Management Craft

Post 1000 at Management Craft

Doing anything a thousand times seems totally out of character for me. I am a great starter and fix it type person. I don't relish being in maintenance mode or coasting known waters. I don't stick with things, usually.

It blows my mind to see that this is my 1000th post on Management Craft. Not all the posts were full of meat, and some were silly. But geeze, that's still a lot of stuff. A lot of questions. A lot of pontificating and ranting and linking.

Thanks so much for reading! I have met and virtually met so many great people, many of whom I now call friend or pal.

I started this blog on August 7, 2004. Just for kicks, I thought I would reproduce the first post I did and see if it still rings true. Here it is:

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Welcome to my weblog!

Welcome to Management Craft, a weblog dedicated to finding, sharing, and discussing state of the art management. We will discuss books, products, business management news, and fresh ideas. Management is my passion. I know that sounds strange, but I have seen and experienced the hum of peak productivity and it can be a beautiful thing!

Enough with the introduction, how about some meat?

I call this blog Management Craft, because I believe that the art and practice of managing people (without controlling them), processes, and projects WHILE flexibly changing as needed AND considering short term and long term needs and opportunities is a craft.

When I use the word craft in this blog, I am referring to an honorable and worthy body of work that can mature and grow with development and practice. Of course, building our management craft is not automatic. To improve our ability to manage well (making a positive difference to the organization and team, getting results) we must acknowledge our privileged and important role and continuously grow.

Frankly, I get tired of hearing about how worthless middle managers are or how awful it is to be a middle manager. It can be the BEST job out there because middle managers can make a lot happen and have a significant impact on the business. To be sure, there are awful managers and undesirable management jobs.

And I wish we would stop comparing leadership and management. Leadership is often touted as the higher level work and management something less. Leadership is leadership and management is management. Just like project management and meeting facilitation are different type tasks, so it goes with leadership and management. Both are important although I have seen more companies struggle to meet their goals due to poor or missing management than I have because of lacking leadership.

Not to knock leadership, which I also consider a craft. It is just not what interests me most.

What do you think? Are you a manager? Are you having fun managing? What does management look like to you?

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That was post #1. I agree with 95% of it today, so that's good. I have developed my notion of leadership a bit since then.

Will I go another 1000 posts? Who knows. It depends on a lot of things, including you. I write to build my brain muscles and I write to be read, so as long as my readers remain engaged and interested, that will keep me interested too.

I would love to kick off year #4 by addressing your burning questions in the areas of management, leadership, OD, HR or training. Drop a comment or an email with the topic or questions you would like me to address.

Growing is good - please help.
To help Management Craft grow and expand, share this blog with three colleagues this week. It will be fun to infuse our online community with additional bubbling brains.

Welcome to Management Craft, a weblog dedicated to finding, sharing, and discussing state of the art management. We will discuss books, products, business management news, and fresh ideas. Management is my passion. I know that sounds strange, but I have seen and experienced the hum of peak productivity and it can be a beautiful thing!

Enough with the introduction, how about some meat?

I call this blog Management Craft, because I believe that the art and practice of managing people (without controlling them), processes, and projects WHILE flexibly changing as needed AND considering short term and long term needs and opportunities is a craft.

When I use the word craft in this blog, I am referring to an honorable and worthy body of work that can mature and grow with development and practice. Of course, building our management craft is not automatic. To improve our ability to manage well (making a positive difference to the organization and team, getting results) we must acknowledge our privileged and important role and continuously grow.

Frankly, I get tired of hearing about how worthless middle managers are or how awful it is to be a middle manager. It can be the BEST job out there because middle managers can make a lot happen and have a significant impact on the business. To be sure, there are awful managers and undesirable management jobs.

And I wish we would stop comparing leadership and management. Leadership is often touted as the higher level work and management something less. Leadership is leadership and management is management. Just like project management and meeting facilitation are different type tasks, so it goes with leadership and management. Both are important although I have seen more companies struggle to meet their goals due to poor or missing management than I have because of lacking leadership.

Not to knock leadership, which I also consider a craft. It is just not what interests me most.

What do you think? Are you a manager? Are you having fun managing? What does management look like to you?

============================================

That was post #1. I agree with 95% of it today, so that's good. I have developed my notion of leadership a bit since then.

Will I go another 1000 posts? Who knows. It depends on a lot of things, including you. I write to build my brain muscles and I write to be read, so as long as my readers remain engaged and interested, that will keep me interested too.

