25 July 2009 
FREE: The One Minute (Small Business) Manager Meets the Monkey
You Are Invited to a FREE* Management Seminar.
The Manager’s Formula for Success
The One Minute (Small Business) Manager Meets the Monkey: An Introduction
How to Manage Your Staff and How to Manage Your Manager
Well-run organizations have managers and staff who work to control events, instead of events controlling them. They anticipate the future . . . adapt to the present . . . and learn from the past.
Who: Managers who need to get in control of events or to better influence results
What: An introduction to The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey
1. The Management Equation:
Vocational Time vs. Management Time2. How Management Really Works:
The Molecule of Management3. The Who and How of Promotions:
The Freedom Scale
When: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Where: Northern Virginia Community College,
Alexandria Campus, campus map
The new Bisdorf Auditorium, room 196
3001 North Beauregard Street, Alexandria, VA 22311 street map
Parking and Directions here.
Why: Improve managerial effectiveness and staff efficiency.
Cost: FREE* Registration is helpful here. Space is limited.
The class will reference the work of Ken Blanchard and Bill Oncken in their book The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey.
Also cited will be the Harvard Business Review article, Managing Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?, published in 1974, by Bill Oncken, Jr.. The article, an edited excerpt of the Managing Management Time™ seminar, has gone on to become one of the two most requested reprints in the history of the Review.
The training summarized in the article is sometimes called the “Monkey Management” seminar.
Jack Yoest, Adjunct Professor of Management and President of Management Training of DC, is a former Armored Cavalry Officer in Combat Arms.
His military leadership training and management experience guides his philosophy at the core of Managing Management Time™. He has managed software, health care and international human resource management companies.
His experience is in Military, Academia, Early-Stage, Non-Profits, Fortune 500 and Government.
Jack also served in the Governor’s Office of the Commonwealth Virginia as Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Resources where he acted as the Chief Technology Officer for the secretariat. He was responsible for the successful Year 2000 (Y2K) conversion for the 16,000-employee unit.
He was also a manager with a medical device start-up and helped move sales from zero to over $12 million, resulting in a buy-out by Johnson & Johnson. Jack has consulted in China and India.
Questions? email JYoest@NVCC.edu or call Jack at 202.215.2434 to save your spot.
Jack Yoest
202.215.2434
Adjunct Professor
Thank you (foot)notes:
*FREE. The Alert Reader knows well that there is no free lunch. But some products and services can be rendered at NO CHARGE as a component of an organization’s marketing budget. The taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Virginia have provided the compensation for Your Business Professor at NOVA.
Who’s Got The Monkey? from the Harvard Business Review
Following is the PowerPoint for the lecture:
Suggested class reading:
Do You Have An Incompetent Manager? From The Washington Post
One Minute YouTube Introduction: The Manager’s Formula For Success.
The six part management training video.
23 July 2009
Are All Managers Sociopaths?
Are managers sociopaths? Alert Readers know that Your Business Blogger(R) teaches management at the local college.
I teach that the desire to get promoted into management is not normal.
Who would want to move away from those tasks that an individual contributor can do well — where the rewards are immediate and visible, and to move to a practice barely measurable?
Management is, indeed, deviant behavior.
Alert Readers and Hugh MacLeod might agree.
Two decades ago, I was part of a 45 member sales team. Whenever there was excess budget, we sales guys, staff and management…
(“managers” also known as “overhead”)
were evaluated by outside consultants.
We all got the same tests.
We were grouped by the results. All the cool kids, the normal employees, sat in the front. The sales reps were laughing and joking and backslapping and happy.
In the back of the room were grouped three quiet odd-balls: a product manager, the CEO and Your Business Blogger(R).
At first I was pleased to have been grouped with the CEO. But the product manager was a dimwitted kumquat.
(I learned later that the CEO was a mean dimwitted kumquat.)
So.
I’m writing about mean monsters as managers who fire people during the Christmas Holidays and Fred B. an Alert Reader Comments:
I was playing backgammon at the yacht club Thursday (not as grand as it sounds but, I like that it sounds grand). One of our group is a prison psychologist.
If you think you have had a bad day, his day will recalibrate your meter.
We ended up talking about psychological testing and some of the classes he had with other people who were in the prison system.
The class would take one of the various tests and then the instructor would show how to score and evaluate the test. He noted that some in his class got a little discomfitted
when it was explained why
some results meant sociopath.
They were managers.
The managers who took the evaluations tested-out as sociopaths.
Hugh at gapingvoid.com seems to have summed Fred’s comments up nicely on this back of the business card diagram.
gapingvoid.com
by Hugh MacLeod
Alert Reader Fred B. closes with:
[The prison shrink's] view was that a little sociopath in a manager wasn’t that bad because it meant they could carry out logical decisions with some emotional detachment.
Big mistake in my view but, that’s the world we live in.
A world run by high-functioning sociopaths.
And now we’ve got business cards to be proud of!
Thank you (foot)notes:
Be sure to get Hugh’s book, Ignore Everybody. I did.
Hugh at gapingvoid.com was featured as one of the influential “group of 33″ business leaders in Seth Godin’s Moo book. Visit Hugh’s site and order your business cards. I bought the sociopath product. Type casting, as they would say in Hollywood.
