The Squeeze: Leadership Sandwich
The Leadership Sandwich
Your project manager is the filling. You're one of the slices of bread.
That's the whole metaphor in one sentence, and everybody often gets it backward. A sandwich isn't about balance. It's about pressure from both sides.
Picture any normal day at your shop. The customer/carrier kicked the scope back for the third time and is requesting that two line items be justified. Your PM has one tech out, a rental van, and a homeowner calling twice a day asking when her kitchen comes back. Then you walk through and ask why the job's tracking under margin.
Everything you just put on him came from above. Everything he's dealing with is coming from below. He absorbs both. That's the job.
Now here's the part that should worry you. When somebody gets squeezed long enough, they stop deciding things.
They stop authorizing the extra dehu because last time you asked why the equipment bill was high. They stop pushing back on the adjuster because they're not sure you'll back them. They start texting you for permission on a $400 call, not because they don't know what to do, but because the last time they made it alone, it cost them.
You didn't hire a manager. You built an expensive relay switch.
And may never hear about it. Few walks into your office and says, "I've stopped making decisions." They just get quieter. They stop bringing you problems, which feels like things are going great….right up until they hand you two weeks notice and you find out what they'd been sitting on.
So here comes Monday. Ask your PM one question:
"What's a decision you made last week that you didn't check with me on first?"
Listen to the answer. If he has three, you're in good shape. If he has to think about it, you've got a squeeze. If the answer is "I run everything by you," you're not the top slice. You're a vise, and he's been living in it.
Then do the much harder thing: tell him where the actual line is. Not "use your judgment." That's not a boundary; that's a trap, because he still doesn't know where the line sits, and he'll guess low every time. Give him the number. "Anything under $1,000 on an active job, you own it. Don't call me." Then when he spends $800 on something you'd have done differently, and he will, you eat it. Out loud. In front of people. Everyone will learn.
That's the moment the whole thing shifts. Not the policy. The first time you let him be wrong, and he doesn't get squeezed for it.
If your team isn't equipped, or hasn't proven to you that level of authority, then that's your next step. Work on that.
Because pressure from both sides isn't the problem. The middle of a sandwich is where all the flavor lives. That's where the work actually gets done. The problem is when both slices press at once and nothing in the middle is allowed to hold its shape.
You control one of those slices.
If you don't know whether your managers are deciding or just relaying, that's a gap. And gaps can be filled. It's most of what we do at Restoration Advisers. Reach out and let's look at yours.
-KB
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