Michael Jordan's Weblog

Execs (or any other manager of managers) can create a lot of equity in their organizations by holding skip levels: meetings with the staff that reports to their direct staff, either one on one or in groups.

I was in a meeting today where Jonathan Schwartz came in for a pep talk Q&A session. Good to hear from the guys at the top. Jonathan is a pretty direct -- had specific ideas and direction for one of the program managers in the meeting (I bet that guy didn't expect the advice he got!) Jonathan does a good job of delivering timely and relevant information. He's very connected to what our customers are doing and saying and needing.

The thing about all hands, town halls, and other group meetings with senior execs -- execs judge their employee audiences by the quality of their questions. I've been in many of these meetings with the attendees show up without preparing to ask any questions at all. Senior execs hate this! So a word of advice to the managers of groups about to schedule a skip level: Get your group prepared. With a half hour or so of thought, they can be more intelligent participants in the meeting.