I was working with a sharp young manager recently and he asked me a good question. One of his skips had done something that required some pretty simple, but important, feedback. (Remember, a skip is someone who reports to one of your directs - they are “two levels down.”)

He said, “I know we’ve got to address it, but who should do it? I mean, I kind of want to, but I wasn’t there, so if it comes from me, it’s hearsay.”

I have heard managers use that term before many times, to suggest that they weren’t there at the moment something occurred, and so they didn’t get involved, or didn’t pursue a situation, or give feedback, or take action in some form.

Because it would be “hearsay”.

“Hearsay” comes from the legal world (at least in the US). It is a rule of evidence ( I think), and it means that what someone says to someone else isn’t permissible somehow.

I’m not a lawyer…

…and as managers, neither are you.

Hearsay is NOT a prohibition for management action. Sometimes applying concepts from other professions is good, but sometimes not. If managers were to “first do no harm,” then nobody would ever get fired. (That line is a broad modern paraphrase of part of the medical doctor’s Hippocratic Oath, a truly lovely tradition). If managers had to fact check everything to ensure not just accuracy but truth - as journalists are asked to do - we’d rarely get anything done.

Just because you hear something from someone else doesn’t mean you shouldn’t act on it. Hearing something from someone else as a manager is NOT HEARSAY… it’s just hearing something from someone else.

I’ll tell you what’s worse than the fear of a hearsay backlash. Worse is your boss hearing that you knew that something happened (regardless of how you knew - bet she doesn’t care), and that you didn’t do anything, because of “hearsay”.

Because “asleep at the switch” is far worse an accusation than hearsay.

Oh, I know. Some of you are going to suggest that I’m now going to go off half-cocked and pursue every rumor. No, I’m not. I’m going to consider the source, and if I think it’s credible, and believe some management action would be helpful, I’m going to act.

Hearsay be damned.

I recently read an article in American Way magazine called, “And You Thought YOUR Boss Was Bad.” It made the claim that “nearly 8 in 10 employees are victims of a micromanaging boss.”

This is patently false.

There are so many things that irritate me about this article that it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll do my best.

First of all, the line above about “nearly 8 in 10…” makes a common (but important) statistical error of suggesting that because someone once had a micromanager for a boss, they “are” victims of micromanagement. The actual line later in the article is:

“79 percent of us say we have been micromanaged.”

I won’t even attempt to address the issue that the statistic comes from a book purporting to be a “Micromanagement Survival Guide.” The problem here is that if I say I “have been” micromanaged, that doesn’t mean I “am being” micromanaged right now.

I have come to believe that journalists do this on purpose. Sorry, but that’s what I think. I see this so often I can no longer chalk it up to a lack of understanding of the difference.

Further, there’s a quote from a Dr. Robert Trestman:

“We are in a micromanagement pandemic.”

What a joke. This is even MORE patently false - if it’s possible - than the 8 of 10 statistic above.

Dr. Trestman is a clinical psychiatrist, and surely much more studied and intelligent than I am. Please, I have nothing against Dr. Trestman. But he’s just flat wrong.

The issue here is that just because someone tells you they’re being micromanaged does NOT make it so. Oh, I’m sure there are clinicians and HR folks and therapists who would say that that IS the definition, but it’s not. If that IS the definition, then that look you saw on the face of your directs when you asked if you could give them feedback - that look alone - could cause you to be considered a micromanager.

This is a victimization mentality, and it’s not just wrong, it’s insidious.

By the way, this article has some great anecdotes about micromanagers, all of them amusing and several horrific. Putting compelling anecdotes in an article this way is a great (and false) way to support your thesis. Don’t confuse anecdotes with statistics.

Look, it’s unlikely you are a micromanager. (But if your team reads this article, they might think you are, just to make themselves feel like part of the majority!)

Let me stop here, having gotten through the lesser of the two evils of this article: its sloppiness and resultant false hyperbole.

I’d love to hear your comments, and when I recur, I’ll talk about how the problem is NOT micromanagement.

