Who’s in Singapore Oct 14-20 ?

Posted on 18. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in General

Hey folks, Prague was a blast, and now I make my first business trip to Singapore! I’ll be there from October 13- 20th. Any listeners there who might want to get together some night for dinner?

Drop me a line wayne@crankymiddlemanager.com and let me know if you’re around. My Skype address is wayneturmel if you’d rather connect that way.

The Cranky Middle Manager Show 111 3 Signs of a Miserable Job- Patrick Lencioni

Posted on 16. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in Podcast

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The Cranky Middle Manager #111

Welcome to episode 111- another big shot guest on our little shot show. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, just email me wayne@crankymiddlemanger.com and put Subscribe in the subject line.

Don’t forget to vote for the show on Podcast Alley and help the rest of the world find us.

Show Notes

0:00 Welcome all you middle managers. We are the funiculars of the business world…not glamorous or fancy, but try getting anything up the hill without us. How’s THAT for an analogy?

This episode is dedicated to Phoebe Pember, a bit of an expert on nasty jobs. Hmm never trained for the job she had, didn’t mind the job itself, just the niggling details like being in charge of the whiskey… sound like anyone we know?

3:43 The quote of the week is from Samuel Butler. Happiness and misery are both optional…. depends which way you’re headed on a given day.

4:42 Welcome Patrick Lencioni to the show. He’s the author of 3 Signs of a Miserable Job, 5 Temptations of a CEO and many others. Why does he write what he calls “fables” rather than text books?

7:12 What’s the difference between a bad job and a miserable one? A miserable job is miserable regardless of what the job is. Professional athlete is a good job but there are a lot of miserable people doing it…..

9:22 The three signs of a miserable job are

1) anonymity (does your boss or organization know who you really are?)
2) irrelevance (does your job make a difference to anyone?)
3) immeasurement (it’s his book, he can invent words if he wants. It means can you objectively tell you’re doing a good job).

13:00 We have yet another reason to blame HR for our problems- the interview system discourages us from knowing too much personal information about our employees.

17:40 Irrelevance is the one that kills me personally. Have you ever met a happy person in an insurance company? If your job is managing 1020b forms…how connected to the rest of the human race- or your job- can you be?

22:55 We don’t just need measurement – most of us have plenty of numbers to hit- but are we measuring the right things?

26:01 Some of our guests have cited Pat’s work as resources. Who is he reading?

Matthew Kelly: The Dream Manager

Daniel Harkavy: Becoming a Coaching Leader

Finally there’s the whole concept of Servant Leadership.

Don’t let the weasels get you down…

Just For Laughs, Check Out Man in the Box

Posted on 12. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in General

There’s  a hilarious video series out called Man IN the Box, about life in a cubicle farm.

Check it out http://www.runawaybox.com/index.htm and let me know what you think.

Thanks to Vince Thompson for finding it and posting in his blog about it…..

The Cranky Middle Manager Show #110 Growing People with Erika Andersen

Posted on 09. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in Podcast

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The Cranky Middle Manager Show #110

Welcome to the show. Forgive the Old School cover art- I was feeling nostalgic for the early days of the show. Today we’re visiting with the author of Growing Great Employees , Erika Andersen. It’s a fun conversation and you’ll find something called, “camera check” which I think will go down in the annals of this show along with “dinosaur eggs” from Wally Bock and “Martha Steward was mean to a flight attendant and I busted her” by Judith Glaser.

Don’t forget to check out Cranky Middle Manager e-books at The Cranky Middle Manager Store. Especially, The Four Disciplines of Highly Effective, Leadership Exhibiting, Project Nailing, Cheese Moving Managers and the special added bonus, “100 Free Web Resources All Managers Need”

Show Notes

0:00 Welcome to episode 110. Sticking a finger in the wind, or just sticking your boss the finger, greetings.

This episode is dedicated to the Scythian queen Tamyris . Making a wine glass out of your opponent’s skull is not necessarily going to get past HR but it’s a pretty clear metric of success.

2:12 The quote of the week is from Benjamin Disraeli- “The fool wonders, the wise man asks”. Explains some of the bonehead questions I ask sometimes… just shows how smart I am.

4:15 Welcome Erika Andersen of The Simplest Things That Work blog. How did she get inspiration for the book?Turns out if you want something done you do it yourself. That also includes the blog, The Simplest Things. People’s business models are blowing up left center and right…. the world is changing.

9:23 It’s easy for us to moan about senior executives, but their job isn’t easy either. What are they seeing as the gaps in middle management? First, she sucks up by complimenting my question, then she gets down to the answer… Ask: What can we do to help?

12:00 So why don’t more managers get the training they need? The skills are do-able but we don’t always give people the need they help to succeed. Sometimes when we become managers we stop listening because we’re supposed to have all the answers. Yet why can’t we get anyone even at gunpoint to get help with listening? She tells a great story here, don’t miss it.

22:30 The skills we need at work are not that different from what we need in the rest of our lives but MAN is that tough. She introduces a great concept called The Camera Check- Imagine looking through a camera lens when giving feedback…what do you actually SEE them doing. I love this one.

28:00 Erika’s resources:

Nettie Hartsock- two weeks in a row she gets a mention…..

No big surprise, Phil Gerbyshak and Make it Great

and our friends at 800 CEO Read. (Hear our interview with Jack Covert here...)