Slacker Manager

The Context Agnostic Toolkit for Managers Big and Small

by Bren on May 3rd, 2005

Here’s my premise: I believe there are a handful of readily available tools and skills which, when mastered, add tremendous value to managers of all sizes. So much value, in fact, that I’m pretty certain that mastery of these skills alone may be enough to do at least 50% of the work required of any manager working in a "knowledge worker" context. Sound compelling? Here’s my list…

Communication skills
Everything else has no particular order, but this goes right to the top of the list. We can’t have a context agnostic toolkit list without being able to adequately communicate what’s going on in the given context. Lemme restate that more clearly: you gotta be able to understand and be understood. Lots of paths will get you there, but a moderate amount of "active listening" will give you a huge head start. Take care to not overdo the active listening, by the way. Nobody likes hearing, "What I hear you saying is…" a million times a day.

Text editor
It recently occurred to me how much I use a text editor. So much, that I believe it ought to be a standard part of any good manager’s toolkit. There are tons of excellent text editors out there, for all sorts of operating systems. I use CrimsonEditor because it’s free, it’s fast, it has tabs and I’ve finally figured out it’s secrets and I don’t want to learn something else. A good text editor will eventually become your constant companion. Just to give you an idea, most of my text editor use involves searching multiple files or directories for snippets of text, prepping chunks of data before copy/pasting into Excel, keeping lists of things, etc. Bonus points: any work you do in a text editor automatically looks more important on-screen. This is because most people don’t use text editors and when they see one open, they think you’re doing some crazy high-level thing. You might be, or you might be writing a blog post (glances over shoulder).

SQL
I’ve mentioned SQL before and it remains on my list. I’m leaving proprietary databases off of the list because when you master SQL, you’ve got a good understanding of relational databases. That understanding transfers pretty well to MS Access, JD Edwards, what-have-you. ‘Course you’ll still need to learn to pick the nits of the particular database, but SQL knowledge moves you WAY down the road. Everything mentioned above goes for serious report-writing as well, which is probably why you’re diddling around with the database in the first place.

Excel pivot tables
This is the closest thing to not being context agnostic. In my career, I’ve pretty much done all my heavy lifting with Excel, and pivot tables are indispensible to me. I know that sometimes my knowledge of pivot tables ends up being the proverbial hammer (where every problem looks like a nail), but it’s served me remarkably well over the years. I’m guessing that other spreadsheet software out there will give you similar capabilities, but I’m not certain. Maybe a Kindly Reader can enlighten us.

GTD
What more is there to say about David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done‘? If you’re halfway serious about doing less and getting more done, you’ll take the time to understand how "GTD" works. Start with the book (yes, get the hardcover version–you’ll be revisiting this text year after year), pour on some audio and set aside at least a whole day to do the full-on sweep of your office. I’m serious about this. If you aren’t at least utilizing some method of personal workflow management, you’re suffering from a serious competitive disadvantage when compared to your peers and colleagues. If you learn nothing else on this list, learn GTD or similar. "No Child Left Behind"? This stuff should be mandatory in middle school.

Datebook/notebook/PDA
There’s a flavor for everyone here, and you can get as fancy as you want. The basic idea is that you want stuff out of your fallible head. Write it down, write it down, write it down. I keep reference-type stuff and journal jive in a Moleskine and action items, etc, in a Palm. I’m a fancy pants and have wifi, etc on my Palm Tungsten|C, but you can get by with a cheap used PDA from eBay. The Big Temptation with PDAs is to start experimenting with all sorts of new software. Curb your enthusiasm, for a while at least. Stick with plain vanilla until you know what you need.

Bonus tools

ActiveWords
I’ve become such a shill for ActiveWords that they should be paying me. They aren’t, but this is a truly indispensible app. AW often gets dismissed as a simple text replacement utility. It is, and then some. It’ll correct misspellings on the fly, it’ll launch and log you into programs or websites, it’ll open and address an email to multiple people with just a couple of keystrokes. I could go on. The scripting capabilities in ActiveWords are crazy powerful and that’s just a slice of what it does. I’ll stop foaming at the mouth and just point to my previous review.

Learning keystrokes
Learning the keystrokes that replace mouse actions is a pretty useful way to spend a little time. In a Windows environment, some of my most used keystrokes are ‘Ctrl A’ (select all text), ‘Ctrl C’ (copy text), ‘Ctrl V’(paste text), ‘Ctrl S’ (save whatever you’re working on). A quick search will unearth tons more.

Screen capture utility
Like the text editor, earlier, there are a bunch of readily available screen capture utilities. Screen capture utilities are useful when writing documentation, sending support requests to your helpdesk (here’s the error I’m getting), etc. I use MWSnap. It’s free, it supports multiple graphic formats and it’s got nice keystroke support. A good utility will allow you to select freeform text (draw a box to select what you want), or anything from the whole desktop all the way down to an individual window.

Is there any tool, indispensible to managers, that I’ve left off the list? What do you use? I’m always curious to learn about how other folks do stuff, so drop in a comment and lemme know…

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