Management In A Changing World

CHAPTER 10MANAGING UP AND SIDEWAYS

For most of this book, we've focused on how to manage the people who report directly to you—in other words, how to manage with formal authority. Formal authority might include the power to hire or fire someone, evaluate their performance, or determine or influence their compensation and benefits.

But often, you'll find yourself managing without formal authority—such as in external partnerships and collaborative projects. Or, you might be at a workplace with a nonhierarchical or matrixed structure. And middle managers, you're managing in all directions simultaneously! For all of these reasons, managing without formal authority is an important skill—and the conspire‐and‐align approach is especially helpful for this kind of management. Managing without formal authority can look like:

• Managing up: Using management skills with your boss (or boss's boss, or the board, if you're an ED).
• Managing sideways: Managing work with a peer, either within your organization or outside it.
• Managing diagonally: Managing work with someone with a power differential (one person has more or less position power), but neither of you has formal authority over the other.¹

If the phrase “managing up” makes you uneasy, we get it. After all, most traditional advice about managing up normalizes bad management behaviors. It sets up the expectation that staff people serve as their manager's assistants no matter their official titles—and the burdens fall hardest on staff ...