment too. However, it is more than that and I want this article to prove that to you. It's an investment in skill maintenance and development, professional and personal growth, engagement and leadership development, in anticipation of future skill and leadership needs. In other words, business growth and success.

"The only things worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay!"

- Henry Ford

Taking the metaphor of insurance a step further--if you're not an expert in that field, you know you need to put time and other demands aside to get the advice and guidance you need to ensure you make the best decisions, so you purchase the right cover. That's what the book--The Middle Matters--is about. It's a gathering of experiences and lessons that will help you to make choices; implement strategies; become even more discerning when it comes to leading your middle managers; assess and offer leadership development options; and think more deeply about attraction, retention and engagement of high-performing middle managers.

The ten strategies in that book are by no means the only strategies available. They are a starting point, a prompt to ignite curiosity and thinking.

Get the book here.

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#TheMiddleMatters #MiddleManagement #CEO #CSuite #Leadership #LeadershipDevelopment #ProfessionalLeadership

If you would like to discuss these and other strategies further, please reach out: [email protected].