I would love to kick off year #4 by addressing your burning questions in the areas of management, leadership, OD, HR or training. Drop a comment or an email with the topic or questions you would like me to address.

Growing is good - please help.
To help Management Craft grow and expand, share this blog with three colleagues this week. It will be fun to infuse our online community with additional bubbling brains.

What if we stopped PowerPointing conversations?

Here is a nice article from Hip and Zen called, Make your presentations stickier: these three books can help. Since we use PowerPoint for so many things - some parents even use then for meetings with their kids - it is good to use the tool more effectively.

That said, I have another point of view. PowerPoint - and all the similar presentation programs - gets in the way of conversations. What if we did not use PowerPoint? Might we actually have to relate to one another? Might we have to make sure the meeting was relevant and interesting? Might we have a greater burden for generating better dialogue?

OK, if you are talking to a group of 5,000 people at a conference, sure, having a projected presentation helps keep people awake. But this is not a meeting or conversation - it's a speech. I have seen people put together a presentation for a three person meeting.

That's another problem - presentations take a long time to create! In many cases, much monger than the conversation will last.

I am a big fan of useful handouts. In meetings with 20 people or less, where conversation and input is sought, I think PowerPoint gets in the way.

I am sure there are exceptions - like when needing to share detailed diagrams or something. But if your presentation is a bunch of bullets, then real conversation would be better.

If you absolutely must PowerPoint, then the Hip and Zen post offers some great tips.

This caught my eye...

This looks like an interesting collective book, and I know a lot of the smart people involved so I would say it's a safe bet to buy this. My copy is on the way... Cool design, too.

Dwayne offers a meaty review of the Art of Managing. I am thankful to people like Dwayne because I am a bit behind in my business book reading. The books I am reading tend to be for school (just two more semesters) - essays and fiction. Here is a snippet of Dwayne's review that's interesting:

Finally, she rounds it out with a great set of tools to assess the effectiveness and alignment of an organization, and discusses methods to address any weaknesses or mis-alignment you may discover.

Here's a great post from David Zinger, writing on the up-for-grabs-Slacker-Manager blog, called: Weave retirement into your work even if you are in your 20s. Great idea. Hey David, how about a post called - What to do if you are in your 40s and did not do enough to prepare for retirement! That's be me... I love my flashy Sapphire martinis and BMW motorcycles way too much (not at the same time, of course).

Here's another post on the Slacker Manager, this time from my pal Craig Huggart called, Email - Stop the Insanity. I read all posts that combine the words "email" and "insanity."

I love this short post from buddy Phil Gerbyshak called, The Two Wolves: A Cherokee Tale. It's simple and elegant and powerful.

BarCamps?

Here is a blog post contributed by a friend of mine, Lisa Downs. She has her own company called DevelopmentWise. She's a smart, smart, professional - and fun, too.. Thanks, Lisa, for this great post about BarCamps!

At a recent gathering of learning and development colleagues, I was introduced to the idea of BarCamps (also called FooCamps) as a method of exploring and learning about a variety of topics in a collaborative, open environment. Not being a technophile, this concept was completely new to me, and I’m curious if others are familiar with these events and have tried one in their organizations or otherwise as an approach to learning, tackling management or internal organizational issues, or sharing knowledge.

Apparently, the idea stems from an event hosted by O’Reilly Media and is best described as an “unconference” where someone arranges a gathering place and provides refreshments, equipment, a WiFi connection, flip charts, etc. and lets the participants set the agenda for the event when they arrive. The agenda of topics for learning or discussion is fluid and everyone is expected to participate by presenting information, conducting demonstrations, and facilitating lively conversation. There’s some great information available at http://barcamp.org if interested. Wikis, blogs, and other tools may also be used to help participants prepare for the BarCamp and share ideas afterward.

It seems that many professionals in learning and development, performance improvement, and talent management arenas continue to be curious about how to incorporate collaborative media, technology, and innovative ideas into their work and provide more blended and varied experiences to their learners, but may be hesitant to jump right in. A BarCamp strikes me as an intriguing as a way to get started, if feasible. The possibility of using BarCamps as a way to enable those from different generations to interact and learn from each other is exciting, not only for the promise of collaboration and creativity, but also as a way to engage future leaders.

