Calendar of suggested practices

Rolling out the Trinity cast provides a schedule for implementing feedback, one-on-ones, coaching, and delegation:

http://www.manager-tools.com/2008/08/rolling-out-the-manager-tools-trin…
(If you're a premium member you can get the slides with a nice schedule fore easy reference.)

The Basics page shows the key podcasts to start with:

http://www.manager-tools.com/manager-tools-basics

The rest is up-to-you. The new website allows you to search by "tags" which is nice for picking out topics important to you.

-CC

I'm currently also catching up.

I wouldn't recommend skipping (as in planning to never listen to) any casts. For example, even if you don't have an admin there's still useful information in the cast about how to work well with your admin.

However, I would recommend that when you're planning your listening you don't just go straight through in date order. Try to group casts according to topic and listen to related casts together. That way when M&M refer to earlier casts you've got the information fresh in your mind.

As CCleaveland said, there is a cast specifically on rolling out the trinity (O3s, Feedback, Coaching and Delegation). I don't think it would be realistic to try to put together a calendar. Quite simply, different people will take different amounts of time to implement different parts of the trinity to others. If the culture (national, local or corporate) is very stratified and based around keeping a distance between the managers and the managed then it may take a long time to implement the trinity. On the other hand, if the culture is looser and less reserved the implementation may go a lot faster. In the coaching casts M&M noted that there is a similarity, in terms of the actual process at least, between the MT coaching model and many companies' disciplinary processes. Therefore it might be that a manager has to delay coaching for sometime to make sure that the relationships (built through O3s) are solid. Else the first person they start coaching is going to immediately believe they're being managed towards dismissal.

It's less important that you implement the trinity within some set time table, than that you implement it at all and get it right. Better to take 2 years to get it implemented right than to implement in 6 months poorly.

Outside the trinity, go with whatever works for you or fits in with your company time scales.

Performance reviews tend to be specified by the company, typically annual review with a 6 month checkpoint review. Either everyone at year end or anniversary based. You can make a start on the MT method today and time it to coincide with your company's schedule.

Finding a mentor, I feel, is something that grows out of building your network (you've probably got a better chance of finding a mentor from your network or via a recommendation from your network compared with just approaching someone cold). You can start building your network with the very next person you meet or by re-making contact with someone you haven't spoken to in a while. After that it's like eating an elephant, just one bite after another.

You can start your career management document any time, you've probably already got the starting of it in your resume/CV. After that it's just a case of setting up a recurring reminder in whatever diary system you use to remind you to keep it up to date then when you see the reminder updating it.

Get started, and good luck.

Stephen