The Middle: Recent Episodes
Stephen Willson
The Middle is a podcast series exploring the challenges of improving middle management since that is widely acknowledged as having the biggest impact on organisational performance. Each podcast will feature an interview with a prominent executive from a wide range of contexts including public, private and charitable sectors. The host is associate professor Stephen Willson from Birmingham City University Business School.
Jim Hamilton has played a leading role for over 30 years in the Life Sciences, Health and Nutrition industries, including as a CEO and Board Director in the Dietary Supplement, Food, Animal-feed and Personal-Care product sectors.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management challenges in a business to business context.
The discussion covers topics such as adding value through staying close to evolving customer needs, maintaining an appropriate culture and the selection of measures to include non-financial aspects.
Robert Kirby is the director of People-People, architects and engineers of behavioural, attitudinal and cultural transformation in the workplace.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the negotiating, conselling and conflict-resolution skills required by middle managers to maximise their contribution to organsational performance.
The discussion opens by considering the selection of industry, company and role to enable managers to fufil their potential.
Tom Clarke-Forrest is the founder and CEO of the youth-focused charity Sport4Life.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management challenges for a founder developing a business from start-up to thirty employees, balancing fund-raising and operations. The parallels with commercial businesses are numerous and striking.
While growth has always been an objective the issue takes on new proportions with the prospect of working nationally .
Andy is a junior doctor in an NHS trust hospital sharing his observations in five NHS trusts.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management challenges in hospitals in the national health system. The episode focuses on numerous tensions implicit within the NHS constitution of improving public health and wellbeing.
Should doctors be encourated to share staff across deparments given fluctuating demands that may push one over capacity while an adjoining area has surplus capacity?
How can the demands of different departments be reconciled when it comes to prioritising the limited capacity of shared services such as operating theatres and laboratories?
Are general hospitals the appropriate channel for patients with mental health issues since they appear to disproportionately absorb resources and disrupt throughput?
Shakti Singh is the senior finance director at Ramboll Group A/S an international engineering consultancy based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
She joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management challenges in bringing about successful business transformation. A particular issue is whether shared services should be local or centralized.
Shakti draws on her international experience to illustrate approaches and pitfalls when businesses obsolete their existing business models before a competitor does it for them.
Consideration is also given to the influence of the nature of the industry and the international setting rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all approach.
David Spencer is the head of marketing for Old Speckled Hen at Greene King, Britain's leading pub retailer and brewer.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore how marketing philosophy and practices inform middle management action.
David discusses the challenges of gaining a deep understanding of customer behaviour in a context that is evolving both in terms of points of purchase and consumption.
This subsequently raises the issues of how such insights are suffused into the organisation to ensure that customer desires are fulfilled in the best possible way.
Richard Morgan is the chief operating officer of LKQ Euro Car Parts, a national supplier to independent garages.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the issues of managing over 250 branches in order to be able to deliver the most common parts within 20 minute time slots.
He discusses the role of central and regional management in stock control and developing local community engagement and expertise in the face of a changing market.
Liz Herridge is the Director of Network Claims and Transformation at National Highways, the public sector organisation responsible for the strategic road network.
She joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management issues within reconfiguring the claims workflow processes.
Liz addresses the challenges of establishing a consistent information gathering system to improve national system throughput despite regions have diverse and potentially conflicting objectives.
The issues within the transformation journey include work re-allocation, stimulating team support and motivation by leaders and the multi-skilling and mobility of resources.
In this episode Stephen Willson questions the intuitive presumption that achieving the best overall outcome is attained by maximising results within boundaries. The executive contributions illustrate unintended damaging behaviours that can occur across boundaries. These boundaries include between territories, business functions, alternative customer offerings and over period ends.
Stephen then explores the importance of aligning all business units and functions with the overall organisational purpose and provides examples of tactical, structural and cultural ways to manage boundaries.
Jim DeWaele is the European president of the Keller Group, a global geotechnical specialist building contractor.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management issues of working in the high risk arena of building foundations in uncertain ground conditions. A local approach is described that addresses the national challenges of different contractual arrangements, material costs and familiarity with alternative techniques.
He discusses the requirements of organisation design to provide rapid access to distributed expertise across the network of 190 branches when unexpected difficulties arise on site.
Justin King CBE was the chief executive of Sainsbury's plc, the UK's second largest grocery chain. He joined the organisation and engineered the corporate turnaround from 14 years of losing market share to 9 successive years of profit growth.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the issues underlying the decline and how they were addressed. This included changing from being centrally led to empowering the front line on the basis that the only place that customers are served is in the stores. This required fundamental changes in the top management lineup but illuminatingly no more than normal turnover in the 1,000 or so in the middle management ranks.
Tony Taylor is the managing director of Gibbs and Dandy, a unit of Saint-Gobain, the French multi-national building materials organisation.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the issues of working on two fronts in a distribution business. The first being making multiple small internal operational improvements to prove their worth to their parent organisation. Secondly to access resources and manage boundaries with parallel distribution businesses and internal material manufacturing units.
