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Management is its own discipline, and good managers must always be sharpening their own skills. This is true in the defense industry as well, as engineers climb the ladder, officers rotate out into civilian life or into desk rather than field jobs, and globalizing teams need more native management skills within the team to keep them productive. With that said, Dilbert creator Scott Adams is a rich man for a reason. We’ve all seen the firm that promotes an excellent salesperson, or an excellent engineer, or some other kind of high-performing employee – and shoots itself in the foot, twice. Once by losing the expert services of that employee, Twice by promoting someone who may not have management training, and may not be able to perform well in their new role.

DID’s “The Project Management Podcast” discussed the potential usefulness of MP3 podcasts as a training tool that can be used at convenient times. It’s a great tool for new managers, and can be useful for existing managers as well. After all, even major league athletes spend a lot of their practice time working on the fundamentals. Along those lines, the Manager Tools podcasts offers a set of free sessions devoted to practical fundamentals, as well as sessions covering more advanced topics.

Everyone we know hates a lot of the meetings they’re forced to attend. Manager Tools’ 3 sessions on Running Effective Meetings talk about what works at Intel, Google, et. al., and offer a good introduction. This is an MP3 set you’ll want to pass around:

• EM Part 1 [20.5 MB]. Includes “how do you handle a boss who is late?”
• EM Part 2 [12.5 MB]. Includes continuous improvement, and discussion re: facilitators.
• EM Part 3 [16.7 MB]. Includes: “the meetings I must call” and the “no surprises” rule.
• See also Milo Frank’s book “How to Run a Successful Meeting in Half the Time.” Lockheed’s CEO endorsed it for a reason.