This cast explains a simple technique to consider the impact of decisions on multiple stakeholders.

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.

We have a cast coming out shortly (I think) about politics and decision making. One of the points we make is that you’ve got to consider politics when you make decisions.

Lots of people complain about organizational politics. Executives spend so much time doing it that they grow accustomed to it, and hearing people complain often just confuses them. They think, “but that’s the way things get done…”

Politics are real. If you don’t like them, good luck finding an organization where there aren’t any. You might as well master them.

Here’s something I’ve learned that might help you think differently about politics: Collaboration is today’s politics. You probably don’t like “politics” because those decisions, choices, trade-offs, and alliances happen where you can’t see them. The antidote to politics is to collaborate with your peers and your team more.

Collaboration is a good thing…even a GREAT thing.

But don’t kid yourself. What you call collaboration, a couple of levels below you, they’re calling politics.

This cast shows how to facilitate the capture of Ground Rules when starting a meeting. 
 
Finally we return to discussing presentations!  Both Mark and Mike have recently been in the audience 
for professional presentations, and it was an eye opening experience for both of us.  We think every 
manager – and by definition if you’re a manager you have to assume you’re going to be a presenter – 
ought to have presentation training. 
 
And we think we’re the ones to do it. ;‐) 

And whom did my friend layoff?

Someone with 18 years of experience.

Your job is NOT safe.

Attention must be paid.

I spoke with a forceful, confident C-Suite executive last week, a long time friend. His firm was conducting layoffs. As a testament to the firm, the C-level executives were the ones delivering the news…and this is a Fortune 1000 firm.

This executive had laid someone off earlier in the day, and I was catching him on his drive home.

He said, “When I finished the last one, I put my head on my desk for a couple of minutes and just cried.”

Folks, this is how it’s done.

If that’s not you…get out of management. Go play baseball.

Why launch another podcast, Career Tools, and Why Now?

We realized we were NEVER going to get all of our career guidance out if we continued at the pace we were going. And, with the economy dipping, we thought career skills were going to be even more in demand than they were a few months ago (and they were in plenty of demand then, based on your responses to our career-related casts.

We’ve got thousands of podcasts to roll out in the future. THOUSANDS. A thousand podcasts would take 20 years to roll out weekly. So we realized we weren’t going to get to all of them.

Tomorrow: Differences and similarities between Career Tools and Manager Tools

We are pleased to share that we will start our second weekly podcast, Career Tools, on 4 December. Like Manager Tools, it will be a weekly FREE podcast addressing your Career: development, search, interviewing, networking, recruiting, promotions, layoffs, etc.

We’ll be providing daily updates and details for the next two weeks, leading up to launch. Tomorrow: Why we’re doing this (when we really don’t have time!)

For those of you who have had issues over the past few days using the search functionality on the site, please accept our apologies. We were bit by some software issues related to the Google Mini search appliance.

We’ve applied the patches recommended by Google and believe the search functionality should return to normal by late morning.

This cast describes how to make a decision effective by NOT working on other actions or plans after you’ve decided.

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.

Manager Tools has won the Best Business Podcast Award for 2008.

This is the third year in a row that we have won, and we consider the recognition it brings to us to be valuable for the growth of our community of managers and professionals.

Thank you all for voting for us. We produce our show for YOU, our community of managers and professionals. We hope to do it for many years.

Thank you.