8/27/2012–“Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.” –Dwight
I had my 1st staff meeting and found out how valuable preparation is to communication. Staying up til 5:00 a.m. was probably overkill, but had I not gone in with a plan, I would’ve crashed hard. I had 14 topics I wanted to hit and didn’t hit more than 12 on any of the 3 groups I spoke with. Still, I would’ve only been able to cover 2 main issues if I didn’t make a plan beforehand. In addition to planning my part, writing an agenda helped plan the whole thing. Out of all the topics I discussed, the best received seems to be one on ones. As of now the plan is to run 15 minutes with a 5/5/5 split. I’ve done two so far–one was with a veteran high performer who I’ve already developed an open dialogue with. I did this to simply get a one on one done so I could go from 0 to 1. She enjoyed it and looks forward to the next. The 2nd was by request immediately after I told him about the idea. I gave feedback in both which was also received well. I have yet to see if that worked or not. What I need to do next time is prepare questions and what feedback I will give. I continued to make progress on projects by following the “just do it” motto. This is my final week for my first project. It’s almost done and way under budget.
QOTW: “That O3 thing sounds pretty cool can we do that tonight?”
?FNW: How will I roll out O3s and how will it go? 9/20–O3s are popular after about 10; some before/after shift, about 20 minutes average.
11/14/2017 review: 12 topics!?!? That’s ridiculous, too many for any meeting. And I think this was a 90-minute meeting during which we split the staff into three groups and had thirty minutes with each group. There’s no way you can effectively cover 12 items in 30 minutes, and if I did, they were probably things I could’ve emailed to the staff. However, I do remember this is the meeting where I announced one-on-ones (O3s). And I do remember the announcement going smoothly. Too smoothly, actually, as no questions were asked. I’d later realize this was because people aren’t always comfortable asking questions if the presenter doesn’t encourage them to. If you come across as having everything perfectly figured-out, or as if you know the topic way better than your audience of direct reports does, they won’t be encouraged to provide input. That’s what happened and that’s what has happened to me several times since then, but the likely cause was only recently brought to my attention.
It’s still true that going from 0 to 1 should be made as easy as possible when forming new habits. For managers, this goes for giving feedback in a new way, doing one on ones regularly, using agendas for meetings, coaching, delegating, and other tools I have yet to learn. While the best one-on-one model I’ve seen is 30 minute meetings, 15 minutes was an effective adaptation for this staff of about 20 employees. This allowed for bi-weekly meetings, which is the maximum time between one-on-ones that allows for relationship building and project tracking.