When you get to fill a position during a down market, it usually means it’s a critical position, and/or one that’s been open a long time. Because you’re in a buyer’s market, it’s usually pretty easy to find a good, even an exceptional, candidate. But you have to change how you interview in that situation, and here’s how.

Many people lose great job opportunities because they don’t know how to talk about WHERE they
want to work without scaring the recruiter. There’s a right way to do it. It’s okay to prefer a certain location … but you’ve also got to reassure the recruiter that your choice isn’t ONLY about location.

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Your directs and former directs are going to ask you to provide them references. Yet you’ve probably heard that providing references is generally frowned upon. More and more, HR says you can’t. But you can.

Decision-making (which is more than choosing!) is a core part of our jobs as managers. But yet again, there’s not a lot of training or development spent on it. Everyone hates learning it on their own…but then they visit that same strategy on their directs. Silly. Let’s learn how to make effective decisions.

Too many of us feel good about a “decision” we’ve made (when actually it was a choice, and not a decision), and then we mess up the “decision” by failing to act aggressively on it. And one of the things that keeps us from being successful is we don’t focus on the path we’ve chosen.

We’ve been asked this question so many times, it’s really amazing that we’ve waited this long to publicize widely the same answer we’ve given so many listeners and members. We know, we know: you want to have One on Ones with your boss. But, unless your boss has initiated them with you first, we don’t recommend you try to do so. Really!

I do not like Twitter.

I’ve used it, and I don’t like it, and I’ll tell you why. Because if you’re a manager, and as we like to say, if you’re an executive, which is not as exclusive a territory as it used to be, you have no business learning when other people are doing laundry, when other people are working with clients, or driving to school, or working with their kids, or whatever else, because that causes you to be distracted from what you’re doing.

The idea that anybody else would care about what I’m doing, frankly, is not terribly exciting to me. But it’s really much more about other people. If you have 100 or 150 people that you’re keeping track of, the idea that the banality of some of the Tweets, I think is what they’re called, is far beneath the time constraints of most managers and executives.

You have to control your time. This concept of continuous partial attention, if you’ve been reading about it, it’s complete and utter blather. It makes no sense at all. Executives can only suffer from continuous partial attention, and Twitter is the classic example of it.

Look, email was invented after we all learned how to read and write and after we all learned how to communicate. It’s a great technique, and we all use it terribly poorly. And Twitter is just all the negatives of email on steroids.

I’m sure some of you like it, and that’s great. I like playing golf, but I don’t do it in my office, and I certainly don’t do it when I’m trying to be effective around my work. Twitter makes you ineffective almost always. Stop it.

But during tough economic times, the professional manager has to manage with more effectiveness than at almost any other time. She is distracted by her own concerns, while having to keep tabs on the concerns of her team. She has to listen to the rumors flying around about layoffs and mergers and industry moves, and then apply them not only to her situation, but also make sense of them for her team.

And oh yes, she has to do all this and cut costs too. Listen in and we’ll share the first rule of budget management in a downturn.

I read a “Harvard Business Review article” a while ago, it may have been over a year ago, in which companies were decrying the fact that employees weren’t speaking up. They weren’t responding to requests for information or feedback about how things are going.

And the article basically says, “Sometimes employees fear speaking up because there is a perception, maybe not reality, but there is a perception that the organization, managers in particular, were genuinely hostile about past suggestions or recommendations for change, which imply that something is wrong.”

And basically, they held back because there were broad and sort of vague perceptions about this and no one could really point to anything specific necessarily. And basically what it boiled down to was a culture is built, at least partially, on stories and on collective story telling. And the problem, folks, is that stories that get told are always dramatic. You don’t tell anybody about going to the copier and making a copy successfully.

Stories at work are like news in our lives. The news is famous for saying, “We don’t report every plane that lands safely” and while you may agree or disagree with what news gets covered and why, the fact is, news is dramatic and stories are dramatic. And if you are going to tell a story about someone, for example the fact that somebody got promoted. Unusually if someone tells a story about getting promoted, it is about carping that he got promoted or she got promoted and I didn’t.

A good example would be, somebody says something in a public organizational venue, at a meeting in town hall or something, and as somebody put it afterwards, “he spoke up and suddenly he was gone from the company shortly thereafter.”

It is probably not entirely true, this story, or he may have left on his own. But it doesn’t matter - the story goes around and that gets into people’s genes, which basically says “Don’t speak up, don’t talk, don’t respond to requests for information.” In part, because my boss has a hat on in his head, or a sign on his forehead that says “Watch out I am your boss, I could fire you”.

If you are a leader, if you are a manager, be careful of the stories you tell. I am sure I can’t convince you to not tell any negative stories, but I can suggest: please consider telling positive stories every once in a while to add it to the myth-making that your employees do about your company.

