Today caught up with me. Running hard, just like you.

It has been a wild year, but then we knew it would turn out this way. We’ve worked hard to prepare, get our balance sheets in order, wean off debt, and say goodbye to some of our favorite people. It was those last goodbyes that were the most difficult, those we hoped we could keep, but couldn’t after all.

And some companies are recovering, while others still see the road ahead in trouble.

Some of what we know will no longer be valid. Some old solutions will no longer fit new problems. It will require our brightest mind and sharpest execution. And it will always come down to this.

Find a market need big enough.
Build a product or service to meet it.
Then produce it faster, better and cheaper than your competitor.

But, now it is time to rest and enjoy the holidays with family and friends. Management Skills Blog will return on January 4, 2010. And now this story, first published here in 2005.
__
As Matthew looked across the manufacturing floor, the machines stood silent, the shipping dock was clear. Outside, the service vans were neatly parked in a row. Though he was the solitary figure, Matthew shouted across the empty space.

He reached for the switch and the mercury vapors went dark. He slid out the door and locked it behind.

The race to the end of 2009 is on, and so is our special offer for Working Leadership Online. Our special price of $100 for an annual membership is expiring on December 31 at midnight. When the ball drops, it’s over.

Sign up, now. Special Price – Working Leadership Online.

Why would you want to become a part of this community.

• As your company comes out of this recession, you have to bring on new people and build new teams.
• You truly want to make a change in your effectiveness, as a manager.
• The last thing you have time for, right now, is to take time out of your work day to attend a management program.

This is real.
There are no quizzes, just practical application.

Work on your pace.
You complete all the work on your own time, at your pace. Yet the program is highly interactive with other participants.

Specific to your role.
This program is specifically targeted to you, in your role, as a manager.

Follow this link for your special price. Special Price – Working Leadership Online.

2010 Subject Area Schedule (Total 15 Subject Areas in 2010)

• Jan 11 – Planning – Your 2010 Business Plan
• Feb 1 – Goal Setting – The Essence of Time Span
• Feb 22 – Decision Making – Time Span of Discretion
• Mar 15 – Managing Time – Managing Yourself
• Apr 5 – Spring Break
• Apr 12 – Communication – Mineral Rights Conversation
• May 3 – Delegation – Leveraging Time Span Capability
• May 24 – Control Systems and Feedback Loops
• Jun 14 – Team Problem Solving – Time Span Inside a Team
• Jul 5 – Summer Break
• Jul 12 – Coaching – Bringing Value as a Manager
• Aug 2 – Coaching Underperformance – Time Span and the Employment Contract
• Aug 23 – Coaching High Performance – Time Span and Maximum Capability
• Sep 13 – Fall Break
• Sep 20 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Accountability
• Oct 11 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Hiring Talent
• Nov 1- Time Span and Effectiveness
• Nov 22 – Break (Thanksgiving USA)
• Nov 29 – Bringing Out the Best In People
• Dec 20-Jan 9, 2011 Winter Break

See you online. -Tom Foster

We gathered around the table. In a brief moment, the conversations stopped. Glances exchanged over the food prepared. And we gave thanks.

Management Skills Blog will return next Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday. For those signed up for Working Leadership Online, Monday also kicks off our next Subject Area – Bringing Out the Best in People.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Anniversaries. Don’t you love ’em? Management Skills Blog just celebrated five years of publishing. Captured an ice-cold Guinness with a clover leaf in the foam.

Our Next Project
For five years, we have been working with business owners and managers on how to create more effective organizations. It is time to release our next project. Go check out Working Leadership Online. During this past year, every couple of weeks, we recruited ten volunteers to help us test our platform, slowly creating a powerful online learning system. The pilot phase is over.

To load the system, we reserved 200 annual memberships, now available for $100.

What We Know

1. Our participants have a day job, as a manager.
2. Our participants are really busy.
3. Our participants want to be more effective, now.

This is Real
Working Leadership Online is practical. There are no quizzes or tests. There is no make-work. This is not extra work. The Field Work is real.

At Your Pace
Participants login on their schedule.

Unforgettable
The problem with most training programs is they stop. After a few classes, it’s over, good luck. Working Leadership Online goes year-round. It changes the way you think about your role as a manager.

How This Works
Go to Working Leadership Online. Follow the FREE TRIAL link. Your first Subject Area is on us. Then you decide. We are holding the first 200 memberships. Word is already on the street, so we expect to close this offer in the next few days.

Here’s Some Feedback

This program is anti-matter to today’s barage of costly management solutions. The program covered a great deal of critical leadership material that managers can immediately benefit from. -Cathy Darby

Some people live online and I’m not one of them. I’d much rather be in a human presence. Having said that, after Tom’s first response he won me over. His honesty and feedback is invaluable. -Jane Hein

There’s a lot of valuable information in this course that isn’t easily available elsewhere, and the coaching from Tom in addition to accountability for actually carrying out the assignments makes for a solid learning experience. Keep up the good work. The online format makes the course accessible, and makes it easy to put into practice directly in a work environment. -Erik LaBianca

Your Investment
$100 for an annual membership ($8.33 per month). If your company won’t pay for it, maybe you should. Looking forward to seeing you online.

www.workingleadership.com

Here is the schedule for the coming year.

