Lots of managers - hundreds of thousand, and perhaps millions by now - start doing Manager Tools One On Ones, and they love them. They love them because they work, and they’re not as hard as the manager thought they would be. And very few managers who do Manager Tools One On Ones never stop.

But feedback is a different story. We would guess that around half of Manager Tools managers don’t ever fully implement feedback so that it’s second nature in a way that their directs know this is how their boss will talk to them about their performance. Why is it so hard?

Most managers think that performance reviews are their most significant contribution to performance management and improvement. But that’s wrong. Frequent feedback is the greatest tool we managers have to improve performance. In fact, performance reviews aren’t even really part of the performance improvement efforts managers engage in. Performance reviews are an organizational system that is primarily designed to help the organization manage succession planning.

Almost every Non-Manager Tools manager thinks feedback is hard. And yet every year thousands of managers start giving feedback successfully. These managers have discovered that not only is it NOT that hard, but it’s well received, it works, and frankly, it’s easy to get addicted to giving it.

Almost every Non-Manager Tools manager thinks feedback is hard. And yet every year thousands of managers start giving feedback successfully. These managers have discovered that not only is it NOT that hard, but it’s well received, it works, and frankly, it’s easy to get addicted to giving it.

Almost every Non-Manager Tools manager thinks feedback is hard. And yet every year thousands of managers start giving feedback successfully. These managers have discovered that not only is it NOT that hard, but it's well received, it works, and frankly, it's easy to get addicted to giving it.

In this guidance, we share what we think the base culture ought to be for all managers. You may wish to add more - that can be fine. Just be careful you don't have too many culture touch points - at some point they'll start conflicting with each other.

In this guidance, we share what we think the base culture ought to be for all managers. You may wish to add more - that can be fine. Just be careful you don't have too many culture touch points - at some point they'll start conflicting with each other.

Our Hall of Fame guidance on how to think more creatively about annual planning goals.

Our Hall Of Fame guidance on how to start setting annual goals, and why we do not like "SMART" goals.

The Tetris Workload Battle - Part 2