Stephen Willson brings together contributions from 20 executive interviews that support a three stage process that underpins the evolving role of middle managers.
He then investigates the challenges for individuals making the transition between stages and how bosses can support the process.
Stephen is an associate professor at Birmingham City University Business School.
Asha Devi is associate director at Ove Arup the company most famous for being the architect of the Sydney Opera House. She joins Stephen Willson to explore the issues of designing customers' office space for collaboration and the satisfaction of multiple stakeholders in a changing world. This has particular significance in enabling middle managers to work effectively across their organisations. The same spotlight is then shone on the design of Arup's own professional services offices.
Gavin Card is the Director of Global Operational Excellence at SHV Energy, the parent company of Calor in the UK. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management challenges of aligning supply with demand that is regional and weather dependant. The topics include improving UK-wide performance by abandoning regional P & L accountability and refining KPI's for operational improvement. Gavin draws powerful parallels with his previous experience within GE and the Royal Air Force.
Jason Smith is the Managing Director of Artex, a leading distributor of construction products. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the development challenges faced by middle managers in different phases of their career progression.
Nigel Riglar is the Director of Environment & Community Services at South Gloucestershire Council. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the challenges for middle management precipitated by the Covid crisis. These include the shift to facilitating local communities rather than cities and the dynamics of work when many staff are only infrequently in the office .
Anthony Tattum is the Chief Executive of Big Cat creative agency. He joins Stephen Willson and discusses how Big Cat works with organisations to align their customer-facing and delivery-focused middle management tiers in an environment where customer needs are changing rapidly.
More details of Big Cat are available at their recently rebranded website: https://bigcatagency.com/
Nick Walkley is the Chief Executive Officer of Homes England, the government's housing accelerator. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the challenges of configuring middle management to achieve public sector and political objectives through private sector developers.
Ruth Cooke is the chief executive of housing association GreenSquare Group. She joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management challenges of working with a wide range of customers and stakeholders with diverse priorities.
Frank Bandura was the chief financial officer for casual dining chain Carluccio's. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the ways in which the finance director can add value to their organisation through close co-ordination with the operations director.
Saleh Saeed OBE is the chief executive of the Disasters Emergency Committee. He joins Stephen Willson to explore how member charitable organisations prepare to be able to make a coordinated response when international disasters arise.
Deborah Cadman is the chief executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority. She joins Stephen Willson to explore developing regional growth through the devolution of centralised government powers and the inter-working of numerous local councils and related bodies.
Ananda Roy has been a senior strategy, data analytics and insights director and has over 20 years of commercial and operational responsibility. He joins host Stephen Willson to explore how organisations in a number of sectors are encouraging and supporting middle management leadership across their organisations.
Paul Anderson is a Managing Director of Deutsche Bank. He joins host Stephen Willson and explores the challenges of managing teams to achieve the best overall outcome in a highly complex distributed global context.
Sue is the chief transformation officer at Mediacom, the UK's largest planning and buying agency. She joins host Stephen Willson to address the unique middle management challenges in the advertising industry. Here a strong collaborative culture pervades a matrix structure to meet customer needs amid changing tastes in emergent channels.
Carl Arntzen is the Chief Executive of Bosch Thermotechnology Limited. He joins host Stephen Willson to explore the organisational challenges of managing the transition from risk-averse gas boiler manufacturer to integrated home automation provider.
Professor Philip Plowden is Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham City University. He joins host Stephen Willson to explore the differences between managing professional staff and academics while maintaining a focus on organisational efficiency.
Sarah is an associate director at Rethink, a mental health charity. She joins host Stephen Willson to address the unique middle management challenges in commissioned charity work. In addition we encounter familiar themes from previous episodes set in the private sector.
Steve Allen is a partner heading the Birmingham office of Mills & Reeve, a leading UK law firm. He joins host Stephen Willson to explore the challenges of developing a local office and managing teams of lawyers with regional specialisations.
David Thompson is the Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police Force. He joins host Stephen Willson to explore re-organising middle management in the face of budget cuts and a broadening range of threats to include childhood slavery and cybercrime.
Simon Longbottom is the Chief Executive of the Stonegate Pub Company. He was Voted Business Leader of the Year in the 2019 Publican awards. He joins host Stephen Willson to explore the challenges of keeping a small company dynamic while introducing a whole new layer of middle management as a result of rapid growth.
Anna Slocombe has worked in senior HR roles in Russia and the UK. Her experience includes time in Mars, the privately-owned confectioner and Saint-Gobain, the French multinational. She joins host Stephen Willson to explore the challenges of growing into the middle management role.
Mani Dhesi is the Transformation Director of SDSmyhealthcare. He joins host Stephen Willson to explore the challenges of achieving end-to-end performance in a network including hospitals, community care and a federation of GP’s offices.