Chuck

I stated earlier that my mission for 2009 is to stay in touch (or in most cases – get BACK in touch) with people. One thing I learned from Tom Hausmann at this past Tuesday’s Manager Meet Up was to set aside time in my schedule to make that happen. Like most things (exercise, the GTD weekly review, annual objectives) it is more likely to happen if you schedule time for it.

To that end I created a block of time each week to sit down and keep in touch with people. Setting up the appointment was the easy part. Putting together the took a bit longer. I started by going through my Outlook contacts. Let me warn you that I’ve got about 15 years of contacts and I rarely clean it out. There are high school friends, tech support numbers, family, my wife’s friends, and some that I have no recollection of in that list. With the objective to strengthen my network, I picked about 75. Now I need to go through my LinkedIn list and my Facebook list and see if there are any other potential list members there.

When the block of time rolls around, I’ll take 10 or so people, send them an email and just see how they are doing, wish them well, and cycle around. Some may no longer be “out there” and I expect some will start longer conversations. The point is, it wouldn’t have happened if Tom hadn’t suggested it and I blocked off time.

I highly recommend you try it too. How many times have you said to yourself “I should really call so-and-so.” or “I wonder what my old college buddy is up to?” Make the investment (and it is an investment that pays off big time) and leverage the technology. You’ll be glad you did.

I said I was going to make 2009 the year of reconnecting with friends, family, and co-workers. Facebook has been a big help to that end. When Donna and I got back from our vacation, I found a Swiss Army knife on my desk. At first I thought it was a gift, but upon closer inspection I saw the inscription “G. Steiner”. “Greg hasn’t been to our house in at least 13 years” I thought.

Thanks to Facebook, I reached out to Greg. He thought the knife was long gone. I explained that I have no idea where it was hiding or who found it, but I’d be happy to return it to him. It made for a good excuse to get together face-to-face and catch up on family, friends, careers, etc.

Just one success story in how I intend to continue reaching out and staying connected this year.

This past week was definitely one for the record books. In the past 7 days, the new Global IT Service Desk at work went live. If you missed it, this is what I have been doing for the past six months. Our company decided about a year ago to bring the IT Help Desk back in-house. We outsourced it several years ago, but the relationship had not gone as expected. It was costly and the (internal) customer satisfaction was low. It was a tough decision to leave my position as Manager of the IT group that supports engineering to take on the help desk (later rebranded as the Service Desk) project at the same company. Most of my peers thought I was crazy, but I felt that I could do it better than anyone else. Building a global support department from the ground up in six months certainly was exciting. Having good backing from our IT staff and the rest of the employees certainly helped. Monday the moment arrived to take calls and take them we did. While there are still a few kinks to work out in some of the processes and education, it was generally successful. On time, and on budget – that’s the way I like them.

The second big news this week was that our CIO and Director of Technology Services were terminated. Since taking the Service Desk Manager position in July, I have been reporting to the CIO. As of Monday morning, I’m reporting to his boss, the CFO. Talk about having your “A game” all the time! I am really grateful to people like Mark Horstman and Michael Auzenne of Manager Tools for all their help over the past few years. While I don’t consider myself “C” level material, it certainly helps to know what they expect and try my best to be effective and deliver results.

2009 certainly is shaping up to be a year of change. Here’s hoping the changes are all positive in the long term!

Douglas E. Welch of Career Opportunities article/podcast declared 2008 as the year of “visibility” – get your name out there. He is now declaring 2009 as the year of “leadership”.

I had a smile on my face when I listened to his podcast from Jan 2, 2009 since I’ve already started that.

Thanks to the Mark and Mike at Manager Tools, I’ve learned the value of a network (being visible) and the value of leadership (stepping up and giving.) The investment is very rewarding both personally and professionally.

One of my latest efforts has been to create a local meetup of managers in my area. I started contacting local people (mostly in my field) a couple years ago under the recommendation of Mark Horstman (of Manager Tools.) I’ve developed some great one-on-one relationships with other area managers over the past several months. When I felt I had a critical mass (6-8 minimum) I started asking “What would you think about getting together as a group and discuss management topics?” Everyone was very positive about the idea so much so, that word started spreading at other companies what was going on and people I had never met were responding to my invites.

This is a bit different way to organize a group gathering. Many groups start out large and dwindle due to lack of focus or leadership. Thanks to Manager Tools and their following, I’ve got a strong base to build on.  Yes, it took a bit longer, but I feel we’ll have a lot stronger group.

The group is meeting monthly (save December) on the second Tuesday. We will be utilizing the Manager Tools information as the basis for our meetups and over the next few months it will be branded more as a Manager Tools meetup than just a local group.

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend similar meetups in other areas like Milwaukee and San Diego and learned a few things about what works (and what doesn’t). One thing I noted in San Diego was that they met at a company and sat around a conference table. This worked better than the restaurant venues I attended and organized in the past because it affords a quieter atmosphere and opportunities to use technology should we want a presentation. The company I work for has graciously offered space for our gathering in January. With the response so far, I am very much looking forward to this leadership opportunity in 2009.

If you are a manager in the Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, Fond du Lac area of Wisconsin and want to discuss these items with your peers, please contact me (chuck at chucktomasi dot com). We would love to have you on the team.

I am pleased to announce that I will be keeping this blog better updated in 2009 than it was in 2008.

I realized in 2008 that this site was valuable, however it was difficult to maintain the blog because iWeb is a) only available on one machine, b) kind of bulky in that it has to upload the entire site content for a simple blog entry, making a five minute posting turn in to a 20 minute operation.

I went with the tried and true WordPress installation and found a theme close to the iWeb theme already in place. Now when inspiration strikes, I can post more easily.

The purpose of this blog is to keep you informed about various goings on in my life personally and professionally.