For many folks, Manager Tools is completely inaccessible. Luckily, not ALL … but MANY.

It appears as if there is a network issue affecting our site. Somewhere between above.net and GoDaddy’s network (secureserver.net), packets are being lost. Unfortunately, GoDaddy (our server host) has been either unable or unwilling to help us work through this. Too bad really … up until this point, I’ve been very happy with their support.

If anyone has any network expertise they’d be willing to lend to the effort to figure this out, I’d appreciate it greatly. Unfortunately, I’m at the proverbial end of my technical expertise rope.

For those affected (although you probably can’t even read this ), we’re working on it. Please be patient with us!

–Mike

Today, mark and I finish up our series on running your staff meeting. If you haven’t listened to last week’s show, you may want to do so.

During the show, we also allude once again to our previous podcasts on the Effective Meeting Protocol (or EMP). We did these shows back in August of 2005, so as we suggested last week, please visit our archives on the website if you haven’t listened to them.

You’ll find those shows here:

• Effective Meetings, Part 1
• Effective Meetings, Part 2

UPDATE: If you downloaded the podcast on Monday morning, it is likely you have a corrupted version of the podcast. Unless you like listening to the sound of chipmunks, you’ll probably want to re-download the podcast. If you are listening to the show in your browser and you previously downloaded the bad version, you must clear your browser cache, and in many cases, actually *close* your browser, restart it and then click on the play button. My apologies to all those impacted!

– Mike

We’ve alluded to it, we’ve talked about it, but we’ve never until now shared our recommendation for one of the few mandatory meetings we recommend: The Effective Manager’s Weekly Staff Meeting. We believe that a “Weekly Staff” and weekly one on ones are the core of running a team of directs. It’s one thing to meet with everyone individually, but Effective Managers know that there is a need for a socializing structure for the team as a unit.

And if you’ve ever HATED that “round robin” at the end of meetings, where no one really knows what to say, and everyone just wants the meeting to be over, we’ll tell you how to avoid THAT too.

During the podcast, we make reference to our previous shows on running effective meetings — the Effective Meeting Protocol (EMP). You’ll find those shows here:

• Effective Meetings, Part 1
• Effective Meetings, Part 2

I apologize for any inconvenience today … we were down for about 4 hours this afternoon.

Must have been jinxed … not an hour after I had a discussion with our sysadmin about adding a redundant server to the architecture, the server goes down! What are the odds of that?

Again, sorry for the troubles!

regards,
Mike

Hey folks, would you mind voting for us at Podcast Alley? There’s a convenient link/text box at the top of our left hand column here. One of our folks on the forum has reminded us that we’ve all gotten so comfortable being in the Top Ten, none of us need to vote anymore. But that math doesn’t work!

We need 70 votes, I’m told to get into the Top Ten. Surely we can do better than that!

During this cast, we complete our series on making a job offer to a candidate. If you haven’t listened to last week’s cast (part 1), please do so first!

This cast explains a simple way to make a job offer to a candidate.

If you’re a manager, you’ve got people working for you. If you have people working for you, you’re going to either lose some, or your team is going to grow. That creates an opening, which, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to fill. And that means interviewing, and hiring someone.

While we think it’s funny (and sad) that so many managers don’t like the hiring process, it seems silly to punish ourselves by not knowing how to do it. Look, even if you hate the process, why mess it up and increase your chances of having to do it again right at the very end? It’s like being in the lead of a mile long race, only to fall down and then have to run an extra mile.