In fact, no decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility. Until then there are only good intentions.

Seriously – can you just hear the power of that idea? All those times we felt good when we “made” a decision? That feeling of “it’s done”, and “glad that’s over”, and “can’t wait to be proven right”?

Yeah, well, we were all wrong.

Because a decision, says Drucker, isn’t made until work assignments and responsibilities have been made clear.

The question is, HOW?

We recommend checking email three times a day, but example of constantly being distracted by email [and if you are an manager or an executive, you already have enough distractions, because email is not urgent] is the idea of something called “toast”. Toast is Microsoft’s word for the little reminder that comes up, that comes up in Outlook that slides up, at least in some versions, it slides from the bottom right hand corner of your screen and then slides back down.

And the joke was for a while that it looked like toast popping up. But the real story is they call it toast because if you pay attention to it all the time, you will BE toast. If you are doing that, if you have notifications, if your computer buzzes, or rings, or beeps, or you get a message over all your other work saying “you have new email” you are being distracted…and distractions are the bane of executives. If you pay attention to the toast, you’re toast. (Thanks to Kate Horstman for correcting my use of your vs. you’re in that last line - H)

So stop it. You will be more effective.

When you think about almost any economic system that exists today, there is a buyer and a seller. The seller has something the buyer wants and the buyer expects the seller to give him or her a fair price. There is an inherent negotiation that happens whether the negotiation includes price or not is irrelevant. A negotiation about economic value, their physical or service value for economic value.

When two parties are involved and there are two things being exchanged, economics is incredibly efficient. The economics of individual transactions are aggregated over a large number of transactions are incredibly efficient. The market in itself is not micro efficient, but it is incredibly efficient in the macro sense. Unfortunately, economists have known for hundreds or years, at least as long as there have been economists anyway, that three way economic systems don’t work.

When there is a buyer and a seller and some other provider, somebody who provides cash to one or insurance to another, it inherently distorts the market. The two examples that are most easily known, not just in the United States but across the world, are systems like healthcare where there is an insurance provider or perhaps the government or schools where there is a provider and a purchaser that is the family or the student, the citizen. And then there is the government that is involved in regulating in some fashion, [we’re] not anti-government regulation inherently, but any economic system, any economist will tell you, any economic system with three parties is inherently unstable. It cannot reach equilibrium.

All three parties are incented for different reasons and the incentives don’t naturally balance in the negotiation that occurs over the price and the product and service. So be careful, anytime you are involved in internal or external exchange of good and services for some sort of compensation, be aware of any economic system that you are involved in that has three parties.

If you are in an economy, if you are in an industry that involves a third party, which would include insurance for the government, there is an inherent uncertainty and inefficiency there. It is not to say that the system doesn’t work in some fashion, but it could be a greater efficiency if there were only two parties in the system.

Again, I don’t mean to be anti government or anti insurance, [we] love the insurance that Mike and I have on our business and in our personal lives and yet insurance inherently distorts economic transactions.

We read in the Wall Street Journal this week about a bank failure in the US due to the mortgage/debt crisis the markets are facing. As it turns out, we have several Manager Tools members there, one of whom is a good friend of ours. Mark sent a quick email to this executive.

When Mark mentioned to another member that he had done so, the member said, “I didn’t want to intrude, so I didn’t say anything.” As Mark asked around some more, he discovered that others felt similarly.

“Didn’t want him to be embarrassed that I knew.”

“Didn’t know what to say.”

“Didn’t think I could help.”

Well, they won’t be embarrassed, here’s what to say, and you CAN help.

And, this cast has a nice surprise ending.

We will conduct the training/seminar at the Marriott East Side in Manhattan (map, sw corner 49th and Lex), from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

There will be room for 300 attendees on a first come, first served basis. We apologize for the limitations, but we couldn’t get bigger space for a reasonable price fast enough.

This conference will be FREE. We won’t be trying to sell anything in the back of the ballroom. We’re doing this training free to address many of our listeners and members who have called and emailed asking, “What do I do?”

If you yourself can’t make it, please share this information with anyone who might need this free help in the greater NYC area.

We will cover 4 major topics:

Your Resume - The one’s we’ve seen in the last 1-2 weeks needed LOTS of help.

Your Preparation - How to get ready to interview (and improve your resume).

Your Search - Things you can do now, and how to do them.

Your Interviews - All five parts of every interview, what’s going to happen and what to do in each step.

Again, this training is FREE. We’re doing this to help members and other professionals affected by the difficulties in the financial industries recently.

We like our weekly casts and our monthly casts to be actionable. That’s very important to us, because we know it’s important to you. You don’t just want theory.

