A little over a week ago I did a podcast review of Manager Tools and part one of their effective meetings podcast. Since then I’ve listened to their two part session on weekly one-one meetings (part one, part two), part two of effective meetings, a question and answer session, a session on who the authors are, and am now in the middle of their session on providing feedback. They are very, very good.
Extension or other professionals that spend a significant portion of their time in meetings, in providing direction to volunteers, supervising employees, etc. will like what the authors call their focus not on philosophy or how managers should be, but on steps they can take now "to do" change. They focus on the nuts and bolts that create the cultures that are embedded in our organizations. Also be sure to check out the forms, powerpoints, etc. that are on their site. Highly recommended. I downloaded the podcasts via iTunes. More options are available on the Manager Tools site.
[...] here, here and here for some examples). Manager Tools has also evolved a really neat blog and comment feature into their site. Mark Horstman (50% of the Manager Tools partnership) has posted this neat feature on reading. Mark is reading about 200 books a year despite a busy life as a consultant. He explains his formula for reaching that number. I really like the post although I’m not quite on board with his reluctance to use audio books. Mark feels that commuting time should be better spent on the phone building relationships. I certainly cannot disagree with that concept, but I regularly listen to book and podcasts on my iPod while working out, cooking, etc. Plus some commuting time is often outside of normal business hours. I’m usually on the road between 5-6am, then again after 6pm. I do make several calls during these time periods (often very productive ones to people’s voicemails that saves email and other time), but I also find it a good time to get some listening done with audio books. I’ve reached the point where I read limited numbers of fiction books, but listen to a few every month just to relax and get away. Mark does make a valid point that we read faster than we can listen to books. iPod users can overcome some of this by selecting the faster reading option on their iPod. This increases the reading time to 125%. Conversely, people with listening difficulties can reduce the time to 75%. Unfortunately, this only seems to work with audio books and not podcasts. [...]