Part of being an Effective Manager is not just focusing on your day to day activities, but thinking STRATEGICALLY about your team, your role, your company, and your industry. We find that most managers are truly HORRENDOUS at this, and that’s why we address it in this week’s podcast. We understand why - there is often a great deal of pressure to get down in the weeds, and often senior managers are delegating out un-connected tasks versus giving perspective and scope.

What got us thinking this way was our recent cast on layoffs (Oct 23). Frankly, nobody likes to talk about it, but as a manager you not only need to be ready to deliver the news of a layoff for the organization, you need to be ready to be laid off yourself. Managers who are most ready to deal with being laid off are those who have good strategic vision, and they get that by regularly scanning their environment.

In this show, we’ll talk about what you should be looking at regularly. We use layoffs as a context, but strategic environmental scanning must be done irrespective of layoffs - this is a habit that highly effective managers take for granted.

Today, we continue our podcast on Strategic Thinking and Layoffs, picking right up where we left off on the November 14 Podcast.

Our focus today is on applying the “Environmental Scan” discussed last week to the particular concerns over a potential layoff and identifying specific actions you can take to both identify the potential of a layoff and, more importantly, prepare effectively in case it should actually occur.

Sites mentioned during the show:

• PubSub
• Gada.be

A better explanation of Gada.be

Ever since our podcast on the Manager Tools Development Model, we’ve continued to receive a number of questions on a key component of the process — the coaching model. In particular, folks are having a difficult time on coaching employees on some of the “softer” skills. So for the next two shows, we’re revisiting our friend, the coaching model. In addition to getting into an example of a soft-skill coaching challenge, we also talk a bit about what we mean by “behavior” — what is it exactly (of course, we have a model for that as well), and how do we use it within the coaching model.

Remember: In addition to our normal feedback email address, you can now leave audio feedback for us on our new voice mailbox. You can reach us at (206) 202-7376. Please note on your message if you don’t want us to use your audio feedback “on air”!

Today, we cover the second of two shows on “Coaching Revisited”. If you haven’t listened to last week’s show, we encourage you to do so. This one picks right up where we left off last week.

It’s the end of the year. Most managers we know are thinking about the holidays… and annual reviews. After years of managing, training and consulting, we’ve concluded this is one of the most poorly managed and implemented processes we’re aware of. it’s not hard to do, but for plenty of (bad) reasons, managers just don’t handle this responsibility well. For those few who do, it’s an enormous competitive advantage.

We’re dedicating at least the next THREE podcasts to helping you deliver an effective performance review. We’ve taken the approach that you haven’t had a whole year of one on ones, with the related notes, and haven’t done quarterly reviews to prepare for this one. In this first podcast, we start walking through HOW TO WRITE the review. There are 3 steps in this first part of the process: COLLECTING DATA, EVALUATING DATA, and finally WRITING THE REVIEW. All three of those steps take two podcasts. Starting with the third ‘cast in this series, we talk about how to actually DELIVER the evaluation.

We reference a sample letter for gathering performance data from your employees … you can find it here.

This week, we continue with our discussion on effective performance reviews. Last week, we discussed collecting data; today we discuss evaluating the data and writing the review. In the weeks following, we’ll continue with a discussion on actually DELIVERING the review.

Also, thanks to Kevin Williams at the Middle Management Lobotomy Podcast for his kind remarks about Manager Tools on his show. Another management podcast we listen to regularly that’s worth checking out!

Happy New Year! Please accept our thanks for helping make 2005 a great year for us. We had a wonderful year and a lot of it is a direct result of meeting a number of great folks through Manager Tools. We’re both looking forward to any even better 2006 and hope each of you will stick around and share the upcoming year with us.

Over the next two weeks we’ll be concluding our discussions on Performance Reviews, focusing on actually DELIVERING the review.

The sample of the memo we suggest sending to your employees before their performance review meeting is located here.

In addition, as we discussed on a previous show, we suggest you send to each ratee SEVERAL weeks in advance of the review, an email or memo soliciting input from the ratee. As promised, a sample email/memo is available here.

