The Power of Progress Reports

 


 

TonyMayo.com-Progress-Report-image Of all the management tools I recommend, one of the most effective is both very simple and very unlikely to be consistently employed—if it is used at all: the written progress report, completed on a consistent schedule.

The power of progress reports to promote results and reduce anxiety is demonstrated daily, on matters titanic and trivial. The U. S. Constitution requires that the President “from time to time give to the Congress information of the State of the Union.” Public companies are required by law to present results to shareholders, at fixed intervals and in specific formats. Schools send regular reports to parents, our GPS tells where we are, and UPS sends a text when a package arrives.

Still, managers and employees resist implementing this simple process.

Why?

Who cares about why? Just grow up and start doing a progress report. Declare your goals. Confront your results. Adjust to living in reality. Enjoy the benefits of clarity while the less disciplined fail and fail in a fog of vague expectations and inchoate regrets.

Before I explain how to format and prepare a good progress report, let’s deal with some common excuses questions.

Q: I don’t have a boss.

A: If you have (more…)

Crimes of Cunning


 

On Sale Now!Crimes of Cunning now on Kindle

Crimes of Cunning

A comedy of personal and political transformation in the deteriorating American workplace.

Click here to see it on Amazon.com

Or, here for Barnes & Noble

Fast-paced, funny, and smart. This novel puts you into the world of a young MBA striving to succeed at a famous high-tech company. Brash and confident yet comically inept, Tony clashes with colleagues, clients, and even his biggest supporters.

He fires his most loyal employee, derails the career of his only friend, and nearly destroys his young marriage before transforming from chilly corporate collaborator to empathetic executive coach. Laugh and learn as his clients turn criminal, corporations collapse, and compassion triumphs.

It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social-betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.

–Theodore Roosevelt, 1901

A veteran executive coach draws on his years inside Arthur Andersen, Wall Street, and MCI to share a moving story that explains why your 401k shrank, your house is underwater, and your job stinks. The comedy and conflict illustrate management methods and personal practices that can improve your career and deepen your personal relationships.

 



Click here to read a free sample.


 

Click here to be notified when it is released as an Audible audiobook on iTunes.

 



Click here to learn the source and meaning of the book’s title.


 

017 A conversation with executive coaching client Ron Dimon. Part 8 • PODCAST

 


 

Click here for Tony Mayo's podcastThis latest podcast is part eight of a funny and useful conversation between top executive coach Tony Mayo and his longtime client Ron Dimon. Ron is an expert on the use of information by executives of large organizations. Listen as two experienced business people play with useful ideas in this episode including:

  • Management and sales rely upon the same essential skill
  • Why salesperson with the most technical knowledge of the product is almost never the most top producer
  • The Sandler Sales System
  • Giving back the check
  • The awesome power of the skeptical salesperson
  • Why coaches avoid giving advice, opinions and tips
  • VSOP group coaching for executives
  • Problem vs breakdown
  • Internal vs. external conversations
  • Probing the past vs. future focus
  • Effective conversation with an employee or vendor who is late with a deliverable or deadline

Just click here and either listen through your computer or subscribe through iTunes to have this and all new episodes placed on your device as they become available.

You may also set up an automatic “feed” to non-Apple devices by using this link: click here for other devices.

 


Pixar Fosters Creative Community

 


 

I believe that community matters. … Pixar is a community in the true sense of the word. We think that lasting relationships matter, and we share some basic beliefs:

  • Talent is rare.
  • Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur….we don’t second-guess or micromanage.
  • It must be safe to tell the truth. …get honest feedback from everyone.
  • We must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture. …Nobody pulls any punches to be polite.

Pixar’s Operating Principles

1. Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone.

2. It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.

3. We must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.

if we aren’t always at least a little scared, we’re not doing our job.

 

 

–How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity
by Ed Catmull, President
Harvard Business Review

 

 


 

Tony’s Interview with Healthcare Finance News




Tips for CFOs to survive the transition to value

  • Give up clinging to the illusion of certainty, said executive coach Tony Mayo. Accounting is a black and white world and as such attracts people who like certainty. However, once you move from being a bookkeeper to being a CFO, you are dealing with the future rather than keeping track of the past. “We think we can control the outcomes, but we can’t, so trade certainty for confidence,” Mayo said. “Confidence that you can handle what is coming next. Rather than trying to control and constrain, let’s learn how to respond and create.”
  • Understand your purpose. “If you identify yourself with a particular number occurring on a particular day, you can’t win,” said Mayo, so get clear about your purpose as a human, as an executive and as an organization.

Letting go of the balance sheet
Healthcare Finance News




A New Year, A New Model of Winning

 


I have just read this and I want to share it with all of you as it describes the promise of who we are as human beings trying to discover identities for ourselves.

 

A few years ago in the Seattle Special Olympics nine people assembled at the start line for the 100m dash. This was an unusual bunch as they were all suffering from mental or physical handicaps. At the sound of the starters gun they all surged forward except one boy who fell on the asphalt, rolled over a few times and started crying.

 

The other eight up ahead heard the crying and all looked back to see what is happening. Everyone of them turned and ran back to the young boy. A girl with Downs Syndrome bent down and (more…)

Business School Dean Explains Executive Coaching

 


 

 


 

Vision Series: Transformational Leadership from GMU-TV on Vimeo.

 

Jorge Haddock, Dean, School of Management talks about Transformational Leadership. Change focuses on behavior, whereas transformation focuses on “beingness” or culture. Transformational leadership is about shifting the organizational conversations or interpretations to create different results or outcomes. Organizational culture can become transactional, but transformational leadership creates conversations that generate a culture of relationships, moods, and actions consistent with the desired outcomes. The axiom is that our power to transform our commitments and subsequent actions is directly determined by our ability to engage in powerful conversations – to generate transformation we must generate different conversations. These conversations utilize language, which is most commonly descriptive. However, leaders use language in a generative fashion to declare something with no evidence or authority. Using this type of language, transformational leaders create truly new possibilities.

 


 

Taking Responsibility for My Listening

 


Bad presentation–or resistant audience?

Executives often find themselves assigning blame. Many believe that ranking and sorting their colleagues is a key management skill–and I agree. A much rarer and more powerful skill is the ability to see our own contribution to the unwelcome behavior we see around us. Why is self-awareness more powerful than judging others? Because altering my own behavior is the best access I have to altering the future.

I know this. I teach this. I also forget to practice it.

In November of 2007, for example, I was in San Diego attending a weekend training for coaches. A breakout session was led by the author of one of the best-known books on coaching. It is a good book and I was very eager to attend. His ninety minute workshop was scheduled six times over two days–I was in a morning session on day two.

The author immediately struck me as irritated, aggressive, and arrogant. (Here I am, always ranking and sorting.) His opening seemed vague and rambling and his responses to questions were not pertinent. (Here I go, proceeding to collect evidence for my case.) People were shaking their heads and looking at each other. Coaches are a fairly supportive audience but in the first fifteen minutes, five of the thirty people walked out, one while the author was responding (elliptically) to his question! (Perfect. I have other people agreeing with me, a seductive substitute for truth.) I decided to (more…)