The Effective Manager: Completely Revised and Updated

by Mark Horstman

Without some basic structure to your O3s, you might as well cancel them and go back to chatting your team up in the hallway or the breakroom.

The agenda is simple: first, 10 minutes for your direct, then 10 minutes for you, then 10 minutes to talk about the future.

If you go first, no matter how important the stuff you want to talk about is, our data show you will not get the value out of MTO3s we've discussed here.

The directs go first, and talk about…whatever they want to talk about.

There is no agenda past the three 10‐mi...

we recommend you start each MTO3, every time, with every direct, no matter what, with the same first question.

Ask the same question every time. Memorize it, and tell your directs, “This is the question/statement I'm going to start every O3 with. I don't really need an answer to it—it's just a way to turn the podium over to you.”

Examples are: How's it going? How are you? How are things? Your agenda… What have you been up to? Whaddaya got?

Whatever you do, don't ask a question you expect a real or detailed answer to.

This is a 30‐minute meeting. You don't have time for chit‐chat. That's why it's not on the agenda.

What might your directs want to talk about? On one level, who knows? That's part of the value of the meeting.

don't ask for their list of topics in advance of your MTO3.

It has been our experience that managers sharing a list of topics in advance steps on the direct's agenda, reducing the direct's satisfaction with the meeting.

the answer to the question, “Are O3s personal or work related?” is “Yes.”

The last 10 minutes of your O3s are there to give you an opportunity, periodically, to talk about the future.

You probably will only have time to do so once every 20 sessions because 30 minutes probably isn't long enough to cover everything you and your directs want to.

The 10/10/10 agenda is a template and a reminder not to forget about the future, not a requirement that you discuss the big picture/future every week.

(1) Sometimes we run short, what should I do?

(2) I'm way more down in the weeds than I used to be, which is great, but I'd love to have some big‐picture discussions every once in a while.

The last 10 minutes on the agenda is a reminder to cover the future/big picture when you think the timing is reasonable and you run short.

If you don't run short, don't cover the future.

If you run short two weeks in a row, no need to cover the future all over again (unless there are worthy is...

the average direct talks for 21 minutes.

If a direct talks too much, start by realizing you have an embarrassment of riches.

Don't practice what we call “agenda fascism”

Agenda fascism means you've just told your directs that you want to spend time with them and get to know them, you tell them this meeting is for them, and you share that the agenda is 10/10/10. And then, exactly 10 minutes into the first meeting, you say, “OK, time's up. I have to cut you off.”

The agenda of a meeting always serves the purpose of the meeting, not the other way around.

If the agenda is getting in the way of the purpose, you allow the agenda to be flexible to get to the purpose.

After 2 months, you can say, “Okay, I'm going to start giving you time hacks at 20 minutes.

For the next month you give them time hacks at 20 minutes. Not a hard stop, just a reminder: “Hey, it's been 20 minutes.”

After a month of giving them a verbal yield sign at 20 minutes, you can start giving them a hard stop at 20 minutes. “Hey, listen, for the last month I've been reminding you of when we've gotten to 20 minutes. But now that reminder that's been a yield sign is going to become a stop sign. I really want to be able to get through my items as well.”

every direct brings to their relationship with you all their previous relationships with their previous bosses.

If you're not taking notes, it's not a Manager Tools One on One.

We had assumed that because the meeting was about “relationships,” there wasn't a need to take notes. We'd just … talk.

We were completely wrong.

Managers who just chatted, but didn't take notes about possible follow‐up, were deemed to be less engaged, less interested, and less likely to take action on topics that came up.

The problem with an O3 without notes isn't the lack of notes. It's the lack of interest and accountability that no note‐taking implies.

Make multiple copies of your “One on One Form” (O3F) to make your notebook(s) ready for your first weeks of O3s.

What you don't want to take notes in is what we'll call your normal “go to meeting” notebook.

We recommend that you have some distinctive way to capture deliverables.

So, circle what you promise to do, underline what you promise to do, put asterisks on what you promise to do. But be able to see your deliverables—your promises—at a glance.

We recommend that you capture communications or responsibilities in a different way.

You don't need long MFRs (memorandums for record) that summarize your legal case. You need the raw data that will allow HR and its lawyers to construct a history of you communicating frequently with your directs about their performance.

This is all the formality that HR/legal needs. You don't need to meet some legal standard, or write a memo, or write out exactly what you said, or what they responded with.

Finally, we recommend you capture coaching notes on the back of last week's O3 form.

This is not so much a how to take notes recommendation but a where to take notes idea.

We don't recommend you take notes on your laptop, and neither does anyone else.

it is much harder to remember what you typed versus what you wrote by hand.

with the camera in your phone, you can take a picture of your handwritten notes and now they're in your system.

they fear that when their manager starts writing things down, the manager is thinking that things could become bad enough that he will justify some sort of discipline or worse with formal notes/history.