Comments on: 3 Questions for Your Weekly Review

By: Phil Gerbyshak

Phil Gerbyshak — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:09:38 +0000

Brent - Too bad that didn't work out. Not sure what happened, though it sounds like a bit of a lack of commitment on all parts. Or a lack of staff. Sorry to hear that no matter what happened.

Alex - Great 4th question! Thanks for adding it. I agree completely.

And no sense pointing fingers. That NEVER helps anything.

David - Simple is often most effective, so I'm glad this was simple enough. Strengths based is one of my keys in my life. Buckingham's book revolutionized my management life.

Emiel - Thanks for the reminders on the basics of manager tools. I wrote about that a while back, and it's nice to keep that out in front. Thank you for stopping by.

By: Emiel

Emiel — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:27:35 +0000

Reading this I immediately thought back to a podcast series on weekly one-on-one’s by manager-tools. This is in their basics series: http://www.manager-tools.com/manager-tools-basics.

Keep up the great posts, emiel

By: David Zinger

David Zinger — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:07:02 +0000

I appreciate how you keep things simple and regular as a manager. I think it is also important to start with the foundation of the person’s strrengths.

By: Alexander Kjerulf

Alexander Kjerulf — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:17:37 +0000

That’s a great idea Phil. Especially the first question where you ask what has gone well – that’s crucial! Otherwise these kinds of meetings tend to end up as gripe sessions or as endless repetitions of “why didn’t this get done on time?”

I just want to add a fourth question:
4: What can I as a manager do to make your life easier?

By: brent

brent — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:30:56 +0000

My best boss only used to ask us each what our Top 3 things were this week.

you got LOOKED AT if you had the same thing in your Hot 3 twice in a row
he wrote them all down and 'promised' that he'd work through them and put his best efforts into achieving those three
you weren't allowed 4, or for that matter, 2.
by the time a team has gone around the circle and answered what their 3 most pressing concerns are it's usually clear to everyone that we're far too busy to be sitting around in the meeting-room TALKING.

I suppose that the intention was that, after a while, things would die down and we'd be able to plan our projects a bit more fluently and sedately... but life doesn't work like that - at least not in this company - so this turned out to be a pretty good method of Continual Forest Fire Fighting Engineering.