It has been getting ever clearer to me as people start to ask me for my opinion and what my team has been doing this week, that I have arrived in middle management.  Hmm... So now the question become how to be a good middle manager.  I read a few things like Joel Spolsky's thoughts on middle management. Which gives me some hope that yes there is a good reason to have people doing middle management.  So now the issue is just how to do it well.

One of the big issues that I think anyone in management faces is trust.  This is proboably doubly so if your in middle management.  Because now you not only have to have people that you can trust to do good work (which thankfully it seems that I do) but you also have to be able to explain to anyone else how your method of management works and does indeed get the most out of people.

To be honest my experience of managers is that they have had a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards managing me and consequently I think I've been a fair bit less productive than I couldhave been otherwise.  So, somewhere between micro-managing and "I don't care what you do just don't bug me" seems to be the happy medium that I'm looking for.

The other new aspect of this is the planning, and strategic business development side of things.  This is both exciting and somewhat daunting.  This is the part where we choose a direction and hope like heck that when we reach the next measuring point that it worked and we're making more money or at least making the same money.  And here my true colors show.  Much as I'd like to be a risk taking business adventurer, I lean towards conservativism, which I am pretty certain in the web world leads to business death.

So, here's to growing into something new.  Hopefully, Ths doesn't make me really annoying.