But we see things and hear things and read things and talk about things all of the time that may not be actionable simply because they’re interesting or new or different, or because they’re simply a data point. And they’re an interesting data point to us.

Mike and I read extensively. And often we talk about things, but we know it’ll never be a cast, and we feel like we’re depriving our audience of what we think and what we see in our consulting work, in our client work, and in our own professional development in working with members and listeners and registered members and premium members as well.

So, this is the first installment of the Audio Blog. And my first installment of the Audio Blog is a topic some of you will probably laugh at. It’s about something I’ve seen advertisements for on TV lately, called “Transitions Lenses”, and I see this a lot in technology managers and just technology individual contributors as well.

And those are glasses - eyeglasses - that change based on light and dark. And the idea is, isn’t this great? You don’t have to wear sunglasses. You can just wear your regular eyeglasses, your prescription glasses outside, and they darken.

Folks, don’t do it. There’s an enormous problem with Transitions Lenses. It’s always been there since the very beginning. They’ve been making it better, but they still haven’t eliminated the problem. And that is the fact that after they’ve darkened a few times, when you come back inside, they never become completely clear.

You are perceived as wearing shaded glasses, basically sunglasses, inside. What’s worse, they’re not dark enough to be sunglasses. They’re just kind of dark. And I assure you, the people that don’t wear them don’t like you wearing them. They make a less than professional impression.

The benefit that you get of being able to go outside without sunglasses, which by the way, everybody else has to wear sunglasses, in case you haven’t figured that out…The benefit you get is completely your own. And the negativity, which is also completely your own, is that other people judge you harshly because they don’t like what they see when they look at your face and your Transitions Lenses, is absolutely your fault. And it far outweighs any benefit that you get from not wearing sunglasses.

Whatever you’re doing, if you’re wearing Transitions Lenses now, stop. And go back to regular prescription eyeglasses.

Horstman’s 3rd Law of Interviewing: We’ll Take 90% Less Ability for 10% More Attitude Every Day of the Week.

When the market is tighter than normal (it’s mostly supply‐driven and not demand‐ based right now), organizations are even more particular about hiring the very best they can find. Sure, hiring companies want great backgrounds, with great accomplishments. But if you’re interviewing in the next six months, what ability do you have to change your accomplishments?

What you can change is your preparation, and your attitude of energy and enthusiasm in the interview.

As we like to say, here’s how.

One of the things that has changed as individuals have had to take over their own career management is more mistakes made by younger professionals. Years ago, larger organizations had a more complete HR approach, and managed their employees’ careers. No longer. Now, younger associates don’t have an HR advisor to turn to, or if they do the advisor is unlikely to have solid recommendations for them (or worse, they tell several people of the problem). More experienced managers and executives are often caught off-guard by the mistakes of their junior team members.

So, what to do? Well, first, we recommend you shut up about it.

Mark has finally gotten around to writing this cast down! Every time Mark teaches this technique to an executive or manager, he turns to Mike and says, “we gotta make this a cast.” And then he doesn’t. When you see this work the first time, you’ll be surprised. In almost any situation, you’ll see a noticeable lessening of the tension. You’ll probably also feel better at moving forward PAST the frustration or difficulties that are being discussed. When you use this with your directs, it often helps begin the process of solution finding.

And to our good friend Rich Ruh, who told Mark this past week at our San Antonio conference that after reading Peter Drucker he was more comfortable around Mark because he realized all these great ideas weren’t Mark’s alone . . . Mark didn’t make this one up either. ;‐)

“I have attended Dale Carnegie, American Management Association, etc
conferences and the MT conference blew them away!”
- Jeff Vose, 2007 Conference Attendee

Mark and I are pleased to announce our Effective Manager Conference, November 11 - 12, at the Renaissance Concourse Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia.

We guarantee it will be the best 2 days of your professional life spent learning about management. And our previous attendees agree. You can find their comments in the Effective Manager Conference Discussion Forums.

What: Manager Tools Effective Manager Conference

Who: ONLY 100 ATTENDEES. Our previous attendees loved the personal attention with detailed practice sessions and coaching. We won’t change that.

When: November 11 - 12, 2008. 2 Full Days!

Where: Renaissance Concourse Hotel, Atlanta

How: You can register now on our registration page

How Much: $1,800 Regular Registration. Early Registration, available until September 21, is only $1,600. Your registration fee includes ALL your meals. We don’t want you worrying about your meal schedule, or filing expense reports. The focus will be on your management skills. We’re sorry, but unfortunately we can’t cover your travel costs as well.

Why: To become a more effective manager. This 2 day training conference is an ideal way for you to grow your managerial, leadership, and communication skills. If you need another reason, this conference isn’t for you.

