leadership
Friday, February 06, 2009
Attached to this post is a tool I designed to quickly assess the strength of any team I'm managing. As a leader there is nothing more important to your success than building up a winning team.
Download Visular-Team_Assessment_Tool_v02
This tool is strongly influced by the GE leadership approach to managing people - focusing on A players and exiting C players. It is NOT a substitute for a full employee management process (role documents, goal setting, performance reviews, merit-based bonuses, etc.). Instructions for using the tool are included in the file.
Posted by Tom Wolf on Feb-06-2009 10:32 pm
people •
leadership •
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Friday, January 30, 2009
When you think of the salary (or hourly rate) of every person sitting in a meeting, even the smallest are quite expensive to any organization. Why is it then that so many meetings happen with no stated objectives or even a simple written agenda?
Attached is my basic meeting agenda format that I try to use for all my meetings. Many of my colleagues have found this template valuable. Feel free to customize it as necessary for your needs.
Download Visular-Meeting_Agenda_Template_v03
The most critical elements for an effective meeting are clear, documented objectives, a detailed, timed agenda, and the right attendees in the room. I also find it helpful to identify the key inputs required in advance so you're not all sitting around saying, "why didn't anyone bring the sales figures?".
Objectives - Many people will jump to preparing an agenda without first thinking through the actual objectives of the meeting. This can lead to a meeting that finishes on time, but doesn't accomplish what the owner wants to get done. Worse, participants can end up sabotaging the meeting because they have their own objectives that are different from yours. The very worst cases end up in a complete breakdown with arguments because there is no group buy-in to just what you're all doing there.
Posted by Tom Wolf on Jan-30-2009 10:45 pm
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Monday, January 12, 2009
Attached is a simple template for capturing action items that I've honed over the years while trying to balance diligence with simplicity. Several of my clients and managers have found this helpful so I thought I'd share it along with some thoughts on action item management.
Download Visular-Action_Item_tool_v05
The most critical elements for effectively managing action items are: the action item itself being clear, one accountable owner, a due date and regular follow-up. This may seem like complete common sense and it has become pretty normal for people to capture action items at the end of most meetings, but so often this fundamental management technique is improperly done rendering it useless or worse - driving bad behaviors.
Posted by Tom Wolf on Jan-12-2009 10:53 pm
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Friday, December 19, 2008
Below you can find a link to download both the presentation slides and the Visular Team Assessment tool from the December 2008 discussion at our Wordpress site. The post is protected with the password distributed at the meeting.
Presentation Materials for Download
Thanks for your participation in the discussion. Feel free to make any comments for continued group discussion under this blog entry.
Posted by Tom Wolf on Dec-19-2008 10:55 pm
strategy & delivery •
leadership •
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