Ed: This is Day #2 of the Deconstructing Manager’s piece. Day #1 might help you figure out what is going on here. I am not going to explain what your manager does all day. Sorry. I am going to hand you six critical questions that you need to answer in order to figure out if… more
Ed: This piece is long. Really long. Like 16 pages long. For the original publishing, I’ll be serializing this piece into six days of management deconstruction. Enjoy. Back in February, I asked the question “Who is the worst person you worked for?” If you print out the responses in a smallish font, you end up… more
“What, exactly, do you do?” Slack. Jawed. Amazement. This question is coming from someone I trust. A trusted employee who has been working in my group at the start-up for years. This guy always tells me the straight dope and now he’s asking me what I do with my day because he honestly does not… more
Stop. Grab a pencil and write down the first and last names of your past three managers. Stare at those names for a bit and re-live those months or years of reporting to this person. I want your off-the-cuff opinion about each one. My guess is your opinion falls into one of the three buckets:… more
As already discussed, Managers are not evil. They’re often just stuck in translation hell where they need to say one thing in one way to one team and say the EXACT same thing to another team in a different way. This constant verbal tapdancing looks sketchy to you, the Average Joe, and you start to… more
