Mike and Mark discuss a friend’s stalled technical career. What’s the secret to reinvigorating his career?

In this special podcast for our registered subscribers, we’re going to share our first set of recommendations in self-development. We believe that you cannot consider yourself an effective, professional manager unless you engage in regular reading. To that end, we have a suite of recommended reading, both periodicals and books, and some suggestions on how to fit them into your schedule.

We do have one caveat as we start. While both of us have been overseas to many places, our business careers have been decidedly American. We can’t make solid recommendations for our overseas subscribers, other than we think highly of the Economist. On the other hand, we would be happy to hear from our community about THEIR recommendations. if you’re wondering why your favorite isn’t on our list, let us know - we’ll tell you or read it and evaluate it.

We’ll start with periodicals, and then talk about some books we feel strongly about. Lastly, we’ll recommend some steps you can take to help you find the time for these important developmental efforts.

You’ll find a list of the books we discuss (and couple other of our favorites), and links to Amazon, on our Favorite Books page. Be warned, if you purchase through the Amazon link, we’ll actually get a few pennies for your trouble. First one to purchase a book and send us an email that you did so, get’s a special prize for helping make us our first 5 cents at podcasting! Woo-hooo!

Part of being an Effective Manager is not just focusing on your day to day activities, but thinking STRATEGICALLY about your team, your role, your company, and your industry. We find that most managers are truly HORRENDOUS at this, and that’s why we address it in this week’s podcast. We understand why - there is often a great deal of pressure to get down in the weeds, and often senior managers are delegating out un-connected tasks versus giving perspective and scope.

What got us thinking this way was our recent cast on layoffs (Oct 23). Frankly, nobody likes to talk about it, but as a manager you not only need to be ready to deliver the news of a layoff for the organization, you need to be ready to be laid off yourself. Managers who are most ready to deal with being laid off are those who have good strategic vision, and they get that by regularly scanning their environment.

In this show, we’ll talk about what you should be looking at regularly. We use layoffs as a context, but strategic environmental scanning must be done irrespective of layoffs - this is a habit that highly effective managers take for granted.

Today, we continue our podcast on Strategic Thinking and Layoffs, picking right up where we left off on the November 14 Podcast.

Our focus today is on applying the “Environmental Scan” discussed last week to the particular concerns over a potential layoff and identifying specific actions you can take to both identify the potential of a layoff and, more importantly, prepare effectively in case it should actually occur.

Sites mentioned during the show:

• PubSub
• Gada.be

A better explanation of Gada.be

Have you ever wondered what your team REALLY thought of you? Have you ever wondered what they say about you to their spouses about you after one of their tough days? Have you wondered if other managers wondered this, or do they have their “stuff” so together that they don’t worry about this like you do?

Oh, they worry. Trust us.

The thing is, if you ask around, some people (and more than some in HR) will recommend you “do a three-sixty!”

That’s when you really SHOULD worry. 360-degree feedback is very powerful, and almost always inappropriate for managers as a way to learn how they’re doing. (We spend some time talking about 360 in the cast, as background.)

This cast teaches you a basic, simple, easy, low investment, low (zero) cost, easily repeatable, hard to mess up, gets-better-when-you-repeat it every-once-in-awhile technique for beginning to learn how you’re doing as a manager.

Finally we tackle a topic that we’re surprised no one asks about: How does one receive feedback? We know how to deliver it (even if far too many of us shy away from it all too often). But that’s only half the battle. One of the things many managers realize is that once you start giving feedback, you’re going to start receiving it as well.

Sometimes it’s well intentioned - your directs realize that you really mean it, and they’re willing to give you feedback. And yes, sometimes it’s intended to be a riposte from a nervous or insecure subordinate. But what’s great about receiving feedback effectively is that it sets a powerful example.

And we guarantee you the most effective way to receive feedback will surprise you.