LOTS of great stuff!

Here are the 5 posts that generated the most comments, or were the most fun for me. If you missed them, take a few minutes now to review this month’s best of Slacker Manager.

• An interview with Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten of 800-CEO-READ, authors of the 100 Best Business Books of All-Time
• Great discussion about the worst interview questions of all-time
• Never stop learning: The first management commandment
• For the baseball fan, Resign or Commit Harry Caray
• Effective managers read books

Did you find or write a great post this month? Leave a comment and let’s learn from each other!

Watercolors of March courtesy of ursonate

Post from: EveryJoe

March 2009 In Review

In honor of the month coming to an end, I thought I’d do a wrap-up post for any of you that missed anything this month, or that want a quick reference for the best of the month, here you go. I’m also going to try to do this every month for you. I hope it works for you.

Ten Commandments of Management – An introductory post to what I plan to write about each week about how I live my life as a manager. 15 of you shared your thoughts. Thank you!

Get to Know Your Team created quite a lively discussion as not everyone agrees that getting to know your team is a most important thing for managers to do.

– Get promoted – Guaranteed or your money back was one of my more interesting posts. Not everyone agreed on the best way to get promoted. What do you think?

What is a manager worth? also caused quite a stir. I thought it would be easy to just double salaries as you went up the chain. Not everyone agreed…

Multi-tasking must die was one of the easiest posts I’ve written, yet one of the hardest posts I have to live by. What do you think?

As a gentle reminder/request, the Slacker Survey is open until Tuesday evening, at which time I will close the survey and tabulate the results.

Your turn

• What was your favorite post for February?
• Find a great post somewhere else?
• Did you write your own great post?Share your insights in the comments below. Thanks for reading!Flickr photo of Phil Gerbyshak courtesy of compujeramey

Post from: EveryJoe

February 2009 Greatest Hits on Slacker Manager

• The Enlightened Manager shares When is team building not team building – “If you really want to build a team – be very intentional about it. Don’t just assume that if you bring donuts that everyone will work effectively together. You’re more likely to contribute to giving employees diabetes than giving them job skills.”

• Ryan at Employee Evolution reminds us that if you’re interviewing for a job, there are some questions you can ask to make sure your boss doesn’t suck -  “In an interview, the questions you ask are just as important as the questions your potential boss asks you. They can determine what the relationship will be like and they can determine whether or not working for this person is really right for you.”

• Simple Rich shares “It’s not Brain Surgery,” where he reminds all of us managers to relax.

And relax is what I will do now. I’m off for the weekend, and I’ll be back on Monday. Enjoy the slack that is the weekend!

Please share your favorite management links of the week in the comments below.

Post from: EveryJoe

Management Roundup for Week Ending February 9th, 2008

Slacker Manager Ranked #15 Career Blog by RiseSmart

Contact: Phil Gerbyshak
phil.gerbyshak@b5media.com

RiseSmart recently ranked the top 100 career blogs and as of January 13th, 2008, b5 Media’s Slacker Manager has been listed at #15. Other outstanding blogs honored include Tom Peters at #1, Business Pundit at #3 and Chief Happiness Officer at #4. b5 media’s Linked Intelligence was also honored at #27. Barely missing the cut was Slacker Manager co-author David Zinger’s employee engagement blog.

You can review the full list of top 100 career blogs and the algorithm for ranking the top 100 careers blogs can be found here.

Phil Gerbyshak and David Zinger would like to thank the readers of Slacker Manager for subscribing to their feed and for their continued support and encouragement.

Slacker Manager was founded by Bren Connelly in October of 2004 and sold to b5 Media in 2007, when Mr. Gerbyshak and Mr. Zinger took over authorship.

Post from: EveryJoe

Slacker Manager Ranked #15 Career Blog by RiseSmart

Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Written Word

• Management Craft with Lisa Haneberg
• Managing with Aloha Coaching with Rosa Say
• All Things Workplace with Steve Roesler
• Leadership Turn with Miki Saxon
• The Simplest Thing That Works with Erika Andersen

Spoken Word

• Cranky Middle Manager hosted by Wayne Turmel
• Manager Tools hosted by Mark Horstman and Michael Auzenn

So now, I’d like to

Ask the Experts

(Hey, that’s YOU, reading this blog, if you weren’t sure)

Please add your favorites in the comments, along with WHY it’s so good for you.

Thanks for contributing to Slacker Manager! David and Phil appreciate it very much!

PS If you leave more than 1 URL in your comment, it will be held in moderation, but please don’t let that stop you. I promise I’ll fish them out of the spam bucket and post them here for all to read as I appreciate every one of you who takes the time to share.

