#Mike middleman professional

The same is true in a corporation: if you manage Customer Support and are trying to share what you know with Sales or Product Development, you’ll be much more likely to gain their attention and trust if you already understand their problems and can offer ready solutions without imposing on their busy schedules.

#Mike middleman professional

All professional middlemen do some version of giving before they take, whether they be appliance flippers on Craigslist or operate two-sided markets like Airbnb. These “Bridges,” as I call them, don’t have to have formal authority - they become recognized as leaders by acting like leaders.īut to be effective, they can’t be seen as a drain on either side, which means they must provide immediate value. People who speak the language of both sides, understand the needs and resources of each, and can ferry the right resources across the gaps at just the right time can profit their organization and themselves. But such gaps between groups are opportunities for would-be middlemen, those people who can bridge the gaps-the “structural holes” in the social fabric, as the University of Chicago sociologist Ron Burt calls them. As valuable information gets trapped in each silo, the whole organization can become less valuable than the sum of its parts. An all-too-familiar feature of large organizations, silos are an unfortunate byproduct of each department specializing in what it’s good at. Look for gaps between the silos that’s where the opportunity is. The middlemen I studied did so in several key ways, three of which can be used effectively by middle managers and professionals as well: If you can reduce transaction costs for someone else, you can be a valuable middleman. (Ever tally the hours you spent planning your last trip abroad if you didn’t use a travel agent to cut through the research?) In other words, we face transaction costs, and middlemen can help reduce those costs. The truth is almost the opposite: by specializing (in middleman skillsets), middlemen can usually make things happen more efficiently than those who specialize in other job functions. put it to me, “middlemen connect nodes in a network to increase the value of the network.” And in an increasingly connected world, that makes all of us into at least potential middlemen, subject to the same perils and opportunities.Īnd yet even the term “middleman” conjures up a negative image - someone who creates costs and slows things down, a meddling intermediary. As the venture capitalist Mike Maples, Jr. I used to say, “No - it’s about brokers, agents, dealers, and two-sided markets like Airbnb, OpenTable, and TaskRabbit.” In other words, I was investigating the people who connect buyers and sellers in an open marketplace, not in a firm.īut at some point in my reporting, as I learned more and more about the qualities shared by effective middlemen from all industries, it dawned on me that middle managers - indeed, managers and professionals at every level - obviously are middlemen. “You mean like middle managers?” they’d ask. While I was researching my book about middlemen, some people didn’t seem to understand who I was talking about.