54: Creating a Clear Path Forward with Mike Tannenbaum

There is an old joke that a manager’s work is to go to meetings. As a meeting expert, that sounds lovely to me, but as an experienced manager, I know that’s not the case. This week’s guest, Mike Tannenbaum, is Founder, Principal, and Lead Strategist of Humanity. Mike helps people create better experiences by deepening their understanding of humans. He focuses on helping people and teams become the best version of themselves by redesigning the way they relate to their work so they experience more joy, fulfillment, and effective ways of working. Mike and I talk about the 4 types of work, what a manager creates, the practice of continuous improvement combined with planning, mindfulness and more.   Read the related blog article: What Does a Manager Create?   Join the Modern Manager community to get 25% off everything on Mike’s store including the Clear Path Forward workbooks and course. Join by June 30, 2019 and get two special gifts - a Modern Manager mini-notebook and a Meeteor meeting notebook to help you distill meeting outcomes.   Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.   I need your help: What's challenging about being a manager? Share your experience here: www.mamieks.com/new-course   KEY TAKEAWAYS: There are four types of work: (1) planning - preparing to do the work (2) coordinating - the activities that facilitate the work e.g. meetings, gathering information, etc. (3) creating - producing your deliverables, and (4) distracting - anything that gets in the way of the other work. A manager’s role is to create trust, clarity, enhanced team members, a strong team, high performance, results or goal achievement. There are 5 types of people we collaborate with: (1) collaborators - those we work with to achieve the same goal, (2) leaders - those who give direction and inspire action, (3) advisors - those who offer guidance, (4) people who I rely on, and (5) people who rely on me. Often there are people outside our team of collaborators who we rely on and/or who rely on us - for information, for help, for specific needs. It’s critical to think expansively about who we need to work with, communicate with, and build relationships with. There is value to creating plan that provides direction, but things almost never go according to plan. Incorporating regularly scheduled moments of reflection - e.g. what have we learned - allow you to iterate the plan so it stays relevant. Mindfulness in organizations is really about creating a practice of reflection and awareness, at the individual and organizational levels.