PPS Don’t be shy about listing your own blog if you have a management focus on your blog.

Post from: EveryJoe

Ask the Experts: What are your favorite management blogs?

Marshall Goldsmith is the December inductee into Slacker Manager’s Order of the Golden Slacker.

Marshall has made outstanding contribution to management and leadership coaching, he is widely published and he is committed to helping people be the best leaders and managers they can be.

Slacker Managers do not slack off rather they find ways to make things easier or more effective for others — Marshall Goldsmith is a master of this. You could also say Marshall Goldsmith is a natural for the Order of the Golden Slacker as he has gold right in his name!

Marshall Goldsmith is to be saluted for his willingness to share information freely and for his cogent and insightful writing style. He offers ideas you can use right away. He works with top executives but you get the sense he is the type of person who will roll up his sleeves and engage with you fully at a meaningful personal and professional level.

Marshall Goldsmith offers a phenomenal range of resources through his free and generous library of resources. I guarantee that a couple of hours browing and reading his work will make you a better manager. 

To get a flavor of Marshall Goldsmith approach and perspective read this introduction to his library:

Dear Friends: Please read, listen to, watch, download, copy and send this material to anyone in your company you think might benefit. Even better, please share with your favorite charity, spiritual or non-profit organization. To gain a better understanding of our leadership development process, I would recommend starting with the following ten articles in sequence (Click here to find the 10 articles in sequence). If you or anyone you know find value in these resources, it will make me feel great! Life is good. - Marshall

If you want to learn more from Marshall Goldsmith:

1. Browse and Study at Marshall Goldsmith’s Personal Website and Free Library.
2. Watch and Apply Marshall’s video on feedforward.
3. Read Marshall’s latest book: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful.
4. Visit and Read Marshall Goldsmith’s Harvard Business blog.

Previous Order of the Golden Slacker Inductees:

1. Rosa Say (November 2007)
2. Lisa Haneberg (October 2007)

Thank you Marshall Goldsmith for your

generous and insightful contributions

to all Slacker Managers.

David Zinger and Phil Gerbyshak

Post from: EveryJoe

Marshall Goldsmith: December Inductee into the Order of the Golden Slacker

Although the target audience is C-level leaders I believe anyone at any level of management can benefit by reading the HBR. The articles are well-written, they include wonderful illustrations, and the printed journal includes an eclectic collection of business cartoons.

What could be better than cartoons and Harvard together?

Click here to get your free 21 day pass to HBR-London. If you are a manager, make your next 3 weeks a chance to get a Harvard education.

You will have access to an engaging interactive site and a very helpful collection of articles including the following four:

1. Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy
2. What Makes A Leader? by Daniel Goleman
3. Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform by Edward M. Hallowell
4. Cognitive Fitness by Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts

London calling. So the quickest way to Harvard, even if you live in Boston, may be by going to London first.

Enjoy the journey with some of the best and brightest management writers on the planet.

…..

David Zinger dropped out of his Bachelor of Commerce degree 30 years ago but he has never dropped reading the Harvard Business Review.

Post from: EveryJoe

21 Day Free Pass to the Harvard Business Review: London

Instead of a quick link and a list in a blogroll we have created: The Order of the Golden Slacker. We will send the inductee a certificate to acknowledge them and we will write a longer post here to honor them.

If you are not already following the contributor we induct, what are you waiting for?

David Zinger and Phil Gerbyshak (The Slacker Managers) are proud to honor our first inductee and the September inductee into the Order of The Golder Slacker.

Ms. Lisa Haneberg

The Order of the Golden Slacker is awarded by Slacker Manager to Lisa Haneberg for the consistent and strong voice you offer to managers to make things easier for us. We appreciate the varied and insightful ideas and perspectives you offer Slacker Managers. You are able to break down complex management topics into golden nuggets we can digest and you stubbornly offer us your best again and again. You have offered a pathway to management breakthroughs.

We get a real kick out of your work Lisa!

 David Zinger & Phil Gerbyshak

We presented Lisa with a certificate to acknowledge both her contribution and our thanks in developing Slacker Managers around the world.

Lisa exemplifies the following characteristics of Slacker Managers: 

• infuse work with passion and purpose
• focus on smarter not harder work
• ensure that work is effective and efficient
• leverage learning for results
• commit to both personal and professional development
• draw out the strengths of others and themselves
• transform “me thinking” to “we thinking”  
• weave results and relationships into good management
• delegate for results and development
• engage in lifelong learning in diverse and multiple ways
• value giving and serving ahead of taking and being served
• willingly admit when they don’t know something
• use all available resources
• laugh as leaders – taking work seriously and themselves lightly

Lisa’s accomplishments in both books and blogs is outstanding. She is a skillful management writer who focuses like a laser beam to describe and outline ideas that you can use. She also had incredible drive – evidenced by her 10,000 mile motorcycle book tour this summer. Lisa is informative, interesting, engaging, practical and helpful.