• Nov 30 – Bringing Out the Best in People
• Dec 21 – Jan 10, 2010 – Winter Break

2010 Subject Area Schedule (Total 15 Subject Areas in 2010)

• Jan 11 – Planning – Your 2010 Business Plan
• Feb 1 – Goal Setting – The Essence of Time Span
• Feb 22 – Decision Making – Time Span of Discretion
• Mar 15 – Managing Time – Managing Yourself
• Apr 5 – Spring Break
• Apr 12 – Communication – Mineral Rights Conversation
• May 3 – Delegation – Leveraging Time Span Capability
• May 24 – Control Systems and Feedback Loops
• Jun 14 – Team Problem Solving – Time Span Inside a Team
• Jul 5 – Summer Break
• Jul 12 – Coaching – Bringing Value as a Manager
• Aug 2 – Coaching Underperformance – Time Span and the Employment Contract
• Aug 23 – Coaching High Performance – Time Span and Maximum Capability
• Sep 13 – Fall Break
• Sep 20 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Accountability
• Oct 11 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Hiring Talent
• Nov 1- Time Span and Effectiveness
• Nov 22 – Break (Thanksgiving USA)
• Nov 29 – Bringing Out the Best In People
• Dec 20-Jan 9, 2011 Winter Break

Monday, we kick off our next series in Working Leadership Online, Time Span and Effectiveness. This subject area looks at the roles we create for our team members and how we go about making managerial judgments on effectiveness. If you are new to the concepts of Time Span, you will never see your team the same way again. It will help you make your decisions about who will play what role by asking three critical questions.

We are offering ten scholarships to this program. If you are interested, please respond to Ask Tom.

From yesterday’s comments, some great questions.

Question:
I’ve been thinking about performance appraisals and Time Span lately because many of our front line workers are Stratum I. We have a weekly scorecard and we measure and reward every week, which fits their time span.

Our healthcare company is licensed and, as a stipulation of our license, we’re required to “review” each employee annually. Since I’ve been introduced to Time Span, I can see how these annual reviews are a waste of time for Strata I and II. So, what’s the most meaningful way to comply with our license without wasting everyone’s time?

Response:
First, if it is a requirement of your license, you are not wasting anyone’s time. If you lose your license for non-compliance, then you will be out of business. So take this very seriously. The paperwork should be completed and conform with accepted guidelines.

Now, let’s talk about making Performance Feedback meaningful. You have correctly identified that goals should be reviewed concurrently as they are achieved, meaning, if a team member is working on weekly goals, then they should be reviewed on a weekly basis. It shouldn’t take a lot of time, but a few minutes each week to acknowledge a “job well done,” will pay large dividends to the organization.

So, what would be important to talk about at least once a year? I call it calibration time. Elliott Jaques called it the “Personal Effectiveness Appraisal.” And it doesn’t have to happen ONLY once a year. Calibration should occur at least once a year or any other time the manager sees an observable change in capability (usually positive).

Here are the questions.

• Is the team member functioning satisfactorily, given the Time Span task assignments in the role?
• If yes, could this team member function effectively in task assignments with a longer Time Span?
• If no, could this team member function effectively in task assignments with a shorter Time Span?

This calibration discussion has three participants, the team member, the manager and the manager-once-removed. This discussion rarely takes more than ten minutes.

The brilliance of Elliott’s discovery is that we can use the Time Span of a goal to calibrate and match task assignments to the capability of a team member. This matching is designed to keep people engaged in task assignments that are both well-suited and challenging. What happens to job satisfaction when people are challenged to their maximum level of capability? Not beyond, not below, but right at their maximum?

Because people grow and mature, this calibration should occur at least once a year or any time a manager notices a change in capability.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
Let’s say I buy into Elliott Jaques model of Requisite Organization. But I have a small company. As you describe the layers in the organization, it is clear that I am missing some key roles. But in this recession, I have to stick to a personnel budget. I cannot afford to hire the people necessary to fill all the roles.

Response:
If you were thinking about purchasing a machine, a major expensive machine, for your operations, and you were concerned about budget, how would you make that decision?

Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you are concerned about budget, the answer is still the same. You would purchase the machine only if it were necessary for the operation. I don’t know of a single business owner or manager who would put something in place unless it was necessary.

I use necessity as a driver for many decisions. Is that machine necessary? Is that role necessary? If your business model requires a role, yet your budget will not allow the hire, then you have to modify your business model.

Rather than questioning the validity of organizational roles and layers, let Elliott’s model help you understand what is missing and what modifications you might have to make until your company gets back in the zone of profitability and growth. You will get there faster.

“I don’t understand,” complained Marcus. “I got this new guy on the team. We have been running pretty lean for the past eight months and I knew we needed some more help, so we got some more help. But he’s not helping. As a matter of fact, people are complaining about him.”

“What’s the story?” I asked.

“We cut our admin staff last February, assigned all the tasks around to make sure we could still get all the work out. Our volume is picking up a little (at last), and I am afraid if we don’t get another person cross trained, we are going to start getting behind.”

“Maybe they are just taking their time warming up to the new person,” I suggested.

Marcus moved his head from side to side. “No, it’s like they are hording the work. No one will let anything go. Old habits die hard. The level of trust is pretty low. Even though we added a person, my team still thinks they could get laid off.”
__

We still have a couple of scholarships to Working Leadership Online, Time Span and Accountability. If you would like to participate, please respond to Ask Tom.

In a couple of months, Management Skills Blog will be 5 years old. During this time, I have drawn on the conversations I have with managers. But, I always remember, conversations are mostly with yourself, there just happens to be other people in the room. So, I am curious.

As we go forward, in the general area of management and leadership, what specific topics are you interested in? What bugs you about management? What are the significant challenges you face, as a manager? What’s difficult? Where do you feel the pain? If you would think about that, and send a reply to Ask Tom, I will compile the results and post them in a couple of days.