Own Your Day: New light on the mastery of managing in the middle

By Diana Marsland and Julie Nerney

Are you a manager, stuck in between pressure from senior leadership and needs from your team? Do you sometimes feel that you’ve been robbed of your power, your influence… and your ability to actually achieve anything?! It’s time to Own Your Day.

If you’re a hard-pressed manager, this practical and purposeful collection of simple tools and techniques will empower you to translate the strategy from the top into real results on the ground. Based on working experience from hundreds of organizations, Own Your Day uses an easy-to-apply mix of real-life case studies and specific guidance to help you adapt what you’ve learned to your own circumstances – all grounded in solid primary research from expert authors. Covering the full range of day-to-day challenges and issues, this book includes:

-          Balancing the needs of strategy and delivery

-    The importance of prep vs planning

-          Developing and using your influence

-          Getting the best out of yourself and the people around you

-     Being your authentic self

-    Implementing change successfully

Don’t get stuck in the middle – reclaim your autonomy, step into your authority, and Own Your Day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Release date: May 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781788602440

Diana Marsland

Diana Marsland’s varied career has seen her work in marketing, project management executive roles roles in the corporate, public and third sectors including Halifax plc, the NHS, Action Medical Research and City University. She believes that managers’ abilities are vastly underrated and that they can flourish with support and encouragement.

Book preview

Part one Operating context

Middle managers are the powerhouse of an organization, the magicians who translate strategic plans into operational reality. And we all know that generating commitment to a new strategy is best done by involving people in its development.

But what if that doesn’t happen? How do you avoid getting stuck in the middle in a way that might harm your motivation and ability to perform?

It’s difficult to tread the line between being in the know and effecting change when the direction is not always clear from the top and is ever changing.

Manager, public sector

This section will look at how you can step up and take ownership, be better prepared for what’s coming next, influence effectively, and implement change well.

1 Taking ownership

Why it matters

Being stuck in the middle of strategy and delivery can be an uncomfortable place. Especially in times of dramatic change. It can feel frustrating. Like you are being squeezed. Or pulled in competing directions. We want you to reclaim not only your own autonomy in this space, but also be able to create it for others. Whether you are happy where you are or want to develop your career, owning this space is vital. And it’s not as difficult as it might seem.

This chapter will chart a course through the importance of context, the impact of your own mindset, creating permission for yourself, embracing learning and identifying opportunities for change.

Context is king

As you take on more responsibility, understanding your organization’s strategic intent is an important way of grounding you and your teams in the context in which you work. What routes to that information are available to you?

Strategic plans and priority documents. Board meeting minutes. Live stream recordings of significant announcements. In some organizations, you might even be able to attend Board meetings to hear the discussion first-hand. Taking opportunities to engage with members of the Executive and their direct reports is another way to gain insight and build your network at the same time.

And the context isn’t just internal to your organization. How well do you know what your competitors are doing? Who are the leading-edge thinkers in your field? All contextual information helps you understand the direction of the organization, and the decisions made by the leaders so you can provide that context to your team.

Case study: An ‘aha’ moment on context

As a middle manager working for a bank I was pleased to be nominated for an advanced management programme, signalling the expectation of progression and promotion. During the introduction, the training manager said that he wouldn’t be telling us stuff we didn’t already know but he would be providing frameworks to help us make sense of what was happening in our roles.

Following straight on from that, Joe Nellis, an eminent economics professor from Cranfield School of Management, ran a half-day session on economics. I remember it vividly as he used a model of a central heating system to help us understand the basics of the country’s economy. It was a great session, but I was surprised that such a large proportion of time was spent on this.

I asked the training manager why economics was given so much emphasis when we had an entire team of economists at the bank. His response was that by understanding the context in which the bank operated, I would know what to do in my role without having to be told when the Government made changes to monetary or fiscal policies.

This was an important lesson for me. I realized I needed to understand the company’s strategy so I knew what response was expected when changes happened in our market. It forced me to think strategically and take ownership for the direction and output of the team. It encouraged me to share this with my team so they had the same insight to apply to their work.

To keep my knowledge current, I recognized the need to identify the sources of information within the bank, competitors to be monitored, and who were the key people driving change internally and externally. Although the working environment at that time was simpler, more predictable and less risk-averse, the principles of this learning for managers looking to gain insight on context remain as true as ever.

Your mindset, their perspective

We all know that generating commitment to a new strategy is best done by involving people in its development. This creates ownership and buy-in, making it easier for you to then sell that direction to those who work for you. It creates a collective energy and an army of leaders able to advocate for the next steps and galvanize teams to deliver.

But what if that doesn’t happen? What if the leaders in your organization hide themselves away and emerge with a new strategy or direction with a grand flourish? One that you don’t believe in. One you don’t agree with. One that you know will be hard to sell to your team. How do you avoid getting stuck in the middle in a way that might harm your motivation and ability to perform?

Leading a team through something you don’t believe in is hard. And if you live it through that lens, it will grind you down to the point where you feel stuck between strategy and delivery. That’s not a fun place to be. Pretending you really do believe in it is also hard, and will be seen through very quickly. It also lacks authenticity, which we think is a key principle for effective management and leadership. So the challenge here is how you motivate and lead a team to do something that you don’t believe in, while not compromising your own values and authenticity. That’s only possible by looking at the problem through two lenses.

Ultimately, as an employee of an organization, you’re there to support it in achieving its vision and strategic aims. Whether it is to create shareholder value in the private sector, or activities which meet social purpose aims in the third or public sector. But reminding yourself that it’s your role to execute this is a helpful way to frame your mindset as you look to remove yourself from being stuck between strategy and delivery.

The second lens involves putting yourself in the shoes of the decision-makers – a key component of operating empathetically. It’s that old adage of walking a mile in another person’s shoes. Think about why the senior team made that decision from their perspective, rather than yours.

Case study: Putting yourself in the shoes of the decision-makers

I was part of a leadership team delivering a transformation programme for a global FTSE 100 organization. Like all complex transformations it was a difficult challenge, compounded by a highly federated, autonomous culture, no inclination for compliance, and no willingness from the leadership to frame or mandate. The equivalent of pushing water uphill. But that’s what we did, winning hearts and minds, recognizing opportunities for change to prove there was potential for much broader impact, and exceeding our delivery target of £50m savings over two years with a stellar £82m, spending less than half of our £20m budget. In the process, we’d won the trust and confidence of the Executive by speaking truth to