Proximity Matters

When work involves sharing information, the people involved should sit together. The reason why is captured in a passage I came across describing how currency brokers work in the London Review of Books:

Brokers in major money-market currencies don’t work as individuals, but in teams of up to a dozen or more, sitting close together in subsections of large, open-plan offices. Good eyesight is useful – trainees still sometimes called ‘board boys’ write unfilled bids to borrow and offers to lend on whiteboards surrounding clusters of brokers’ desks, and you can occasionally see a broker using binoculars to read a distant whiteboard or screen – but a more crucial skill is ‘broker’s ear’: the capacity to monitor what is being said by all the other brokers at nearby desks, despite the noise and while at the same time holding a voicebox conversation with a client. As one broker put it to me: ‘When you’re on the desk you’re expected to hear everyone else’s conversations as well, because they’re all relevant to you, and if you’re on the phone speaking to someone about what’s going on in the market there could be a hot piece of information coming in with one of your colleagues that you would want to tell your clients, so you’ve got to be able to hear it coming in as you’re speaking to the person.’

When you first encounter it, broker’s ear is disconcerting. You’ll be sitting beside a broker at his desk, thinking he’s fully engaged in his conversation with you, when suddenly he’ll respond to a question or comment, from several desks away, that you simply hadn’t registered.

I know this idea runs counter to tradition in a lot of places – usually seating is by seniority (all the executives in the corners and along the windows) and functions. In my industry (mortgages), loan officers are in one section, processors in another, underwriters somewhere else, and closers are over there). This is an organization-centric arrangement – good for the egos of managers who can look over their domain, and good for training people within their function. But, separating functions requires information handoffs, and inevitably there are fumbles and failures to communicate. For example, I’ve heard closers asking customers to resubmit information directly to them because it’s easier than finding out if it’s already been provided to someone else in the work flow.

Putting people in earshot of each other greatly reduces the effort needed to keep everyone in the loop, and results in better execution. It’s also much harder to maintain “us versus them” distinctions when everyone sits together.

Give Me a Reason

Everyone who has raised a child has gone through the “Why?” stage. Humans are wired to figure things out, and asking why is often the most direct route to understanding.

In his book Why? Charles Tilly outlines a framework for how this question is answered. There are four approaches: Conventions, stories, codes, and technical accounts.

1) Conventions are standard explanations of an event which don’t attempt to establish causality (e.g., you explain to a friend you have not responded to an email because you are swamped at work). You and your friend both know this is not literally the reason (after all, you’re not at work 24 hours a day), but your friend accepts the convention and does not make you account for every minute since you received the email.

2) Stories are more detailed narratives which provide more details and present a simplified causality model. If you are a 20 minutes late to work, a conventional comment about traffic being bad will probably suffice. If you keep your spouse waiting 20 minutes in a restaurant for an anniversary dinner, you will probably have a very detailed story establishing you left with plenty of time, the nature of the accident causing the traffic delay, etc.

3) Codes explain actions by referring to existing rules. For example, an employee is not reimbursed for five 40 mile business related trips but is reimbursed for one 60 mile trip because the policy is no reimbursements for trips less than 50 miles.

4) Technical Accounts are detailed explanations of events which attempt to prove causality (or at correlation) with evidence. An example is an engineering study explaining the failure of a dam.

Here is how the rejection of a loan might be explained:

• The borrower had bad credit (convention)
• I approved a loan to someone who had multiple late credit cards just like this applicant and the prior loan defaulted…(story)
• The investor will not buy the loan if the borrower’s FICO score is below 600 (code)
• Studies have shown that borrowers with FICO scores below 600 default 40% more frequently…(technical account).

Each approach has drawbacks. Conventions are by definition incomplete and don’t fully establish causality or educate. They’re fine as a kind of shorthand when nobody really cares much about the answer, but are usually inappropriate when someone really wants to know why.

Similarly, codes are a shorthand explanation which don’t educate (except about the code itself) or explain. Saying an investor won’t buy a loan if the FICO score is below 600 doesn’t explain why that’s the investor’s policy any more than “Because I said so!” explains to a child why they have to go to bed at 9:00 PM. Codes work best when everyone understands the reasons underlying the code already.