If you read Lisa and follow her directions I firmly believe you will gain incredible focus, become a better manager, and make breakthroughs happen for both yourself and the people you manage. 

A sample of  7 contributions from Lisa Haneberg include:

1. 10 Steps to be a Successful Manager (Book)
2. Two Weeks to a Breakthrough (Book)
3. Focus Like a Laser Beam (Book)
4.  www.lisahaneberg.com (Website)
5. The Management Craft blog (Blog)
6. 2 Weeks to a Breakthrough Blog (Blog)
7. Fireside Chats (Podcast Interviews)

Lisa has made a significant difference in my management knowledge and practice. I just reapplied her two weeks to a breakthrough methodology during the first two weeks of September. I experienced a tremendous boost in the connection, assistance, and action I received and achieved on two projects I launched.

From both Phil and David, thanks Lisa!

David Zinger

Post from: EveryJoe

Lisa Haneberg: September Inductee Into the Order of the Golden Slacker

1. Strategic planning
2. Customer relationship management
3. Benchmarking
4. Mission and vision statements
5. Core competencies
6. Knowledge management
7. Strategic alliances

Of course there are quite a few more listed there that you can learn from. I cherry picked my favorite 7.

What about you? What do YOU see as the top management tools you’re using in 2007? Is Bain’s list correct or are they way off the mark? What’s missing from this list?

Hat tip to Skip at Be Excellent for finding this gem.

[Phil Gerbyshak tries to spend every day using the tools at his disposal as a manager.]

Post from: EveryJoe

7 Top Management Tools: 2007 Edition

Twitter is a deceptively simple utility. That said, Twitter isn’t for everyone. In fact it’s probably not even for half of everyone. But for those that have the patience to find their personal sweet spot, Twitter can be quite good indeed. If you’re not familar with Twitter, it’s pretty easy to describe. It’s instant messaging with a group. You post a short message via IM, web or other utility (see below) and other Twitterers who are “following” you will see your message. Some have called Twitter a form of microblogging and I think that’s a helpful way of looking at it. Most people don’t quite “get” Twitter at first. This post aims to give you a leg up on the learning curve. For starters, you’ll need an account and you can do that here (yeah, it’s free). Once you’ve got your account, you might feel lonely. I’m here for you, buddy. Just click “add”.

Just a little more intro before we jump into the Habits. Most Twitter newbies are underwhelmed by what they find there. It seems…useless. And unless you persevere a bit, you’ll probably walk away from your account wondering what the fuss was all about. This post aims to help give you a leg up on the Twitter learning curve. One last note: if you’ve never used instant messaging before, this may change your mind. It may also be the last straw that convinces you to become Amish. You’ve been warned.

Habit One: Make the right friends
This habit is pretty much the engine that drives many of the other habits. It is so easy to “follow” someone in Twitter that many folks go a little bit overboard at first. If you can handle the firehose of twittering, go for it. Otherwise, don’t get wrapped up in the “more is better” trap.

• Really think about what kind of info you want pushed your way. If you’re interested in what all the cool geek kids are doing, then go ahead and follow them–they’re all there.
• You can add friends on the web by going to their profile and clicking the “add” link.
• You can add friends via IM, if you know their username by sending an IM to the twitter@twitter.com contact and typing: follow USERNAME
• You can add your friends cell phone numbers by sending an IM to the twitter@twitter.com contact and typing: add CELLNUMBER (where CELLNUMBER is their number)
• Alternately you may be the only person in your social circle who does IM, in which case you might only want to get particular types of news pushed at you. There are currently several Twitter accounts that will serve up various flavors of news. You can follow the BBC (there are a bunch of flavors, just search for ‘bbc’ in the Twitter search box), the Digg frontpage, CNN breaking news (again, type ‘cnn’ in the search box to get the most updated options). There’s no ESPN, or Fark or Slashdot yet (at least that I can find, but I’m sure they’re coming).
• The search box is your friend, use it. Also, don’t be shy about bouncing around and looking at who’s following who. You’ll discover a lot of interesting people out there. Just remember that you can always turn down or turn off the firehose of information if becomes overwhelming. To turn it off, just send this IM to Twitter: off And I bet you can guess how to turn it back on…

Habit Two: Put it where you want it
In it’s most basic form, Twitter is a webpage with a text box where you can enter a little message. But you don’t need to stop there.