As someone who recently launched a business to provide learning, performance, and talent management solutions to organizations, I know it is critical to keep pace with emerging technologies and innovative solutions to challenges. If you have experience with BarCamps, or any other “out of the box” solutions you’ve tried for learning, resolving issues, or collaboration, I’d enjoy hearing from you. Like many in the learning industry, my background is more centered in training facilitation, coaching, and leadership/learning program development, so every bit of information helps to incorporate fresh ideas into client work and encourage colleagues to use.

Blogs - a business or a person?

I was out of town last week and did not read any of the blogs in my aggregator. Now that I am back in Seattle, I see that Bren, from Slacker Manager has sold his blog and is recruiting new writers for Slacker Manager.

Bren is a great guy and I congratulate him on his success and will miss his voice in the business blogosphere. That said, this news brings up two questions for me.

1. First, are business blogs a business or are they a voice? Clearly the answer is, "it depends," and "both," but I wonder what your thoughts are? When I first read Bren's post, my initial response was:

Bren IS the Slacker Manager, how can someone else write for the blog - or how can Bren be separate from the identity of Slacker Manager? Is Slacker Manager Brendon Connelly or is it a business site that Bren created and wrote for?

I am torn on this.

2. Slacker Manager is certainly not the first blog to be sold - it is done all the time. Is this no different than any other start-up?

I don't think it IS like other start-ups. Blogs are built on the notion of being a place for open and authentic communication. Blogs are places where we get to know the authors and the blog's readers. Blogs are personal - even if the content is dead serious.

Golly, I hope this is not a big trend in business blogs that takes things over. Companies who buy blogs likely have the cash to make their sites more visited than the independents. Like the corner book stores, I worry that this trend will lead to business blog homogenization and depersonalization.

And I mean no offense to the writers posting "tryout" posts on Slacker Manager right now, they are excellent. But they are not THE Slacker Manager.

I have often thought about how I might handle the day when I don't want to write Management Craft any longer. The day has not yet come, don't worry, but it is inevitable that I will not be doing this forever. Maybe I am being a bit too naive or ego-centric, but I don't think you - my dear readers - would want me to sell the site and I don't think I could do it. I am Management Craft, Management Craft is me.

Is that how you feel?

I feel like I am sliding in the blog world a bit, but I guess that depends on my definition of success. Other than being an affiliate for Amazon and StyleWriter, I do not accept advertising. I have not put all the gizmos and buttons and widgets that you find on a lot of blogs. And you know what? My readership is not growing as much as it once did. There are so many GREAT blogs out there and your choices expand every day. Perhaps I am like the corner book store. My selves are rounded and warn. I have been writing Management Craft for three years (August 2004) and have completed 995 posts. A lot has changed in three years - that's like 30 years in brick and mortar land, right? :-)

If my definition of success is blog readers - stats - I am struggling a bit. If my definition of success is about WHAT I write, I would guess that I might need to fluff my pillows a bit but am otherwise still on target. Is that true?

This all leads me to wonder about how people are getting the management and leadership information and training they need. How is this changing?

Every now and then I think about inviting a partner to write with me on Management Craft. Perhaps someone who does not agree with me on everything - I love a great debate. But I have always dismissed the idea, I am not really sure why.

This is all very interesting to think about. Even if you are not a blogger, what's going on at Slacker Manager is indicative of the changes that will impact you in some way as a blog reader - heck, as a reader in general.

Bren, I hope you enjoy what's next. I will miss the original Slacker Manager.

Fireside Chat with Sara Orem, PhD

Affirm a problem employee? Chat with Sara Orem PhD

During this 27 minute podcast, I chat with author, educator, and professional coach Sara Orem, PhD about her latest book, Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change. Let Sara tell you the two things you can do during your next conversation to create positive change. Sara has twenty years of management experience and fifteen years management consulting in and to major financial services companies in the U. S., Britain and Australia. This is a great podcast for coaches, trainers, managers, and learners - that covers everyone!

What is appreciative inquiry and how can you use it in one-on-one coaching conversations? Listen to this podcast!

You can listen to my podcast with Sara Orem by clicking here:

You can also download an MP3 version of the podcast here: MP3 Download

And just a reminder.....

Here is the Podcast Feed for the entire Fireside Chat podcast series:

To see the complete list of podcasts in this series, select the Podcasts and Webcasts category on this blog or see the list on my main website here.