Here’s the one Charmaine thought I should get:
What do you think? Please comment. Sociopath or No People Skills?
Outside the Beltway has Traffic Jam.
Visit Don Surber for Best of Friday Blogs. Then bookmark his site.
See Deborah Brown and Business Cards and Branding Message.
Be sure to visit my good friend Ron Newton with Bradults.
21 July 2009
Job Search: Spelling Counts — Especially The Manager’s Name & Public Relations
Job Seekers: when looking for a new position, it is helpful to get all the spelling correct — especially the hiring manager’s name.
Media (as seen on TV) can get away (maybe) with getting a name wrong.
You, Gentle Job Seeker, cannot.
Charmaine is doing a bit of buying of talent from the abundance of experienced senior professionals in today’s pool of available executives.
A recent job candidate spelled her name wrong.* A common occurrence with a name like ‘Charmaine.’ (“Char” like Charlemagne; “Maine” like Augusta.)
When you tangle with print, radio, or visual media your name and identifiers are sometimes going to be mangled. It is not always deliberate. Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense, says to never confuse a conspiracy with incompetence.
But how does one tell the difference?
Charmaine, Right (as usual) on MSNBC
The wife of Your Business Blogger(R), Charmaine, appeared on Joe Scarborough’s show a few years back. She prepped using the 10 Tips for Your Big Show Biz Break. She was debating a some liberals over a New York Times article.
It said that cheating on a spouse can be good.
Your Business Blogger(R) advises against cheating on a spouse. Bad for the job. And business is a jealous mistress.
Who?
Anyway, Charmaine does her homework. And provides name, rank and serial number to the producer. Including her Ph.D. suffix. Those three letters cost me a million dollars and ten years. I insist on the lettering. She doesn’t care — I do. I’m the shallow one; she’s not.
Anyway, MSNBC would be considered — by some — to be a world-class organization committed to attention to detail.
But an MSNBC producer slipped up on the names and by-lines. Mistakes will happen. Guaranteed. Like leaving off suffixes.
And when the goofs go live, the professional doesn’t say die.
Whenever there is any kind of error in any form, in any forum, continue with your act.
Keep talking; keep singing; keep dancing, keep moving.
The show must go on.
At Last, The Correct By-line
Most of the time, your audience will never see the goof-up. The audience will see and remember the passion in your play.
It doesn’t matter if there is a conspiracy. Or if merely incompetence.
Deliver your sound bite. Make the sale. And you will please your audience.
Remember, incompetence will be forgiven if delivered by a media outlet.
Misspelling will not be forgiven if delivered by a job seeker.
*That spell-challenged job candidate did not get the job.
Thank you (foot)notes: See the adultery clip on Scarborough Country, MSNBC, here. Courtesy Peter Shinn.
Management Training Tip: If you will cheat on your wife, you will cheat on your business partners. Even if the New York Times approves.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest
11 July 2009
What To Do When A Reporter Calls: The First Question
“Hello Mr. Journalist from the main stream media, I’m glad you called…
Am I a target or a source?”
Your Business Blogger(R) has had the misfortune of being both.
But not at the same time, like Karl Rove
.
Charmaine, The Dreamer,
Jack, c.1995
In any conversation with a reporter you are either Richard Nixon, or Deep Throat — a target or a source. You are not a friend.
Repeat after me: not a friend.
And it is often difficult to determine hidden agendas. But you can be prepared by knowing what kind of person is on the other end of the phone.
Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, named his show after his book (for which he received a well deserved $75k book advance). Chris tells us how most reporters get started in their careers.
Their entry-level job begins with covering the police blotter on the night shift. This is where journalists become inhuman.
Whenever there is a tragedy — a death, a dismemberment, anything that bleeds — the cub reporter is dispatched to the home of the grieving family.
He knocks on the door of the home of the dead one and secures a picture of the recently deceased from the crying mother/father/widow/spouse/sibling.
“I’m sorry about your dead daughter. Can I have a picture or two of your girl for gawkers and trolls?”
Thank you for the picture. Have a nice day.
Three days later the girl’s face in the newspaper looks up from the bottom of a bird cage.
The reporter on the other end of the phone does this for a living. He does not care about you — only the story — the journalist soon becomes calloused and cynical. And look for blood even if they have to do the cutting.
Which is (one reason) why the mainstream media hates Karl Rove. He won’t bleed.
And reporters hate bloggers: we still have our humanity.
Thank you (foot)notes:
Chris Matthews
Mahablog has updates.
Betsy’s Page rightly asks why?
Pundit Guy also has questions.
Outside the Beltway has Traffic Jam.
Basil’s Blog has Matthews praising Fox.
Mudville Gazette has Open Post. And while you’re there visit Chromed Curses with Casualty Notification Officer. A positive reverse image of a journalist.
Adam’s Blog has trackbacks.
The Political Teen has Open Trackbacks.
Stop the ACLU has mid-week party.
(Something good from print media: Don Surber) writes on perjury.
The Heretic has cat rove.
Legal Fiction has view from the Left.
Sic Semper Tyrannis says indictments are coming — Richard Sale is a vector for a source.
Best of Me Symphony has the best blogs.
Be sure to follow on Twitter.