The Cranky Middle Manager Show #134 (MP3 14.3 MB 29:37Min)

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Greetings one and all, today we’re going to get all practical on ya, with Dr. Riaz Khadem, who is the author of . Total Alignment, Integrating Vision, Strategy and Execution for Organizational Success. Yes, getting everyone marching in the same direction is a challenge for middle managers, mainly because we don’t have authority to say where we’re marching or the power to force people to follow. Ahhhhh don’t you love our job?

Show Notes

0:00 Welcome to the show. Today we’re talking about who does what with which and to whom, and doing it in a way we can actually execute. A little consultant speak is involved but this is a more practical show than most. We dedicate the show to King Tiglath-Pilesser III (because we know how common the name is and we don’t want him confused with the first two). Creating an empire is one thing, running it is quite another (ahem, current office holders around the world take note). One solution- appoint eunuchs. Seriously….. tough to get past HR but effective.

3:42 The quote of the week is from Ancient Greece and the philosopher Hesiod. Have a system, work the system… maybe this time you’ll listen people.

4:22 Welcome Dr. Riaz Khadem… okay the subtitle of the book may have changed since I got my advance copy, but the idea is the same- Getting everyone in your organization aligned with the strategy. Maybe our biggest challenge as managers. Why is it so tough? I mean we all get the memos and read the posters.

7:22 The first step is to quantify the vision… what does it mean to be the “Employer of Choice” for example?

9:46 Okay, let’s start with the vision. How do you align all of the pieces? First you quantify and identify the indicators, then the next step is to align strategy… if you want to do X… what do you actually have to DO? This isn’t as easy as it seems. Trying to keep the consultant speak to a minimum here gang.

13:42 Now you have to assign who’s responsible for which tasks. The idea is to push accountability as low as possible. It’s not just dumping it on the people below you, you can only be accountable for things you actually do and paradoxically it’s empowering. Riaz explains it way better than I do. We pick on sales people because it’s an easy example to measure….and they’re sales people and deserve to get picked on

21:00 How do we put measures in place so everyone’s responsible to the whole vision and don’t just create silos? Accountability needs to include cross linkages and other stakeholders.

24:00 He takes us through a case study with a whopping big ROI. We like these…future guests… case studies and measurable results please!

28:00 Resources and stuff:

www.infotrac.com

One Page Management

The Wall Street Journal

Forbes Magazine

Fortune Magazine

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.