You can also find this series on iTunes (and several other podcast sites), just search under my last name for Fireside Chat.

Relapse of Control

I am fighting myself this morning. I am a recovering control freak and I have had a bit of a relapse. I am talking myself down.

Stop. You don’t need to control this. It’s going to be fine.

Be happy to contribute.

There is enough great work to go around for everyone.

This is 90% of what you wanted. Enjoy the accomplishment of achieving this.

You are working with smart and caring people.

Things are great.

Repeat as necessary.

I know a lot of my readers are also recovering control freaks. What's your magic elixir cure? Help me please!

Employees with Bad Attitudes

Bad Attitude.... it's a bad term and now that I have written it, I would encourage you not to use it. Why? Because as a manager, saying someone has a bad attitude is of no help:

• It does not tell you what the person is doing that is unacceptable
• It does not allow you to take any kind of action

I have coached a lot of managers through what they called attitude problems. There are no attitude problems, but there are:

• Employees who do not build and maintain positive team relationships
• Employees who communicate in ways that are disruptive or disrespectful
• Employees who cause fellow team members stress and unease with their comments and/or actions
• Employees who have a negative impact on the workplace because of excessive complaints and derogatory remarks
• Employees who do not adequately collaborate and cooperate with team members

Many managers throw their hands in the air and believe that they cannot do anything about these employees. Not so. The above behaviors are not acceptable and can and should be managed just like any other expectation.

I think saying that an employee has a bad attitude is often a cop out because dealing with performance issues around one's demeanor and communication style is hard. As long as you call it a bad attitude, you can rationalize doing nothing but complaining about it. Yep, it's not easy to talk to an employee about these topics but it is harder to leave your team to deal with it every day.

Few employees with so-called bad attitudes get good clear feedback and fewer still are held accountable for being productive members of the team. Do you agree?

Fireside Chat with Harvard's William Ury

Are building a golden bridge? Chat with William Ury

In this 27 minute podcast, I chat with William Ury, the author of The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes. William has served as a mediator, writer and speaker working with conflicts ranging from family feuds to boardroom battles to ethnic wars in the Middle East. He co-founded Harvard's Program on Negotiation and currently directs the Global Negotiation Project. During this provocative podcast, we chat about Ury's lessons learned about building partnerships, negotiating techniques, and the importance of saying NO more often.

What's the importance of the other party's acceptance speech and why is a good "Plan B" so critical? Listen to this podcast!

You can listen to my podcast with William Ury by clicking here:

You can also download an MP3 version of the podcast here: MP3 Download

And just a reminder.....

Here is the Podcast Feed for the entire Fireside Chat podcast series:

To see the complete list of podcasts in this series, select the Podcasts and Webcasts category on this blog or see the list on my main website here.

You can also find this series on iTunes (and several other podcast sites), just search under my last name for Fireside Chat.

Hey Seattle! Hey New York! Hey Baltimore!

I want to let you know about three upcoming events/trips.

For those of you who live in the Seattle area, I will be speaking at the ASTD (American Society of Training and Development) Puget Sound Chapter's monthly meeting on July 24th at 7:30am at the Starbucks HQ in SODO (South of Down Town). Click here for more details and to register. There is a small fee to register that goes to benefit the chapter. I will be talking about the power of catalyzing breakthroughs and sharing a few stories about people who I have met who are making amazing things happen. It will be fun and I would love to meet you there.

For those of you who live in the White Plains/New York City/Greenwich/Stamford area, I will be heading to your neck of the woods on September 6 and 7. I have a private event on the morning of Sept. 7th, but I would love to line up one or two more stops while I am in the area. If you would like me to speak at your company or association, while I am in town, let me know ASAP as I need to make travel arrangements soon. I will likely fly into and stay in the White Plains area.

I will be speaking at a private event in Baltimore on October 8th (I get to meet director John Waters - I am really looking forward to that). I am occupied all day on the 8th but could add a day before or after if you would like me to speak at your company or association. I could even make it down to DC. Drop me an email if you want to chat more. My new book, 10 Steps to Be a Successful Manager will be out by this time.

The fees and arrangements would depend on the topic you want me to address and the group size. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know the breadth of topics I can address. Because I already have these trips booked, you might be able to score a deal!

Oh, and I will be in Albuquerque, NM in late July and Ft. Myers, FL in early December. And Birmingham in mid August.

And.....

Paris anyone? Oui!