Manager Redefined: The Competitive Advantage in the Middle of Your Organization

PREFACE

Observers of the business environment often refer to the workplace as an ecosystem. This metaphor seems apt. Our working habitats have climates (from warm and embracing to frigid and formal), contain an abundance of species (ranging from the ruby-throated sales rep to the saber-toothed CFO), and respond to climatic change (such as rapid warming of the competitive landscape).

If we accept that most of us inhabit some kind of workplace ecology, then supervisors and first-line managers occupy what scientists call an ecotone. An ecotone is an area of transition between two communities, a boundary space that separates one environment from another.^[1] The manager ecotone lies between the world of employees and the territory occupied by senior ...