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  I N   T H I S   I S S U E

Managing from the Middle

Promises, Promises

May Poll Results

Survey - How Social are You?

  A R T I C L E S

Managing from the Middle

CAD Management is considered “middle management”. This term applies to anyone that does not report directly to the company CEO and that has people reporting to them. You are in the middle. Middle management is where the vast majority of people actually work. It is the environment that we all live in.

If you are like most CAD Managers, you spend the majority of your time putting out fires and managing processes and people above you and below you. You interact with everyone in the firm. You touch just about every process that creates the design. Sometimes you feel empowered and other times it feels like you cannot get anything done. It ranges from a feeling of total control to out of control. Feelings of success and failure. All in the same day.

Add to that the fact that you have to work and get things done with employees that do not work for you. The users of the products you oversee have no direct line of reporting that includes you. You cannot hire them or fire them. You have to constantly negotiate your way through the day. Trying to get others to do things the way they should with little real leverage over their efforts.

CAD Management is unique in that your area of responsibility does not match you circle of authority.

 

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Finding Productivity

Promises are a pledge to satisfy the concerns or needs of others. We make them every day. We make them when we don’t realize that we are making them. We sometimes break them without thinking of the consequences or the impact on the other party.

The conversations that we have contain offers, counteroffers, commitments, refusals, refinements, reflections, clarifications and agreements. All of these are steps toward a promise. Promises are the executables that energize our work.

If you have read my writings or heard me speak, you may have heard me state one of the maxims that I try to live by… “Under Promise and Over Deliver”. This reflects my perspective of how to really have people believe what you say. By guarding just how much you “promise” to do and then delivering more or sooner than you stated, it ensures that people will be impressed with your promises.

What makes a good promise? Here are few concepts…

 

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May - Poll Results

When asking a technology based crowd about what they want, you would expect software and hardware to be on the list near the top.  But that is not so, based on the results of last months survey.  Software and hardware are low on the list - actually they are at the bottom.   That could be because you already have all you need - right?

What is at the top of the list?  Money?  Respect?  Time Off?

 Click here to see the whole thing.

 

June 2008 Survey

How Social are You? 

There are a lot of social sites that have sprung up.  There are amny ways to stay connected.  We list a few and ask you where you are hanging out...

Take the June Survey... upper left of the home page.

 

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CADD Manager Journal is a publication of the Core Technology Group
Editor: Mark W. Kiker
mark dot kiker at caddmanager.com © 2008 by CTG.

 

WELCOME

June - 2008

CAD Managers are sandwiched in between those above them and those below them.  This means that you have to manage from this perspective.  Doing this can be a challenge.  We help you figure out how.

We also discuss what your promises really mean to others and how you can use the ones you make and those of others to your advantage by structuring them correctly.

 

Mark W. Kiker, Editor


SURVEY - POLL

Take the Latest Poll

How Social are You?

There is a poll on the left column of the site.


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