Stories are extremely effective at conveying values and information. Like asking “Why?”, narrative explanation and understanding seem to be hard wired into humans (picture cave dwellers huddled around the fire listening to stories of the day’s hunt). However, if you’re using a story to convey a truth, you need to make sure your story represents a truth, and not an isolated instance. For example, your story about how dangerous unleashed dogs are because you were once bitten by one will not resonate with someone who spends a lot of time around unleashed dogs at a dog park. Also. stories are seductive, and as discussed in in a previous post people are all too willing to accept them uncritically.

Technical accounts use evidence and establish causality to answer the question. They are the nuclear weapons of explanation – after a good technical account you really know why. The problem with technical accounts is they tend to be boring, and more information than the audience is looking for. They also tend to be limited in scope – it’s hard to establish the why of big events conclusively.

Given each has drawbacks, which is the best form to use? They can each be appropriate in certain contexts. Tilly introduces the concept of “superior stories”; stories which draw on the strengths of a narrative format, but which are underpinned with the evidence and causal links found in a technical account.

What to Do When You’re Dissatisfied: Part I

Although for the most part I’ve had a happy life, I’ve been in many situations I’ve been dissatisfied with (a bad experience at a restaurant a few weeks ago, several jobs I’ve had in the past, and the last 10 years of my first marriage all come to mind). What to do?

The first thing is to pause and give thanks for the gift you’ve received. If sounds too Buddhist/New Age for you pretend you didn’t read it and skip down a paragraph.  Dissatisfaction is a gift because it gives you an opportunity to handle a situation, learn from it, and become more adept at handling such situations in the future. Framing the situation that way moves you from the irritation and anger you’re probably feeling to a calm sense that this is a situation you can master and transform. If you want to explore this idea further I recommend Naikan, by Gregg Krech.

You have two paths to handling your dissatisfaction. They’re not mutually exclusive; you can often follow them both simultaneously. The first option is to challenge the external source of your stress, and the second option is to change your internal response to the stress. For example, as I’m writing this I’m in Wheeler, Oregon and it’s starting to snow really hard. Tomorrow I was planning to get up early and drive two hours over winding roads and a mountain pass to get to two meetings I’ve scheduled in Portland. One of my options is to challenge the storm; I could leave now before it gets worse, or I could go buy chains for my rental car. Or, I can accept the storm, change my plans, and spend another day or two where I am.

Changing your internal response works best in the following situations:

• The aggravation is trivial in the grand scheme of things.
• The aggravation isn’t trivial, but it’s not likely to be repeated (a stranger sneezes on you on the bus – irritating, but you’re not likely to ever see him again).
• There is nothing you can do to change the situation (you are snowed in, there is nothing you can do, you might as well enjoy it).

Even as children we are all familiar with the idea of riding it out, grinning and bearing it, going with the flow, etc. I never thought seriously about this approach until I read Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. In Greek mythology Sisyphus committed multiple offenses against the Gods, and in punishment was given the task of rolling a huge boulder to the top of a hill. The twist on the punishment is the task is impossible; before Sisyphus reaches the top of the hill the boulder always slips away and rolls back down. Pointless, repetitive tasks are referred to as Sisyphean tasks. Camus’ essay suggests Sisyphus can attribute his own meaning to the task and take pleasure in the struggle (instead of defining success as reaching the top of the hill).

But what if you don’t want to change – what if you want the situation to change? I’ll discuss that in Part II.

What Do Successful Personal, Reporting, and Client Relationships Have In Common?

John Gottman can watch a married couple interacting for 15 minutes and predict with 90% accuracy whether that couple will still be married 15 years later. Based on his system, I think he would probably be able to predict the success of manager-subordinate and salesperson-client relationships too.

Gottman looks at bids and bid responses between people to draw conclusions about their relationship. In Gottman’s terminology a bid is an attempt by one person to establish a connection, and a bid response is how the other person reacts to the bid. Responses fall into three categories: turning towards, turning against, and turning away. Some examples:

BID	RESPONSE
Husband (on the couch calling to his wife in the kitchen): “Honey, could you bring me a beer?”	Wife Turning Towards - “Sounds good, let me join you. How’s the game going?”
	Turning Against – “Get it yourself, you slob!”
	Turning Away - Silence
Employee sends an email with some requested information to a manager.	Manager Turning Towards - “Thanks for the quick response. Could you include some background on the Ragamuffin account?”
	Turning Against – “Incomplete as usual, where’s the background on the Ragamuffin account?”
	Turning Away – No response to the email
Salesperson following up with a call on some emailed information	Potential Client Turning Towards - “It was interesting but we’re not doing anything until the next budget cycle. I have your contact information and will let you know.”
	Turning Against - “Stop spamming me.”
	Turning Away – Doesn’t return the call

Gottman’s research shows contempt (on the part of either party) is the best signal a relationship is headed down the drain.

