Wake-Up Calls for Managers
For the hard parts no one prepares you for
When the path isn’t clear, the stakes are high, and the answers aren’t obvious—this is where managers struggle most.
Wake-Up Calls for Managers delivers practical, real-world guidance for navigating:
- Tough conversations
- Leading through uncertainty
- Building influence without authority
- Driving results through others
The Leadership Caffeine Blog
The Great Delayering Is Solving the Wrong Management Problem
Chip Cutter wrote an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal: Corporate America Is Axing the 'Micro-Team Boss. Cutter writes: "At Uber and elsewhere, managers with small fiefdoms have become an especially vulnerable target in the push to purge the management...
The Great Delayering Is Solving the Wrong Management Problem
Eliminating micro-team managers may make perfect sense. Eliminating layers may make sense, too. But gutting management capacity and turning managers into players with token responsibility for coaching, coordination, development, and execution is a recipe for trouble.
Stuff happens. Where you look matters. How your Locus of Control affects your success.
If something goes wrong, how do you respond? Do you look primarily outward at the external factors that created that outcome…circumstances, other people, luck, management or others? Or, do you focus your attention on what you can influence moving forward? Your locus of control counts in your success.
September 2026 Leadership Development Digest
I’ve had a lifelong love of receiving publications that make me think. I love authors and ideas that spur the imagination, challenge convention, and raise possibilities. As a teen, I made the regular trip to the mailbox hoping to find the latest science fiction pulp...
Leaders, beware of creating restructuring wreckage. Tips to minimize the fallout
Given the constantly shifting market forces and the need for organizations to find new ways to leverage technologies, restructuring is a fact of life. If you must, it’s imperative to minimize creating restructuring wreckage. Here are 9 tips to help.
The “Wake-Up Calls” call-to-action for My Latest Book on Managing
Everything is and/or will shift about how we structure, lead, invest, and engage our people in this world. It’s an amazing time to rethink the need for, use, and impact of the manager. It’s an amazing time to think differently about everything we do related to strategy, innovation, and engagement.
It turns out, resistance to your change initiative is (mostly) a good sign
A mentor would regularly offer: “Art, if you’re getting flak, you’re close to the target.” While always a sucker for good air force analogies, the flak or resistance didn’t feel good. It turns out, my mentor was right. Here’s how to better leverage the resistance or flak, as my mentor described it, as part of leading successful change initiatives.
New Video Series: Wake-Up Calls for Managers Shorts
Eliminating the drama-storms that run rampant in too many organizations and on too many teams is important for managers striving for a healthy working environment and great results. Here’s an approach that hundreds of my clients have successfully applied to solving this challenge.
“Simply put, managing is hard.” (Here’s a new playbook to help.)
Wake-Up Calls for Managers — Insights to Sharpen Focus and Elevate Results is my latest contribution to helping anyone responsible for the work of others survive and ultimately thrive in the hardest parts of their jobs. It’s also, as the title suggests, a “wake-up call” to think differently about how you engage with your colleagues and get the results you and your organization need in this world of change.
Ready to publish: two manager-focused book projects coming to life in different formats
In the next few weeks, two of my projects focused on manager and leader development are coming to life in very different formats. Wake-Up Calls for Managers (the handbook no one hands new managers) and The Manager’s Journey move to publishing. Wake-Up Calls will be available via Amazon.com and The Manager’s Journey will be published in a unique serial format on my blog.
Why Gutting Management Layers Is the Wrong Response to AI
We’ve seen this movie before. A shock hits the broader system and organizations decide to ‘delayer’ focusing the brunt of their efforts on middle management. This time AI is the excuse. Yet the real opportunity and need here is to redefine the role of manager, not eliminate it.