Go to our registration page to sign-up now!

“Simply the best, most exciting and informative conference ever.
The personal feel to and for individuals set it apart.”
- Stephen Hay, January 2008 Attendee

More about our agenda:

Day 1: Where else would we start but with the Management Trinity?

One on Ones - The basics, and taking them to the next level.

Feedback - An overview, your questions, and — practice, practice, practice!

Day 1 Evening: We’re hosting you for dinner. We’ll talk about management and leadership, have plenty of time for Questions and Answers, and get to know each other better. You’ll leave this conference with 100 managers added to your personal network, ready to call in an instant.

Day 2: We’ll start by practicing the new Effective Coaching Model - you’ll love it. Also:

Rolling out the Trinity: Now that you know what to do, how do you roll it out to your organization. We’ll cover the roll-out in detail!

Effective Performance Management: How an Effective Manger connects day to day to annual goals. Like everything else we do, it’s simple and powerful.

Both Days:

Practice: You will practice feedback and coaching and other skills repeatedly. Individual Attention: When you practice, one of our coaching staff will be watching and providing feedback.

Open Q&A: At our meals, and at the end of both days, we’ll throw it open to questions. Come ready to have your questions answered . . . all of them!

We promise, when you’re done — you’ll be spent! And somehow, still energized to go back to work even more excited about managing and leading — and living.

“This was the best management course I have ever taken!”
- Alberto Magano, January 2008 Attendee

Please join us in Atlanta!

Go to our registration page to sign-up now!

If you have questions, you can leave comments here or in the Manager Tools Effective Manager Conference forum.

best regards,

Mike and Mark
Founders, Manager Tools

“The podcasts are brilliant but being there,
hearing it from you guys just makes it perfect.”
- Martin Harvey, January 2008 Attendee

Hotel and Travel Notes:

Contemporary Travel Inc is the official travel agency for the New York, 2008 Effective Managers Conference. If you have any questions relative to hotel arrangements or travel, please contact either Gail Weiss (gweiss@contemporarytvl.webmail.com) or Judy Barth (judyb@contemporarytvl.webmail.com) as quickly as possible. Late reservations may not be afforded the group rate.

We’ve been asked a thousand questions about what to do and when to do it when it comes to the Management Trinity, and we’ve finally gotten frustrated enough to do something about it. We assumed that a lot of the ideas we’re going to share here just made sense, and managers were taking the parts of the Trinity step by step, mastering each one, and adding new parts as they were able.

And then we got an email complaining that putting ALL FOUR of the Trinity in place all at once was “JUST TOO HARD”.

And, that listener was right – it was too hard – and we weren’t helping by not sharing our guidance. We’ve shared these ideas with hundreds of corporate client managers…and now it’s time to share it with everyone.

Step by step, here’s how you do it. If you ask us, if there WERE a Manager Tools Hall of Fame (HOF), this cast would be in it.

We get asked all the time, “how big a group have you ever used the Meeting Introduction Tool with?” The answer is 110.

It is Mark’s favorite Manager Tool because everyone can use it, it works so darn well, and it’s TOTALLY against his natural inclination to “take up SO much time on fluff”. And yet, when he has tried to NOT use it, trainings and meetings inevitably are less effective – sometimes enormously so. So, we don’t use it because it makes natural sense, we use it because it’s so incredibly effective. The definition of a professional executive is someone who does what is effective whether they like to or not.

So, if you want to use the Introduction Tool for a big group, we explain how in this cast.

And getting on an airplane means packing a bag. And based on what Mark sees in his travels, no one seems to have gotten the memo about the right way to do it.

How easy is it? How about a 23 day, 5 country trip without checking a bag? Yep, you read that right.

For premium subscribers, we have the normal shownotes (though the notes have a bonus in them) and slides, PLUS a special set of slides showing How Mark Packs for a Week Long Trip. Step by step pictures: what he packs, how he uses dry cleaning bags, how it all fits (easily). If you’re not premium, this is a cast that might make it worth it!

For Premium Members only, we’ve posted a video of Mark going through his packing routine. One of many more videos to come!

This cast describes how to increase your chances of re-hiring someone who has left your organization. They’re called Boomerangs!

There really IS a war for talent going on today. Demographics are in many ways working against us, reducing the labor pool, as well as changing the nature of work and the relationships “employees” have with their “employers”. Frankly, it’s harder than ever - and will KEEP GETTING HARDER - to find and hire high caliber associates.

One effective technique is hiring former employees, or “Boomerangs”. 20 or 30 years ago, it was unheard of. The reasons then seemed to make sense … but now?

This cast will tell you what to do with Boomerangs.