Here are some other takeaways from Gottman’s research:

• In a successful relationship, there are a lot of bids going on; a happily married couple may engage as many as 100 times in ten minutes while eating a meal. Not all of these bids get “turning towards” responses, but the ratio is high. Couples headed to divorce engage much less and have a much lower ratio of positive responses. Obviously, there are not going to be as many manager-employee or salesperson-client interactions, but an absence of interaction is bad, and a low ratio of positive responses makes infrequent interaction even worse.
• The overwhelming majority of interactions are trivial; even in the best relationships there is not a lot of sharing of deep feeling and soul searching going on. It’s the frequency and ratio of positive to negative responses that’s important, not the topic.

All this rings true to me in both my personal and professional relationships. What is truly amazing to me is how many managers and clients operate almost exclusively in the “Turn Away” mode, when a quick “Turn Toward” acknowledgment of an employee’s or salesperson’s effort is so easy.

I first read about Gottman’s work in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. If you want to dig deeper, I recommend Gottman’s book The Relationship Cure.

Focus on Others’ Minutiae

Yes, this is the opposite of the typical time management advice. The usual approach is to determine your goals, identify the tasks you need to complete to accomplish the most important ones, and give those tasks top priority. Suggestions include doing the big rocks first, and and identifying what's important as opposed to what's urgent. The conventional advice, then, is to focus on your goals, and do what’s important. My advice is to do the opposite – focus on others, and don’t prioritize what’s “important”.

Here’s an example. You get to work in the morning and are informed the deadline for an important report has been moved up and it must be done in time for a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. You estimate it will take 8 hours to complete. You also have emails from three coworkers requesting information, and each response will take 10 minutes to complete. Conventional wisdom would have you work on your report and push back the response to the coworkers (if you’re nice, you’ll let them know you can’t get to it today). My advice is to respond to the coworkers. Here’s why:

• You have four things to do. Your brain has a lot of trouble distinguishing between accomplishing something big and something small; all achievements register roughly the same in your brain regardless of their magnitude. If you do the three small items, your brain will feel like it’s accomplished 75% of what you needed to do today in the first half hour. You will be happier and more productive, offsetting the time you “lost” responding to your colleagues.
• If you do the report first, the fact that you have three more things to do will weigh on your mind at some level, making you less productive. Better to clear your mind and rid yourself of other tasks you can accomplish quickly so you can fully focus on the big one.
• Your coworkers may be waiting for your response to complete their own urgent projects. Everyone's productivity goes up when bottlenecks are eliminated, and the best way to do that is to give priority to other’s needs.
• The total 1/2 hour you need to respond to your coworkers represents a little over 6% of the time you need to complete the report. Work tends to expand to fill the time available, and it’s not hard to squeeze 6% out of the total time needed to complete the project.
• If you put your coworkers off, they will probably be thinking to themselves, “He only needs to spend 10 minutes on this, is everything he has to do today so important he can’t spend 10 minutes on my request?” This situation gets really ugly if your coworker catches you taking a break from your report (and you will, or should, take some breaks – no one can work productively on a single project 8 hours straight).

Of course, if you find yourself never getting to your own projects there’s an overload problem (to be discussed in another post). There are times when you shouldn’t follow this guideline (for example, see my post Do What You Dread). However, when I focus on responding to others I’m both happier and more productive, and so are the people around me.

Do What You Dread

Getting Things Done is a great system, but it’s not always clear what your priorities should be. I had an experience when I was 12 years old which has helped me set priorities ever since.

I grew up on a small farm in eastern South Dakota near Lake Campbell. One cold, windy spring day I was fooling around by the lake and I spotted an old tire someone had discarded on the ice about 20 feet out from the shore. This tire really bugged me; it was right around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, and my environmental consciousness was running high, I guess. So, I decided to retrieve it.

I knew, of course, that this was really stupid. The ice had already melted further out, and it was open water about 20 feet past the tire. Every year there was at least one story of a kid falling through the ice and drowning.