Today, we conclude our conversation on Delivering the Review. As a brief review, here’s are the items we’ve covered over this show and last:

• The Pre-Meeting E-Mail - You’ll send this about a week in advance of the delivery meeting. In this mail, you begin to set the groundwork for the meeting by telling them what’s going to happen and why.
• In addition, in part 2 we provide a Sample Self-Appraisal Email - Text for an email you can send to all of your ratees to ask for their input SEVERAL weeks in advance of the review.
• Develop The Core Message - This is perhaps the most important, most overlooked, and initially the HARDEST part of your discussion preparation. If you want the ratee to remember ANYTHING, you need to boild down your message to two or three core items. The core message has three parts: Rating, Result, and Ramifications.
• Logistical Preparation - Things you need to do before the meeting around the physical set-up, etc.
• The Day Before - There’s one thing that MUST happen the day before you meet with a ratee. The ONE THING you MUST DO on the day before any review meeting is give the ratee a copy (without pay information) of their review form.
• What To Bring - There is a list of stuff you need to bring with you.
• How To Structure Your Delivery - There is an effective ORDER to your delivery. Our delivery will have three components: behavior, results, and confirmation.
• How To Start - We recommend scripting your opening, with three parts: the agenda, the ground rules, and the core message.
• How To Behave During the Meeting - Some simple tips on being perceived as a good listener and communicator.

Surprised to get this?? It’s not Monday! Well, this month, we’re opening up our registered users podcast to all our listeners. We’re doing this for several reasons. First, to say thanks to ALL of you who are listening. We appreciate that you’re taking the time to think about your management lives, and that you feel we’re adding value. Also, when we started talking about this show, we realized there were some ideas in here that were just TOO GOOD to limit. What’s that old saying, “information wants to be free?”

Finally, we want to encourage non-registered users to BECOME registered. Each month, registered users get an extra podcast made available only to them. Previously, we’ve addressed topics such as what books and periodicals we’re reading, as well as additional tools like the Meeting Introduction Tool. This month, though, we’re initiating a recurring theme, asking our registered users to stretch themselves a bit.

We’re introducing 6 development ideas in this podcast, and we’re going to revisit them throughout the year on our registered users casts. We’ll delve into some of the topics more deeply, and we’re seriously considering asking those of you who engage in these efforts to be a part of the show and tell everyone else about your experience.

So, join us for the first Special Podcast of the year, “Manager Tools Development Challenge 2006″!

We make reference to the One-on-One Reinitiation Note in the podcast. Here’s a link to that sample note.

This week we recur to a theme we started a while ago, management communications. If you don’t remember, we won’t be surprised - it was September, and we barely scratched the surface of presenting with PowerPoint.

There are so many topics to cover, we’re just now getting back to management communications. One of the reasons was our just concluded FOUR part series on performance reviews. We hope that the timing of that helped you be HIGHLY effective this month.

While we ARE going to talk about communications this week, we’re going to discuss a topic that most of you give almost no thought to: communication plans.

What do we mean by communications plans? What we mean is, how do you, as a manager, intend to have your organization understand your team’s plans, strategies and operations? If you immediately jump to “email and a meeting”, you’re not thinking effectively. Have you ever even THOUGHT about having a PLAN or PROCESS for thinking about HOW to communicate with your team?

Here’s what we bet. We bet that you communicate on autopilot. You don’t think AT ALL about HOW to communicate… you think about WHAT you’re going to communicate, and then use the most basic defaults to get your message across.

In fact, we would argue that you NEVER think about communicating other than presentations with PowerPoint. You don’t THINK about communicating… you just DO communicating. The problem with that is, if you don’t ever think about it, you WILL NEVER GET BETTER.

How do you know if you’re on autopilot? Let’s say you want everyone on your team to know something. If you think pretty quickly, email! You’re on autopilot. If you say, well, wait. If I have a meeting coming up, I might put it on the agenda, you’re STILL on autopilot. If, on the other hand, you have something to tell an individual, whether it comes from your boss or not, you think, one on one or poke your head into their cube, you’re on autopilot.

By the way, “telling everybody something” is called, in the communications planning world, “broadcasting”… and telling just one person something is “narrowcasting.”

Now look, we’re not saying these defaults don’t work pretty well most of the time. They do. But there are two dangers with them. First, if something unique or special requires communicating, and you’re operating on autopilot without even a hint of being most effective in your communications, you run the risk of the WAY you’re communicating affecting the quality of your message. Putting it in systems language, your poor PROCESS is affecting your CONTENT. What today’s cast about is the PROCESS of communicating, versus the content.

The second danger is that if you don’t think about communicating as a PROCESS, your ability to communicate as you gain managerial responsibilities will break down. If you just take communicating for granted, when you become a director or junior Vice President, and now have to rely on managers and others to carry your messages to your entire organization, you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO IT. You’ve got to have more tricks in your bag as you climb the org structure.

This inability to communicate is one of the biggest frustrations of senior executives we know. They often describe their jobs as “swimming” or “running in oatmeal”, because it takes so long to get the word out, and then “people still don’t get it”.

During the podcast, we make reference to a Sample Communications Plan to assist you in planning your communications more effectively. Use this tool to immediately increase the effectiveness of your managerial communications. You may download it here.