Middle managers business

At the enterprise level, the executive management responds to the voice of ownership and is primarily concerned with profit, return on capital employed, market share, etc. At the business level, the managers are concerned with products and services and hence respond to the voice of the customer. At the operational level, the middle managers, supervisors, operators, etc. focus on processes that produce products and services and hence respond to the voice of the processes carried out within their own function. 

Sayles, L. R., Middle managers can rescue business, The New York Times, p. 11, February 14, 1993. 

Deploying the discovery driven approach, however, reqnires the agreement of those in control of resonrces and who review the plans to live with the different disciplines of this approach, as opposed to those of conventional planning. A critical middle management task is thns to create a receptive commnnity for the discovery driven approach among a coalition of powerfnl people. At Air Prodncts and Chemicals, Inc., for example, Ron Pierantozzi, the Director of New Business Development, spent considerable time orchestrating the acceptance of the discovery driven approach (see the mini-case in Table 9.5). 

A key middle management role is thus identifying whether and when charter moves will best facilitate the venture s chances. At telecommunications provider Nokia, for instance, charters are managed proactively in a milestone-oriented discovery approach. Ideas that were incubated in their new ventures organization might make the transition to an established line of business. Conversely, sometimes the company will pull charters out of existing lines of business, combine them with... 

Kanter, R. M. 1982. The middle manager as innovator. Harvard Business Review, 60(4) 95-105. 

Middle managers are fewer and the influence of their decisions and actions extends over the lower level as well as their own. They are charged with ensuring that business objectives are met, so the ways in which they do this can introduce systematic faults into the ways in which junior managers and staff function. 

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest link in any organization can vary. The workforce at any particular place of business is different. Your company may have the best-equipped and most dedicated hourly assembly-line team member workforce in the world. Possibly the company you work for may boast of the skill and ability of your front-line supervisors and middle management. Or your company may have the most highly touted chief executive that every Fortune 500 company is begging to lure away. I believe that it is truly difficult to say what group is the most important link in the safety chain, but it depends (see Figure 9-1). 

Nikkei Business (Economy and management for top and middle managers)... 

Fire, explosions and environmental pollution are the most serious "unpredictable" life affecting and business losses having an impact on the hydrocarbon industries today. These issues have essentially existed since the inception of industrial scale petroleum and chemical operations during the middle of the last century. They continue to occur with ever increasing financial impacts. It almost appears that the management of industry is oblivious, or else must be careless, to the potential perils under their command. Although in some circles most accidents can be thought of as non-preventable, all accidents are in fact preventable. 

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