I inched out on the ice, testing its strength with each step before I put my full weight down. In a few minutes I was almost to the tire, when I heard a cracking sound and felt the ice move. I hadn’t fallen through; the entire section I was on had broken off and was drifting out into open water.

I scuttled back to the edge of my floe closest to shore. There is no photographic record of this event, but this was my situation: 

The wind was rapidly pushing me out in the lake; already the gap was 10 feet and visibly widening. I knew that jumping in the water and trying to swim to shore in my heavy winter clothes and boots might be fatal, but I could see my situation was worsening every second. I might have hesitated a moment, but I don’t remember that; I remember knowing what I had to do, and I did it.

I also remember the physical feeling of dread; I really, really did not want to jump in that icy water. I often get that same feeling when I have to do something I don’t want to do; for example, when I think about an unpleasant call I have to make to a client, or when I need to confront a coworker about an issue. When I get that feeling I think back to my experience on the ice, and ask myself if the situation is going to get better by putting it off. The answer is almost always no, and so I go ahead and get it over with.

There are a couple of reasons to move these kinds of tasks to the top of the priority list. First, if the situation is such that it provokes a physical feeling of dread, it probably is really important to deal with it. Even more importantly, if the situation is not resolved at some level your mind will continue processing it, and it will pop up again and again provoking the same bad feelings until you finally do deal with it.

Give Me a Plausible Story and I'll Believe You

There is a great, illuminating mind game in Robert Burton's On Being Certain: Believing You're Right Even When You're Not. Read this paragraph, and as you read think about what you're feeling:

A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications it can be very peaceul. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.

Irritating? Frustrating? I can fix that with one word - kite. Reread the paragraph, and notice how everything fits. Feels better, doesn't it?

Humans are problem solving machines. Give them a puzzle and they're frustrated if they can't solve it, satisfied if they can. This is deeply wired in us at a physical and emotional level, and the drive to solve problems is what keeps us moving forward.

But, there is a potential problem with our wiring. Try rereading the paragraph and recapture the feeling of not knowing what it is about. You can't; your brain says "kite" with every sentence. What if I told you the paragraph is not about kites, and to reread it to find a different solution? You almost certainly will not be able to do that either. Once your brain "knows" an answer it is very difficult to dislodge that answer and consider alternatives.

Bank executives took excessive risks out of greed - plausible, but true? American car makers are on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of capitulating to unions in the past - plausible, but true? Teaser rates were an important contributor to subsequent mortgage defaults - plausible, but true? Honestly, how much actual evidence have we seen supporting these propositions? It's frightening to realize how much we accept as true simply because it's plausible.

Expert Performance: Journaling Meets the US Military

One of the recurring themes of this blog is to become an expert at something, you not only need to practice; you need to think about how it went and make adjustments. Doing something 1,000 times the same way does not make your performance better, but doing something 1,000 times and thoughtfully varying how you do it over time will.

Kevin Eikenberry (hat tip Stephen Smith) suggests a way to do the "think about" part is to keep a journal:

"Asking yourself the right questions – and answering them – creates the lessons and insights; writing them down in your journal solidifies them and makes them yours forever. Ask yourself questions like:

• What happened?
• Why?
• What is the lesson?
• How can I apply this to another situation?
• What could I do differently next time?
• How could this problem/challenge/issue be solved/removed?"

You may, as Kevin notes, think that journaling is something teenage girls do. If it makes you more comfortable, these questions are very similar to those used in an After Action Review, a debriefing approach originally developed by the US Army and now used throughout our Armed Forces. If the technique saves lives, it can probably improve your performance too.

Listening Like Your Life Depended On It

You might like Thomas Friedman's columns and books , or not, but he's a very interesting guy. Ian Parker has a profile of Friedman in the November 10, 2008 issue of The New Yorker (synopsis here) which I highly recommend. Here's an excerpt:

In April, 1982, Friedman became the Times bureau chief in Beirut. Two months later, Israel invaded Lebanon. He reported on the invasion, the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the suicide bombings of the American Embassy and the Marine headquarters. "The biggest survival mechanism, being a Jewish Times correspondent in the Arab world, is listening," Friedman said. "It's a sign of respect, and if you will just listen to people and let them not just vent but say what's on their mind it's amazing what they'll let you say back."

