The Big Corporation and Middle Management: some Advice

Background: This started to be a short piece of advice to a friend who works at a huge corporation with a worldwide presence, happens to be in the cosmetics business, based in Texas. She has told me that she is seven steps up the 10 step corporate ladder. She’s been in the ‘executive management pipeline’ for two+ years. She has lot’s o brains and people skills and looks. In summary, any company of any size would like to have this person working for them. She is flexible, adjustable and a B school graduate, with accounting/ auditing skills. She has experience at small and large firms and she is NOT pretentious or a suck up.

Assume this response is to an email she had written back to me about how ‘it wasn’t funny’ to tease her about corporation politics, when she’s living in the middle of it. I wrote a short reply. Then added a few things. Finally, it had to be on my blog. So here it is.

Dear G:

Big company politics, how it Works.

Middle mgmt are always the first to be examined when cutbacks come. Middle Managers make good salaries, but their contributions are hard to quantify when bad times hit. One MM cut equals 2-3 drones in savings. MM people have bulls-eye targets painted on their backs, always. In growth times, you need them to hire, train (and shockingly, manage) new people. In down times, they are the first to go – overpaid and underutilized. Superstars (and potential SS’s) are exempt.

This is just facts, don’t be mad at me.

Small companies, there is no MM. Either contribute 3-5x your $alary or be gone. Usually, it’s the Boss, and the drones. (if the boss dies or gets divorced, usually, that’s the end)
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Medium sized Cos, in good times, there are managers.  In bad times, no. If you’re lucky in a medium sized company in bad times, you’ll have a skill they need.

Just ask me about the  period from  ’83 to ’93 when my exorbitant $85k salary was reduced to $55k and then it took 10 full years to get back. When I looked at my income history later, I couldn’t believe it. I was happy to have a job, any job, for ten years! Our company went from 33 people to 5 people in 2 years. That’s when I learned how to be a worker, finally. Never recovered psychologically from that trauma, it was my generation’s great depression. From then on, no more ‘being a manager’ for me.

It took a while, but I soon learned skills like listening, (hard core) sales techniques, function based design and speed drawing skills that I could count on. Also, how to collect from deadbeat clients, including physical intimidation, and how threats can backfire. And, how to lead from the front.

These skills were not taught in college. This is business jungle prowess you learn when you’re hungry.

Turned out I was much happier, felt more productive every day. 100% less BS, and I actually got more respect from co-workers and clients, most of which couldn’t believe that I did the drawings they were looking at, designed the buildings they liked, and had my name on the door, too. Clients had a hard time accepting the fact that I was a salesman, they were embarrassed to have been swayed by an architect. (Then later when they found out I was a good salesman, they were proud to have been sold – strange how that works)

My philosophy of being a worker became our best sales tool, and I even started to think I had discovered something unique. But of course, it’s not. It’s how to succeed in life 101. Learn a few skills, then USE them.

So tell me, are you concerned about your job?