Our guidance on how to choose a book.

We’ve said before that reading is one of the most important things an individual contributor, manager and executive needs to do each week. Reading (books) is one of the ways you understand subjects more deeply, explore new ideas and allow the moment of creation to take place – the one where your circumstance melds with someone else’s idea and something new is born. But if you don’t read and you don’t know where to start, how do you choose a book?

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This guidance tells you how to potentially get some informal self development guidance from your manager by asking three simple questions.

Almost every manager wants more performance communications from their boss. But very few bosses give it. If you’re a manager, and you have thoughts about further managerial roles or executive life, what can you do to politely and professionally get some insight into what your boss thinks about your abilities?

Ask her three simple questions.

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This guidance describes how to use a RACI [Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Inform] Matrix when determining project responsibilities.

When you’re starting a project, there are all kinds of people with fingers in the pie. There are people who want to be on the team. There are people who are affected by the work. There are people who aren’t affected by the project but whose budget IS. There are people who don’t want the project to succeed, but will only privately work against it. There are people who need to know stuff…but other people who WANT to know stuff.

How do we help project managers – or how do WE as project managers – keep track of who’s responsible for what? We use a responsibility matrix. The best one is called the RACI – pronounced Ray-See.

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The conclusion of our guidance on ethical behavior.

We started this cast with the intention of putting it in our new series for newcomers to the workforce: First Job Fundamentals. But it’s too important not to give everyone access to it. Ethical behavior underpins the Manager Tools and Career Tools philosophy. We’ve always taken it for granted that our listeners understand that. This cast makes clear our stance on ethics.

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Our guidance on ethical behavior.

We started this cast with the intention of putting it in our new series for newcomers to the workforce: First Job Fundamentals. But it’s too important not to give everyone access to it. Ethical behavior underpins the Manager Tools and Career Tools philosophy. We’ve always taken it for granted that our listeners understand that. This cast makes clear our stance on ethics.

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Our guidance how to deal with not being promoted, when your former team member is now your boss.

One of the most requested Manager Tools casts was ‘How To Manage a Disgruntled, Non-Promoted Direct’. The cast was written for new managers whose former peers were struggling with the new relationship.

But what if you’re the person who wasn’t promoted. How do you deal with your own feelings and develop a new, productive, respectful, manager-direct relationship?

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This cast continues our discussion on whom to coach and develop on your team with your marginal time.

If you only have a limited amount of time, whom should you coach? This is a question we get all the time. What if I've got a weak performer? Don't I have to work to get him up to speed? What do I do when the time I spend with a weak performer cuts into my time with everyone else?

These are really good questions. They address the inherent challenges of growing the productivity of your team, AND the issue of there never being enough time to do it. So, before we go any further, let's be clear: if these are the questions you're asking yourself, you're thinking the right way and wrestling with the right kinds of questions.

The problem with these questions is that if the average manager asks her peer a couple of cubes over, and that fellow manager really doesn't know what HE is doing either.

So let's answer the Coaching Dilemma problem once and for all.

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This guidance describes whom to coach and develop on your team with your marginal time.

If you only have a limited amount of time, whom should you coach? This is a question we get all the time. What if I've got a weak performer? Don't I have to work to get him up to speed? What do I do when the time I spend with a weak performer cuts into my time with everyone else?

These are really good questions. They address the inherent challenges of growing the productivity of your team, AND the issue of there never being enough time to do it. So, before we go any further, let's be clear: if these are the questions you're asking yourself, you're thinking the right way and wrestling with the right kinds of questions.

The problem with these questions is that if the average manager asks her peer a couple of cubes over, and that fellow manager really doesn't know what HE is doing either.

So let's answer the Coaching Dilemma problem once and for all.

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A short (8 min) extra cast where Mark introduces the Coaching Dilemma and solicits YOUR responses. What do you think is the correct answer to the dilemma?

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This cast concludes our guidance on how to stay up to date on what's going on in your company.

One of the skills which separates the successful from the non-successful is their connectedness. They know what's going on in the company and therefore where the opportunities are. It's not all achieved by networking, though there is no such thing as too much networking. In part, it's achieved by knowing what questions to ask of whom.

That means reading and thinking about the information which is available.

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