Thanks to your nominations, Manager Tools made the finals in voting for BOTH the People’s Choice and Best in Business Podcasts on PodcastAwards.com.

Mike and I are grateful to all of you who nominated us.

Voting starts tomorrow, Friday, the 28th. You can vote once a day for the entire 15 day period, and we’d appreciate it if you would. (We’ll have some polite reminders during the 2 weeks.)

Please use the banner ad on our site (to the left). I think they are starting the banner ad competition again, so clicking on the banner is best.

I THINK that you will be able to vote for us in both categories each day, but we will confirm that. That would mean ideally everyone would vote 30 times (2x per day) for us.

Also, I THINK that you won’t have to type in our address this time - it will just require a click on our name.

And, please remember that you will have to respond to the verification email they send you for your vote to count. Be careful of it going in your junk mail folder.

Thanks for the nominations, and now it’s time to capitalize on what we’ve already done.

Vote early, and vote daily!

That’s the headline from a WSJ article about a week ago. Surely every other business periodical carried a similar one.

Intel specifically cited “slowed decision making” in their decision to target mid-level managers.

There is a global shakeout among managers coming. Reduced pricing leverage, commodity supply constraints, the merging of the corporate and nation-state worlds, and the flattening world all mean more competition. That means tighter margins, and more attention to costs. Labor is always “Cost One”. And managers are mistakenly seen as an easy solution.

Luckily for some, at the same time, effective managers wil be prized and recruited away not for their technical skills or pedigree, but for their ability to set and meet tough goals by creating and motivating teams of professionals to achieve beyond their day to day abilities.

Because the single biggest influence on competitiveness is human performance, and effective managers are the single biggest influence on human performance.

Once again, it’s all about people. The differentiator is effectiveness.

What are you doing to improve your performance, and your team’s?

How are you investing in being effective?

Attention must be paid.

Today’s show is an interesting one … At least once in your career, and perhaps as many as five times, you’re going to have to resign from a position. And this is another one of those tasks or responsibilities that no one talks about, no one knows how to do, and therefore many do it poorly.

It’s not hard to do well, and in this series of casts, we make it a simple step by step process. If you’re thinking that you already know how, consider that we recommend you need SIX WEEKS to do it well.

We’ve gotten a couple of notes recently indicating that Mike and I could have done a better job of explaining some of the ways our site and services work. Specifically, “new members” have said things like, “I didn’t know about the monthly cast feed,” and, “you mean I have to register twice in order to use the forums?”

And my answers are “Sorry we weren’t more clear!” and “Yes… And, sorry!”

If you don’t know it, Manager Tools is more than the weekly casts we have (posted in this blog Sunday night/Monday morning. Herewith, a brief overview.

1. The Weekly Manager Tools Podcast. The bread and butter of Manager Tools. You can listen to our future-award-winning cast either right here in your browser, or by downloading it to your PC directly. You can also subscribe by using our RSS feed of that cast. (I’ll be covering more of the technical stuff in the coming days).

This cast will always be free, and will always be dedicated to making managers more effective.

2. The Monthly Members Only Podcast. Mike and I added this additional cast to encourage listeners to join our community more fully. Registering essentially gets you an extra free show every month. Last year we had casts on how to run an introductory meeting, how to run a “hot-wash” after action meeting, and a very well received series on working with the four major behavioral styles in the DiSC profile we like so much.

You must first register, by going here. Once you register, you’ll be able to go to the page where we archive all those monthly shows, and you can also access the feed if you choose to use RSS.

This year, we’re going to be focusing on your career with the monthly casts, with topics like how to prepare for your own monthly review, how to prepare for being acquired/merged with another company, etc.

3. The Discussion Forums. There’s a link on this page that says “Go To the Discussion Forums”. The Forums are even less well known than our monthly cast, and that’s too bad. Post any management or career question, and we’ll answer them, usually with all the detail you need. There are over 1200 posts from close to 400 members. Often, you’ll get multiple answers to your question. If you think you can add value to someone else’s problem, please share you experience and/or insights with them.