Listening is a sign of respect, and even if your physical survival does not depend on it, the survival of your relationship with that person is always at risk. It's also hard work given our genetically wired short attention span. When you catch your attention drifting, think of Friedman's situation, and refocus on the conversation. You'll not only gain the respect of the speaker, you'll probably learn from what's being said.

Say It. Do It. Repeat.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner have conducted extensive surveys looking for the characteristics employees consider important in their leaders and coworkers. For leaders the top four attributes, in order of importance, are:

• Honest
• Forward Looking
• Inspiring
• Competent

Kouzes and Posner combine these characteristics into one; credibility:

"We want to believe in our leaders. We want to have faith and confidence in them as people. We want to believe they can be trusted, that they have the knowledge and skill to lead, and that they are personally excited and enthusiastic about the direction in which we are headed. Credibility is the foundation of leadership.”

While I agree this is what we want in leaders, I think putting excitement and enthusiasm under the credibility umbrella is stretching the meaning of the word. Some of the most credible people I know are dry as dust, and in my experience the level of enthusiasm with which a statement is made is inversely proportionate to its truth. So, in my formulation honesty and competence are the foundation of credibility.

Back to Kouzes and Posner. The four top characteristics employees look for in their coworkers are, in order of importance:

• Honest
• Cooperative
• Dependable
• Competent

There are two that overlap – our friends honesty and competence. So, in the work world (actually I think the entire world, but we’re focusing on work) if you can nail these two characteristics you are more than halfway there regardless of your role (especially since you’re unlikely to be viewed as inspiring or dependable if you’re a dishonest incompetent).

How does one come to be viewed as honest? You say things, and they turn out to be true.

How does one come to be viewed as competent? To the extent your job is to report on current conditions or project the future, it’s the same process as establishing honesty; you say things, and they turn out to be true. If your job is to produce something (for example, a report or a widget), you produce it as and when it’s expected.

This seems very simple, but every day, almost everyone screws it up:

• You say you will get back to someone, and you don’t
• The meeting starts at 9:00 AM, and you show up at 9:10 (even worse if it’s your meeting)
• You promise numbers to someone today, and give it to them tomorrow

To you, these are minor things, and the other people involved might think so too. How others react depends in large part on your history with them. If over time you’ve demonstrated you’re dependable and competent, an occasional lapse is not a big deal. But, if you don’t interact with the person often the event looms much larger. Fundamental attribution error is the tendency by people to attribute explanations for behaviors to personality explanations rather than situational explanations. You say you were late for the meeting because traffic was bad, and they think you were late because you’re disorganized, don’t respect the time of the other attendees, etc. If you haven’t already established a credible track record, it’s much harder to overcome this effect.

There are a couple of very simple things you can do to increase your success rate in “say it, do it.”

Don’t Say It. Before you open your mouth to say you’ll do something, take a breath and think hard about whether or not you’re going to perform. Offering to do something and then not doing it is much worse than not offering at all.

Say You Won’t Do It. Ironically, often the fastest path to building credibility is to tell someone you won’t or can’t do something. Note such a statement fulfills all the requirements for credibility building; you’ve said something (“I can’t do it”) and it comes true (you don’t do it). It’s obviously preferable to do things for other people if you can, but if it’s not going to happen you might as well build your credibility by saying so rather than undermining it by promising what you can’t deliver.

A final thought; if you just do it without saying it, no credibility is built. Too many highly capable people just handle problems as they arise without anyone being aware of their effectiveness. If no one knows what you are doing, you’re not establishing credibility. Of course, you can take this too far by grandstanding or manufacturing problems to solve. But, letting people know you’re handling things is good for you (it’s an essential step in building your credibility) and good for them (when something difficult comes up, they will be better able to assess your ability to take on the task).

Daniel Mudd, Richard Syron, and Kerry Killinger are not Stupid, Greedy, or Crooks

An article in today's Seattle Times says "Washington Mutual suffered an ugly death, leaving thousands without jobs, homeowners facing foreclosure, a civic crater in Seattle and a 100 year old institution flushed away by miscalculation and greed...Shareholders are also appalled by what they see as incompetence, and worse, by executives in their failure to protect the company...The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board of Canada, a major shareholder, has filed a securities class action complaint against Washington Mutual and some officers, including former Chief Executive Officer Kerry Killinger." Daniel Mudd, former CEO of Fannie Mae, and Richard Syron, former CEO of Freddie Mac, have been similarly lambasted (see, for example, His Name is Mudd) and the subject of calls for criminal investigations.

