It's been an honor to support nearly 6,000 of you in your leadership roles at work this year with these monthly suggestions for being a more effective and joyful manager. Leading workshops for 44 of you and your teams on various topics was even more fun. Here's to continuing our work together in 2025! Let's get to your Monthly Management Memo - as always with something bold, something new, something borrowed, and something to pursue.
Something Bold - Suggest a Bad Idea If Brainstorming Needs to be Jumpstarted If your team needs help getting a brainstorming session going, try kicking things off with a bad idea. Once the ice is broken with an awful idea, it seems to get the discussion going as people devise good ideas to ward off the bad ones. Jon Bell calls this the "McDonald's Theory".
Something New - Make a Public "To Do" List for Your Team If you have between 3 and 100 employees, your company probably should have many initiatives, systems, and practices in place that it doesn't yet have. And you're not going to get all of them done this quarter. There's no way. But just telling everyone who suggests an improvement or a needed system that we will get to that "later" will frustrate folks. Here's what to do instead (2-min video). It's simple but makes a significant impact. One of my clients calls this their "backlog list." Then, once you have that list, use one of these approaches to determine what happens first:
Give each idea a rating of how much impact the improvement would have + how much effort/lift is required. The low lift + high impact ones are good candidates to do sooner rather than later.
Give the team 5 “votes” each as input to your decision. They can put all their 5 votes on one idea or distribute across ideas. Use that team input to help you decide what happens next.
Something Borrowed - "Is This Safe to Try?" I recently chatted with a client (hi, Xanthe!) about a workshop I'm leading in January on communications norms for the team. As we were discussing the design of the workshop, she shared some language I really liked from a previous role of hers. To avoid a leadership team spending too much time going over and over a topic that might not be super high-stakes, they would ask, "Is this safe to try?" after a reasonable amount of discussion. If folks agreed, the project or initiative could move forward and be improved over time, with everyone clear that the risk was relatively low for this particular thing if something wasn't perfect. If this sounds helpful, share it in your next team meeting and see if you can implement the idea in 2025.
Something to Pursue - A Happy New Year Note to Your Team As the new year begins, consider filling in the blanks and emailing your team members individually as they return to work. It's a simple task that won't take you too much time but will be meaningful for those who receive it.
Hi ________,
I wanted to write and appreciate our work together in 2024. Thank you for your leadership on _______ and for how you are consistently ___________. I am looking forward to 2025 and excited for _________. I'll see you on _______!
Your Name
P.S. Doors open soon for this. Email me if you want me to save you or someone on your team a spot.
Bring your team, I'll bring my A-game. I love helping teams with workshops on topics of productivity, team culture, and effectiveness at work. Find out more and book a free chat to see if I can be helpful for your organization.