We’ve talked about thank you notes hundreds of times. They are fast becoming a nearly lost art. That’s too bad, because they are always appreciated. We know too many managers and professionals who keep them for years! Mark often talks about the basket under his desk full of cards, which he reads when he’s having a bad day. It reminds him things are not so bad.

“Many a friendship — long, loyal, and self-sacrificing — rested at first upon no thicker a foundation than a kind word.”

Frederick W. Faber

We consider thank you notes a part of every manager’s career and management toolkit. Here’s how to write them.

Additional Note: For those of you not close to a stationer or prefer the web, we recommend Crane’s, Dempsey & Carroll, and Mrs. John L. Strong. Crane’s is the classic American stationary provider, famous for their paper quality. Further, a quick suggestion: a higher rag or cotton content in your nicer stationery makes all the difference.

Today, Mark and Mike finish their conversation on Strategy and SWOT. If you haven’t already listened to Part 1 and Part 2, be sure you do so!

Mike and I went out to the Game Developers Conference last week, and had a wonderful experience. I spoke to about 1,000 people, we think, and the talk can be found here.

We want to say thanks to Bob Raffei, a Manager Tools member who arranged the invite. Bob is just pure class, and one very smart guy. He’s famous in the gaming world for being the artist behind Crash Bandicoot, and is very well respected in the industry.

I gave a very simple talk, and I’m sure many of you could have given it yourselves:

You have to spend time with your people!
You actually have to CARE about your people!
One on Ones are the core of the Management Trinity!
Feedback works, even if you’re scared of doing it!

There were two moments during the GDC event that were special for us. First, there were about 10 Manager Tools members and fans who were in the audience, and it was great having their support. I asked them all to stand, and a couple of them were kind enough to give testimonials…that’s the kind of stuff presenters can’t buy.

Second, a couple of members came up afterwards and offered to do something special for my youngest son, Drake, with whom I often play their games. It was a very sweet moment, to see these folks genuinely wanting to share with my son, because of their association with us. Mike will tell you that as we walked back to our hotel, it was all I could talk about: “Fred, and Chad, and Cary - wasn’t that COOL? Did you see Cary’s jacket? AWESOME!”

To my son Drake, these guys are rock stars, and the fact that we serve people like YOU makes us feel like the luckiest roadies on the planet.

I apologize for my long absence from the blog and the forums. I am back.

I’m not couching this as a pure apology, so please don’t jump on the fact that I share my reasons. (And who would put a real apology on a blog?) (if that isn’t a future regret waiting to happen, I don’t know what is.)

To the 17 of you who have sent notes of concern, thank you.

Mike and I have been juggling our growth over the past few months. Last year, we really did think we were quite close to launching premium subscriptions. We then made a fateful decision to accept a new corporate client, and I have done a poor job of managing the competing demands for content and client service. The addition of the conference has added more work for us as well.

“When is the premium stuff coming out?” is our most frequently fielded question. We’re glad to get it, even if our answer is often pretty weak.

The short answer is, this year for certain, and we are hopeful to have it out in early summer. We’ve developed some mechanisms to speed up the process. And, we will be communicating more openly about it starting after the conference.

We’re thrilled with the demand, and we will meet it.

After I sleep in my own bed a few nights.

Last week, we spoke about our high-level view of Strategy. This week, we start our discussion on the details of SWOT.

At some point in your career, you’re going to be asked to put together a strategy session for your organization. This is when most managers start to panic.

But take heart. Probably, your boss does not want you to set strategy for the whole organization. What she wants is for you to come up with a process to help the leadership team determine its strategy. And that’s good, because most of us are unlikely to be imminently qualified to be setting strategy.

But how do you set up the process? There are a number of different ways, all of which have various merits. You’ll likely ask around and some b-school grads will tell you all about Porter’s Five Forces and Blue Ocean and Dear God one hopes Peter Drucker, and etc, etc. But as always, the question comes back to, “what do I do?” The answers you’ll get to that question will include some mention of the SWOT Analysis, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. While SWOT is NOT the complete process, it is a great start to getting a handle on where your organization is and where it might need to go.

In this cast, we’ll tell you how to set up a basic SWOT session, the Manager Tools way.