Welcome to the Middle Management 101 website! My name is William Thomas Jones and I am the founder and keeper of this website. I am also the author of Middle Management 101 - Zen in the Art of Middle Management which is available from Amazon.com.
I created this website from my passion to reach out to and help the most misunderstood, misdirected, misguided, mismanaged, poorly trained and “hung-out-to-dry” members of our global workforce – the middle manager. They might call you a supervisor, or a “lead” or “mid-level” or just a manager, but you know who I mean, the person between top managers and the worker bees. You might manage a team of two or two hundred, it doesn’t matter. You are often “stuck in the middle” with no help available to you from anyone!
The following are some general guidelines that I have used in writing this website that you should be aware of as you read and use it.
Terminology: There are some special nouns that I use in the postings to this website to hopefully save words and add consistency that I want to formally define as follows:
Organization – The company, business, nonprofit organization or government entity that you work for.
The Boss – The ultimate boss, the owner, president, founder or CEO.
Senior – Your boss, the person that you report to. Often the person between The Boss and you, but in smaller organizations, The Boss and the Senior can be the same person.
Middle – That’s you.
Teamer – A person in the team(s) that you lead.
Coworker – A person who works at the Organization you work for, but not one of your Teamers.
Quotes: I’ve always loved quotes. They’re little “nuggets of stuff” that get you to start thinking seriously about something. Perhaps Zig Ziglar put it best when he said, “Great quotes make the light bulb go off in my mind.” I’ve inserted quotes within the blog postings of this website as appropriate to again get you to think about the material being covered. My hope is that they add to your experience of using this website.
“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”
- Michel de Montaigue
My humble single wish for this website is that it helps you to be a better and happier middle manager working with a truly empowered team that really enjoys what they do!