This is the beginning of a series of newsletters dedicated to the question of what it means to be ethical as a middle manager. This first post will serve as a general overview of ethics to lay the groundwork for future posts. What is Ethics? Ethics, specifically normative ethics, is the study of how people ought to behave. This assumes,

With Christmas next week and the New Year following, I wanted to send a slightly different newsletter to close out the year. Overview of the year This was the first year of the Stuck In The Middle newsletter. I kicked off in August and, since then, have published 16 newsletters with over 32,000 words. That is over 2 hours of

Leaders need vision! I am sure you have heard this said over and over again. In leadership positions, we often discuss vision as a critical attribute a leader must have. A leader needs to create a vision to inspire the team and see where they are headed. But what if the value of vision isn’t to show exactly where we

“Imagine a government that assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must obey. Although superiors give most inferiors a routine to follow, there is no rule of law. Orders may be arbitrary and can change at any time, without prior notice or opportunity to appeal. Superiors are unaccountable to those they order around. They are neither elected nor removable by

Last week, we looked at three different types of freedom and how they show up at work. This week, we are looking at the idea of freedom as a choice and what that really means. Choice and indifference What is often meant by freedom in organizations is some degree of choice. Which of these projects would you like to take