While it is last minute notice, I’m able to go through with our planned meet up in Milwaukee this coming Tuesday evening, November 28th, at 7 pm. I’m sorry it’s late, but this is a client trip and I take those responsibilities seriously.

We will meet at Pizzeria Piccola, 7606 W. State St. Milwaukee (actually, Wauwatosa).
Phone: (414) 443-0800.
Here’s their website and here’s a Google Map.

We will start at 7 pm, and pizza is on me. (They close at 9 on Tuesdays.) It’s a great spot.

And, in light of the timing of this final okay, perhaps not many will be able to make it, but we’ll do this again in ‘07, as well as do something in Chicago also.

We’ve been asked many times to create some podcasts for new managers - what to do early on. We both understand the requests, and at the same time always want to ask, “What about One on Ones, Feedback, Delegation and Coaching do you not understand?”

Nevertheless, we know we have smart listeners and members, and so this week we introduce a new theme for some recurring casts: The New Manager Toolbox. Our purpose is to highlight those tools and tasks and efforts that pay special dividends to managers who have recently assumed their responsibilities.

[And hey: there’s no doubt that many, many “old” managers could benefit from much of this stuff!]

This week, we lay out a simple, systemic plan for reaching out to internal customers to find out what they want from you and your team. It builds relationships, and gets you valuable data your team won’t have.

Learn how to Jump Start Internal Customer Relationships with the inaugural episode of The New Manager Toolbox Series.

Below, you’ll find the sample customer email we make reference to in the podcast:

Customer Name,

I’d like 30 minutes of your time to discuss my org’s role in supporting you and your org. [If you want to name the respective orgs, that’s fine.] I know you rely on my team for [blank services]. I want to start with a clear understanding of what your needs are, and determine where we are now, and what we need to do to improve our support. I’ve included the questions I’d like to ask below, and of course would be happy to hear any other thoughts you have. I’ve also attached a single slide with some basics, which I’ll go over in the first five minutes of our meeting.

Looking forward to hearing how we can support you.

signed,
[YOU]

Unfortunately, it is likely that you are having troubles downloading some of the older podcasts. It appears that our audio hosting site (Switchpod.com) is down. We’re in the process of moving the files over to a new host, but that will take some time. In the meantime, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience!

Update (11/23/2006): All files have been moved over to the new host. If anyone has any issues accessing a podcast, please do let me know! Thanks.

Mike

Many firms do annual reviews all at the same time, and usually that means at the end of the calendar year. So, for many managers at this time of year, you’re faced with having to do a review on someone whom you really haven’t spent sufficient time with.

What do you do when you have to review someone whom you haven’t supervised for more than perhaps a few months? Obviously, we encourage you to go to our previous casts on reviews, which are some of the most popular on Manager Tools. They do a great job of laying out in excruciating detail exactly how to do a review for anyone.

But in this cast, we recommend some additional tactics to help you with those whom you haven’t known as long. Maybe they came to you recently, maybe you got promoted or took your role over late in the year. In Manager Tools style, we tell you what to do and how to do it.

Since we recommended Anne Fisher’s Ask Annie Column in this space earlier this year, I feel obligated to urge you to ignore her latest column, “What’s Your Greatest Weakness?” 

While most interviewing advice that gets published is rubbish, this is particularly bad rubbish, because so many folks want to know the secret to this question.  It’s not hard…

 but it is not what is recommended in the article.  For instance:

“Next time you’re stumped…try steering the conversation toward another topic.”

Rubbish. Interviewers do NOT like this tactic.  Try it twice and we will politely end an interview.  When we ask a question, we expect an answer to OUR question, not the answer YOU want to give us.  No offense, but this is just lame.

Further: 

“Instead of hashing over a current weakness (assuming you can think of one)…”

First, let me clue you in on something:  you have weaknesses.  The idea that you can’t “think of one” ought to embarrass the hell out of you.  Either you are so nervous you can’t think (this is bad in an interview), or you haven’t done even the most basic of preparation (this is also bad in an interview).

“…talk about a past shortcoming and how you resolved it.” 

Why would we care about this when we asked about a weakness in the present tense?  You might as well say, “when I was 9 months old, I had trouble walking, but through steady effort I overcame this shortcoming, and, as you probably noticed earlier, I’m quite adept at the skill today.”