• Once you’ve got your account set up, you can add twitter@twitter.com as a contact in whatever IM software you use (I use Adium on the Mac, and it’s awesome).
• Additionally, you can get your Twitter pushed to your phone, if that’s how you want it. Just check the appropriate bits in your devices settings. You can send SMS to 40404 if you’re in the US. Outside the US use +44 7781 488126
• If you use Gmail and GoogleTalk, you can add twitter@twitter.com as a contact and get your stuff there.
• If you’ve got a Blackberry, you should check out the Google Talk client and use it there. As if you needed another reason to fiddle with that thing in meetings.
• Same deal with Treos, actually. Any of the Treo IM clients will work with Twitter. If you must, just Google “Treo IM” and you’ll get a lot of leads. I’ve tried a few, but it’s really more than I can take. Good luck to you.
• On the Mac you’ve got a couple of standalone options. There’s Twitterific and Twitterpost. Regardless of which one you use, be sure to add the corresponding Twitter user to your friends list in Twitter. Twitterific is at http://twitter.com/twitterific and Twitterpost is at http://twitter.com/twitterpost. You’ll get updates on bugfixes, etc by adding them.
• If you’re rocking the PC you might check out Twitteroo. As with the Mac options, add the Twitteroo user as a friend in Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitteroo. There are no updates as I write this, but I’m sure that’ll change.
• If you want to take all this just a little bit slower, you can just grab the RSS feed for all the folks that you’re following, or for individual users. If you don’t IM, and you just want to follow a few people, you can grab their feeds–just go to their Twitter page and look at the bottom left corner for the RSS link. Subscribing to your own RSS feed (the one that contains all the twitters from the people you’re following) is a good idea. It acts as an archive of the content which can be quite helpful.

Habit Three: Own it
If you’re unafraid of spreading yourself around the web, be sure to claim your Twitter page with Technorati and expand your digital empire. If you don’t have a Technorati account, just sign up (free). Once you’ve got your account go to your blog settings and at the bottom of the page there’s a place to put in your blog url. This is just http://twitter.com/YOUR-USERNAME. Replace YOUR-USERNAME with, you know, your Twitter username. You’ll then be presented with two options for claiming your blog (which is just your Twitter home page). Choose the posting method. Copy the code and send it to Twitter via any of the methods described above. Done.

Habit Four: Address your followers
By default, when you send a note via Twitter it goes to everyone that’s following you. If you just want to send a note directly to someone, you can get them via the direct messages web interface. Additionally, if you’re twittering via IM, you can use the direct command to send private-ish messages to a contact. Just type: D USERNAME your message here. That’ll send a message directly to that person without bothering all your other followers. If you don’t mind hitting everyone else with a private message, you can publically address that person by following the standard “@” convention. That is, just type: @USERNAME: your message here. That way everyone knows who you’re talking to.

Habit Five: Hack it
People are doing interesting and innovative stuff with Twitter. Feel free to leave a comment if you know about cool Twitter hacks that everyone should know about!

• Check out this recent post over at Lifehack.org that covers “five ways to use Twitter for good.” I particularly like the ideas of friendsourcing and quick human answers.
• Also, various mashups of Twitter search results, RSS feeds and jedi tricks with stuff like Yahoo Pipes can result in some very interesting customized info streams. Check out Christopher S. Penn’s post on Twitter Power Tips.
• Use your skills to take your favorite RSS feed (or spliced feed) and HTTP POST (via API) to create a custom Twitter account that anyone can befriend.(hint: this can be a nice traffic builder…but only if you have the skillz)

Habit Six: Play with it

• Use the Firefox Search Plugin to post directly to your Twitter account (so cool)
• Use the Twitter confessional to get clean
• Participate in the Twitter fan wiki (tons more tools in there)
• View info about Twitterers by posting: whois USERNAME This will return the standard Twitter bio for that user
• Try Steve’s Twitter search engine
• Search for friends and coworkers. Heck, search for the guy that just sent you his resume.
• Check out the Twitter help page for more tips on commands. Also see this Library Clips post for more of the same.

So there you go. This is by no means a comprehensive list of Twitterliciousness, but I hope it gets you thinking in new directions, and helps give you a leg up on figuring out Twitter. As a final sign off, here’s a brief wishlist that I’d like to see built into Twitter:

• A way to create an account with an RSS feed for auto-posting (rather than having to work with the API)
• A decent integrated search engine
• Some kind of groups feature with privacy options. It’d be nice to have a Twitter group for my office. I know this can be hacked, but we are not a technical people at my office.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Several Habits of Wildly Successful Twitter Users