Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here once again with Andy Ray, a Principle at PKF Texas and the author of Radical Impact: A Manger’s Playbook to Achieve Meaningful Results; welcome back to the Playbook Andy.

Andy: Thank you Russ.

Russ: You bet. So we talked about this last time and it’s keenly focused on middle management.

Andy: That’s right.

Russ: But I’m curious, what triggered the idea for you that you wanted to write this?

Andy: Well the idea started for me very early in my management career after I received a dismal performance review in my first management job at General Electric and from that point on I really spent the rest of my career solving how to perform as a manager. As a consultant when I get out with different types of teams in the business world I just seem stuck; they’re stuck in the day to day, they’re stuck in their careers, they’re just trying to get to retirement. So I wanted to give them a book that would show them a way out of that and the way out of that is to create a meaningful and sustainable result in your business, radical impact.

Russ: That makes sense. I was reflecting on my first management position, which was a middle management position with IBM and a lot of people that head up through management their first step obviously is middle management. So not only are they may be stuck, they might not know the key to it at all.

Andy: They might now and that’s really what most of the book is about is that trade craft of management; those techniques and skills that you need to apply into your business to master the craft of management.

Russ: Well I really appreciate you sharing that with us.

Andy: Thank you Russ.

Russ: This thing’s going to be valuable to lots of middle managers out there.

Andy: Oh I hope so.

Russ: For more on middle management development visit PKFTexas.com/radicalimpact. This has been another Thought Leader production brought to you by PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook.