Make 2007 Your Year to Become a Better Manager Date:   Thursday , December 28, 2006 When you think about going to work every day do you think about how much you love your job, how much you hate it, or something in between? No matter how you feel, your attitude toward work is often impacted by whether or not you report to a great manager or a lousy one. And to make life even tougher, there just doesn’t seem to be enough great managers to go around. In fact, many people would say most of the managers they report to might even have a masters in mediocrity. With New Year’s resolutions around the corner, it’s time to take charge of your management skills and bump them up a notch. If you are a manager now, aspire to be one in the future, or simply need to know how you can better work with the manager you report to today, you need to look at time tested ways to tackle familiar middle management dilemmas and challenges that managers face. Moga Moga: “Get a move on!” Moga is an acronym for middle management growth: Motivate, Organize, Guide and Achieve. Middle managers should learn management techniques to know how to: Motivate a team into action, Organize with well placed structure and resources, Guide with coaching and support for individuals and the team as a whole, and Achieve with methods that promote success and personal sense of accomplishment. The middle managers need to: * Get started with their latest project or management challenge by taking stock of the current situation * Identify process issues that may be hindering success, and · Fine tune group dynamics and roles to get the job done right—a true management win-win. · When faced with a new challenge, many middle managers are so caught up in other work they simply don’t have time to think about where to begin. This calls for management methods that instill confidence, provide structure and allow management by design to take on management by default. Middle managers need to know how great managers hold meetings that people want to attend, along with a useful collection of other management advice for taking nagging problems and converting them into noticeable results. The run-of-the-mill manager should quickly understand how to achieve top-of-the-hill success. And that’s what great management is all about … finding success that comes from knowing how to get the job done right. The author of Master Your Middle Management Universe. She can be reached at mary@masteryoursuccess.com