There aren’t that many places where you can get 24 hour turnaround on your managerial problems from a management consultant. In some cases, you’ll get a response within an hour. (Yes, there are times when I also miss a post, and I catch it a week later, but it’s rare.) I would really appreciate it if a few members who spend time on the forums would share their thoughts as comments to the value they’ve gotten from the Forums. Mike and I think it’s an under-utilized part of the Manager Tools suite of services.

We’ are sorry you have to register twice - we’re working on that. We didn’t start the forums until March, I think, so we only have 400 or so members there. I think the double registration catches some folks. Fight through!!!!

4. This blog. I finally got comfortable with blogging, and our sense is that it’s working well. Mike tells me I blog “a LOT” with my Tuesdays Thursdays Saturdays schedule, 3-4 times each of those days. Well, that’s okay to me - I’ve got lots to say. I really enjoy asking questions and getting insights. My recent post on resumes was a HUGE change in how I see them… glad I had a forum to reach thousands. Someone needs to keep an eye out for the good managers who don’t know how to handle their transitions.

I’m completely comfortable with disagreements, and kudos, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts as comments.

5. Corporate Clients. We alluded to this in our anniversary show. We haven’t advertised it, but organizations are hiring us more frequently, and it’s tougher balancing all that we do because of that, let alone our “other” jobs. If you think your firm might want to engage us, to further spread the Manager Tools message of basic professional managerial blocking and tackling, just send us a mail. We do both standard consulting engagements and private podcasts.

6. Coming Soon: Premium Subscriptions. Still in pre-release. We will be offering collateral content for every show to all paid subscribers. Our thoughts now are $15 - $20 a month for both a transcript and a slideshow covering the points in a detailed outline form, as well as any forms that are tied to the cast. This will include the monthly casts as well. We get requests for both types of collateral. You will be able to keep and print all documents, and they will be yours forever. (For personal use - they’ll be copyrighted).

We have yet more coming. We are discovering that all of the cobbled-together systems that podcasters use sometimes don’t scale well for some of our efforts, and Mike is creating custom solutions for some of this.

In asking for folks willing to be interviewed for a potential business press article, I was overwhelmed by the number of folks willing to be interviewed.

THANK YOU.

At first, I was thinking I would filter the list, looking for members that were representative. But I got so many nice notes, detailing the impacts that Manager Tools had on your lives, I decided to forward everyone on to Danielle, our member who offered to help us share our story.

I want to highlight two comments that touched me. One, from Dave Tehre:

You mentioned Fast Company which reminded me that a couple of months ago I sent an e-mail to John Byrne (formerly of Fast Company, now back at BW) about your ‘cast and how I thought the M-T story was one that was just waiting to be told. I’m not sure what it means in the publishing world but he replied saying that he would ask one of his editors to get started on a story.

M-T ROCKS!

Thanks, Dave, for taking the time to write to someone else about us. It’s that kind of “remarkability” that we’re shooting for, and we’re glad we’re getting there.

And then, this comment from Guy Pilens, from Australia, which is perhaps the ultimate compliment:

One of the Managers from another Department started doing One on Ones with his people a Month ago(10 People) and is having great success.
My Manager is now doing One on Ones with his directs(6 people), and uses your One on One Form.
One of my Directs is using your Feedback Material teaching the Feedback Model with his Senior Engineers(3 People) & One on Ones with his whole Team(6 People) so that they can work more effectively with Design Engineers.
I do Pseudo One on Ones with every member of our Department (Not all are my directs) (20 People).

So see what an effect you have had on our environment……

Peter Westley (was commenting on the world cup) was someone I used to work with at HP, I put him onto your website, he is an avid listener now.

It’s a lot less important what Mike and I do. What’s important is what you do, for yourself and for your directs, your peers, and your organization.

Manager Tools “Rocks” because our members do.

Mike and I are in YOUR debt.