First, let me make clear that I don't know these men; they actually could be stupid, greedy and crooks. But, I think that's unlikely; my guess is they're probably really smart guys, and as honest and ethical as the rest of us (here are a couple of interesting posts arguing the elite really are elite, and the difficulty of assessing the ability of those at levels above our own). I think there is a much simpler explanation for the decisions which blew up their companies:

They tried to earn what they were being paid.

It's admirable, of course, to earn what you're given -if they didn't try to do that, they would be justly criticized. In 2007 Mr. Killinger's compensation was $14,364,883, Mr. Mudd's was $14,231,650, and Mr. Syron's was $14,497,981. What should they have done in 2008 to earn that money?

Lenders compete on price (interest rates, fees, processing costs), execution (speed and certainty of delivery of the promised transaction), and terms (leverage, documentation, covenants). By all accounts, all three companies were very competitive on price and execution. That leaves terms. As long as there are lenders willing to lend more aggressively (higher LTV loans, lower income ratios, less documentation, fewer reserves and covenants) conservative lenders will lose market share. You do not get paid $14M to lose market share.

In the old days (1970's and '80s), savings and loans were called 3-6-3 businesses; pay depositors 3% interest, extend mortgages at 6%, hit the golf course by 3PM. WAMU, Fannie, and Freddie were all stable, well run companies that could have made a good return making/buying secure loans, and their CEOs could have been on the golf course by 3. But, that would not be worth $14M. So, they tried to earn it by competing for riskier business, and they failed.

Sales and Middle Management: Twins Separated at Birth

Sales people and middle managers generally don't hang out together. It's too bad, because they have a lot in common, and what works for one would often help the other.

Middle managers are, by definition, in the middle - senior management above, junior management or employees below. Less obvious but just as true is that sales people are also in the middle, between their company and their customers. This leads to a whole host of parallels:

• The success of both middle managers and salespeople is largely (arguably totally) dependant on others. Middle management depends on senior management to pick the right direction and make the right decisions, and they depend on their direct reports and people down the line to execute and provide good feedback. Sales people depend on their companies to provide the right products at the right prices with good delivery execution, and they depend on their customers to buy. This lack of direct control in both directions can and does make the people in the middle crazy.
• The primary function of both middle management and sales people is a communication conduit. Middle managers absorb and distill information coming up from below and transmit it to senior management so better executive decisions can be made. They also pass information and decisions from senior management down to the troops below. In addition, there are feedback loops in both directions; middle managers (hopefully) have a role advising senior management on what decisions are likely to work, and provide feedback to their reports on how well they're doing implementing senior management strategy. Sales people transmit information about their company's products to customers, and transmit feedback from customers back to the company.
• When things are going badly, both middle management and sales people are often targets. Did senior management make bad decisions, or did middle management fail to communicate and execute? That's a call senior management makes when things go poorly, and how often do you hear a CEO admitting to a bad strategy? If a product isn't selling, is it the company's problem or are the sales people weak? In a downturn the lowest performing salespeople are often the first to go even if the problem is a market or product issue. Also, in bad times middle managers and salespeople are often messengers bearing bad news (this strategy isn't working, this product isn't selling). Everyone knows what happens to those kind of messengers.
• When things are going well, the value of middle managers and salespeople is still suspect. Things are going well - does senior management really need to work through a middle manager? Why can't they talk directly to line employees (or customers for that matter)? Our products are selling well; do we really need to pay salespeople that much?
• Pretty much everbody thinks they know better than middle managers and salespeople. Senior management knows the business and management better (that's why they're senior, and make multiples more than everyone else). Line people know what's really going on in the company, and management is out of touch. Companies think they know what companies want better than their salespeople, and customers think salespeople don't understand their needs.

Given these parallels, I think the core issues with both occupations are remarkably similar:

• How can you make good things happen when you don't have control?
• How can you communicate most effectively?
• What's the best way of giving feedback, direction, and advice?
• What's the best way to interact with people who might not respect you or your role?
• How do you demonstrate you add value?

I think the answers are pretty much the same for both salespeople and middle managers, which is why I deal with both in this blog.