For a generation, business thought leadership emphasized managing down and climbing up the corporate ladder. What if we explored managing up? Without completely abandoning career aspirations (climbing), what if we formally recognize the limitations of executives and consciously manage up?
Such an exploration requires challenging some status quos, rejecting ambiguous buzzwords, and finding solutions outside conventional business topics. Such an exploration insists that no one be set up for failure, and everyone be set up for success.
This session shares ten tools to manage up the corporate hierarchy. It rejects conventions such as RACI, meeting minutes, squishy leadership paradigms, and the obsession with speed. The tools maximize your executives’ value to you and shape a culture of increased discipline and empathy. This session places you (not senior executives) on the frontier of innovation methodology. In applying these tools, you must manage in every direction, including up the org chart. These are ten tools to manage up without kissing up.
Agenda
● Acknowledge the typical practices of managing down and climbing up.
● Propose the alternate – managing up.
● Ten topics for managing up such as speed, minimizing cost, and handling counterproductive behavior.
● Anticipate skeptics & preserve your mental health.
● How to adopt new tools.
Learning Objectives / Takeaways
● Culture traits that we should see as unacceptable.
● Language to manage up and improve our culture.
- Inspiration and tactics to shape a culture of discipline and empathy, regardless of your seniority.
About the speaker
Robert Snyder is the founder and president of Innovation Elegance, LLC. His thirty-year career spans roles such as developer, project management, change management, sales enablement, and the performing arts. His career path includes corporate roles, consulting roles, startups, PMP, and Agile certifications. He’s performed in numerous vocal, dance, and theater ensembles. Robert earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and his MBA in Strategy from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Robert is publishing a series of books on innovation methodology, inspired by metaphor-based leadership:
“Innovation Elegance: Transcending Agile with Ruthlessness and Grace” (available now)
“Innovation Portfolio: Five Verbs Shape Your Team’s Legacy” (available now)
“Elegant Leadership: Distinguishing the Good, the Bad, and the False” (targeting 2025)