I promised everyone monthly updates on the progress of my book, The Effective Manager. The last 4 weeks have not been good ones for the book, and I only achieved about 50% of my writing/volume goals.

That said, I’m not worried. I have added some more sessions in the next few weeks, and am reasonably certain I can overcome the slight fallback. This has happened before a couple of times, and each time I was able to get back on track. The desire to write is quite palpable.

I admit that the culprit lately has been Manager Tools growth. Mike and I have been spending a lot of time on the web redesign (WOW), the roll out of premium content, and Intellectual Property discussions. As well, I have been working far ahead on show notes, as I will be traveling more in the next 3 months.

Never fear - I will finish it this year.

What you’re about to read is the single biggest change I’ve made to resume recommendations since I started looking at them 18 years ago.

Even if you think your resume is perfect… think again. Even if I’ve TOLD you your resume is perfect… think again.

Because it doesn’t matter how good it looks when you finish it, or when a friend or professional looks at it. All that matters is whether the recruiter or manager at the hiring company likes it.

And there’s a relatively new reason why they won’t.

The latest edition of MS Word (the one you likely have, not any beta version for the new MS Office) has a new ‘feature’ called “Reading Layout”. I’m sure you know about it - some of you may like it, some may not.

It basically displays a Word document in a form made to look like a book, with two pages side by side. Here’s what Microsoft’s website says about this great new feature:

When you open a Word document from an e-mail message, the document opens in reading layout view. This view displays your document like pages in a book. The pages are designed to fit well on your screen — and text is automatically displayed using Microsoft ClearType technology, which makes the document more legible.

It sure sounds harmless.

Unless your one page resumes displays as TWO PAGES when it comes up in Reading Layout, because you sent it as an email attachment.

When I recently had to rebuild my laptop from scratch, I forgot to turn this feature off (more on how in a moment). So, I’ve been noticing that resumes that are sent to me are opening up in Reading View.

I only noticed the problem, though, when a close friend asked me to help him with his, and after I personally edited it down to one page, it nevertheless showed up in Reading Layout in two pages. I had to double-check to ensure I was looking at the right resume!

Microsoft’s intent might be laudable, but in trying to make the fonts readable, they can’t make them as small as they would be if they were proportional to the reduction in page size necessary to fit two pages side by side on your screen. You can check this with any Word document - you’ll notice that pagination in this view is different, and line breaks (a key part of editing resumes, due to accomplishment bullets) are different as well.

If you want to turn this feature off, you can. Just go to the Tools menu, select ‘Options’, and then click on the ‘General’ tab. In my version, at top right of that dialog box, you can uncheck a box named, “Allow starting in Reading Layout.”

Of course, the hiring manager isn’t going to look at your resume on YOUR computer.

There’s no solution in MS Word for this dilemma. You can’t mandate how your resume appears on any screen but your own.

So:

- Your resume should never appear longer than one page (there are rare exceptions).
- MS Word can’t guarantee you that. (It’s likely, in fact, to do the opposite - always longer than one page).

Therefore:

I henceforth recommend that you send your resume out as an Acrobat document - in PDF.

One of our members posted that Marshall Goldsmith, a truly outstanding executive coach, as famous to many as Tom Peters, has decided to release his archives for free to everyone. Here’s the post:

Now here is an inspiring thing regarding intellectual property.

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top 10 management consultants, has decided to give away his work for free. And, this from a guy who doesn’t get paid for 18 months when he signs up to be your coach.

“In my older years, I have decided to “give away as much as I can”. My new web site http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/ features my articles, interviews, audios and even lots of free videos. Please feel free to download, copy, send and use anything from my site. Please feel free to use with anyone in your corporation. Even better, please feel free to use with your church, charity or non-profit”

This library site is being continually expanded and will eventually include free material from many other great thinkers in leadership development. It will make all of us at the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management feel great if you can benefit from any of these resources.

I encourage everyone to take advantage of this resource. Mr. Goldsmith is brilliant, and his generosity should not be missed.