O3's - One to One's a tool for mobile managers

Being an avid listener to Manager Tools and having applied nearly all of the tools and techniques so well presented by Mark and Mike there is one catch with the One-2-One guidelines.

Go get the podcast

The suggestion is to document the session in a file for follow up week to week and for easy review come appraisal time. This causes a problem when you travel a lot.

The solution is to use some desktop available tools that allow for easy note taking and a more flexible structure. This means Mind Manager.

Having created a template for using in the O3 the next step was to incorporate another of the Manager Tools, retention tracking.

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The result is the Mind Manager template that I am sharing here.

For those without Mind Manager, suggestion is to get it as the tool is very flexible, you can see an image of the layout



Take the time to go an register at Manager Tools. The podcast series is excellent and there is now the added bonus of Premium content.

Book: Peter Flock - Flawless Consulting

A good reference if you want to [re]learn about consulting methods and approaches. Equally useful for internal and external consultants and maps very well to line management. The discovery process and meeting guidelines described would certainly help a line manager understand and deal with conflict.

Books: Tom Markert

A good and short book from Tom Markert "You Can't Win a Fight With Your Boss and 55 other rules for success"

Very easy to read (143 pages in just over one hour)

Lots that sound familiar and more then it's fair share of ah ha moments.

DWYPYWD? read the book and find out.

Useful Excel Tools - Making Management Easier

I have been using little Excel tools that I have put together to help track holiday for myself and my directs.

Following on from the variations I have generated for David Seah's Compact Calendar there is a great use for the neat solution he has put together.

Over and above country specific version it would be very easy to generate employee specific versions that help you keep track of when and when they're in the office. The table used in the compact calendar can easily accommodate inserted rows to include personal vacation.

I started out with a different tracking spreadsheet which you can download from here.

The top bar is generated for the total amount of holiday each person (in their own tab) has. The bottom bar changes as you add the holiday record as people request the time off. Helped me keep track of how close people were to using their leave up. Also helps me remind people to plan as the year end approaches and the carry over limit from one year to the next is announced.

If there any comments or suggestions on improvements/other usage please feel free to contact me.

Compact Calendar - Indonesia Version

Adding to the variations I have created to David Seah's Compact Calendar please see the tentative version for Indonesia for 2008.

This is to add to the Thailand and Singapore versions already available.

You can find the versions here:

Indonesia
Singapore
Thailand

Also go and look at David's work:

Compact Calendar
Printable CEO

David Seah's Compact Calendar - Singapore Version

Having already created a Thailand version of David Seah's Compact Calendar I like the format so mush that I have created a Singapore 2008 version to complement it.

How would you use it?

If you use Excel for any planning, like creating simple Gantt Chart's, this is an invaluable aide to quickly seeing by month how many working days there are. Put both the Thailand version and a Singapore version in the same workbook and you can get an idea of the influences on a project team based on the public holiday's in their respective countries.

A little bit more tinkering in Excel and you could build a table that allows you to see which days all potential resources are in the office (unless on vacation) so you can plan the best days to have your all hand's meeting or Community Centre (smaller than a Town Hall) meeting.

Get the Singapore version here
Get the Thailand Version here

I would also recommend taking some time to look at David's Printable CEO series.

David Seah's Compact Calendar - Thai Version

I have used a lot of David Seah's excellent Printable CEO series outputs.

He has kindly shared his candy bar style compact calendar and there are many versions available for different countries from his site and his readers. I wanted to add the Thailand version into the pool.

You can find the Thai Version here