“The idea is that you are interested in getting better…”

Uh, NO.  That’s not the idea.  The idea is for you to tell us a weakness, to see if you’ve thought about your abilities relative to this job, and have prepared.

“Talk about how the job you’re applying for will help you stretch and build your skills.”

Um, NO.  We know that already, thank you.

“Describe a valuable piece of advice someone gave you…”

Have I made my point?

Lucky for you, you won’t make any of these rookie mistakes… which is a competitive advantage right now, because thousands of people WILL after reading this article.

(And judging by the comments posted on Annie’s blog, there are a LOT of bad answers ready to be delivered right now.)

Anybody interested in a cast on how to answer this question?

I answered a post this morning about male managers’ dressing habits, and left something out.

If you can’t shine your shoes, you have on the wrong shoes.

Managers shoes are able to be shined.  If yours are not, you’re leaving out an important part of your wardrobe.

If you don’t know how to shine them… maybe there’s a cast there.  Mike and I are, thanks to school, quite adept at it.  I stumbled over this early in my corporate career, and felt like a fool for not using the skills I had been given.

Ladies, many of your shoes are shinable as well…. and therefore, yes, we recommend it for you too.

We’ve talked about the importance of interpersonal skills before, with casts on handshakes and meal etiquette. While for many, they might not sound like managerial subjects, the fact is that career management skills are part of the modern manager’s repertoire. And, as surely you’ve read, business gets done at dinner, at parties, at conferences, at conventions, at product launch events, at annual meetings, on the golf course, and at non-profit fund raisers.

So what do you when you walk into a party and you don’t seem to know anyone there?

In this cast, we walk through a simple technique for introducing yourself into a small group in an unobtrusive, polite fashion. Everyone can do it … of course, the question is, will you? Are you willing to stand in the corner and have everyone think you painfully shy, and therefore surely not managerial or executive material?

Mark and I are continually looking for ways to improve the experience on the Manager Tools website. To that end, we recently implemented a new flash player for browser-based listening. As much as we would like to believe that all our listeners subscribe to us in iTunes or another podcatcher, we know from the log files that a number of you listen to us on the website itself. For those of you who do, the new flash player should improve the experience a bit.

In addition to being able to move backward and forward in time during playback, you can also launch the player in a pop-up window. Launch it in a pop-up window, and then to continue to navigate the web with Mark and Mike as background music.

A couple of notes:

• If you start the player located in the post itself, and then subsequently launch the pop-up player, the pop-up player will continue to “buffer” until the player located on the post finishes downloading. Just be a bit patient with it; the pop-up player will being playing shortly. (Of course, Mark and I find this behavior incredibly annoying, but don’t have a solution yet).
• Additionally, some browsers require that you click on the flash player once to give it focus, and then a second time to actually start the player, creating the impression that a double-click is required. Again, annoying.

Despite the couple of minor annoyances, we believe the new player to be well worth it. Let us know what you think!

Mike

Now that the US election is nominally over (the polls are closed), no one can realistically accuse me of a political bent by using a political figure’s TERRIBLE example of how NOT to deliver a genuine apology.

Here it is:

“I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member or American who was offended,”

This is a TEXTBOOK wrong answer.  First, he says he regrets what YOU did, by misinterpreting him.  CLASSIC! 

Further, you are WRONG to suggest that he implied… And THEN, he says that he apologizes only to those who were offended, suggesting that they were wrong yet again to draw that inference.

 He did both an “I apologize IF,” AND an, “I apologize YOU.”

I think this may be the PERFECT non apology.

If you think you’re being clever by apologizing like this, you’re not.  You’re just insulting those to whom you’re supposed to be humbling yourself before.  A good apology feels good for EVERYONE.

Horstman’s Third Law: You’re Not That Smart, and We’re Not That Dumb.

Several friends of mine privately suggested to me recently that email has become so pervasive and powerful to careers that my recommendation of having one’s admin look at it just wouldn’t work, and our recent cast was therefore flawed.

Here’s someone who agrees with us.  This comment came in from Mike Ciolino, regarding having his admin help with email:

“I began having my admin read ALL my email about a month ago and believe it’s one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.”

It works for all the C-Level execs I know, and Mike Ciolino thinks it’s one of the smartest things he’s ever done.

If you haven’t done it, and you have an admin, why wouldn’t you?