The New One Minute Manager

I read an interesting management book today titled The One Minute Manager, written by Ken Blanchard, PhD and Spencer Johnson, MD. The book is quiet short and the content is straightforward. It really provides an easily read story.

In this post, I’m going to write a brief summary of what I’ve read.

Basically, the One Minute Management is a management approach which consists of three practical management techniques, namely One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Reprimands.

The First Technique: One Minute Goals

This technique is the first to be executed before starting to work on a project. The manager and the team members sit together to discuss the goals and the performance standard.

Basically, each goal is written on a piece of paper along with its performance criteria. To be precise, on a single page paper using no more than 250 words. It should be enough to enable people to read them in less than a minute.

In order for this technique to works well, both parties (the manager and team member) must follow the following rules:

• Agree on the specified goals
• See what good behavior looks like
• Write each goal on a single sheet of paper using less than 250 words
• Read and re-read each goal, and make sure you can do it in less than a minute each time you do it
• Take a minute every once in a while out of your day to look at your performance
• See whether or not your behavior matches your goal

The Second Technique: One Minute Praisings

The key point of this technique is to always catch someone doing something right. In other words, the manager should look for any right thing done by the team members. It doesn’t matter whether those right things are small or big, the manager should appreciate the perseverance, patience, efforts, and so forth even though the work results are not positive yet.

This technique provides feedback to the team members as soon as possible without waiting for annual performance review. Doing so might help people reach their full potential.

However, the managers doesn’t need to always apply this technique. They might try to do this technique to inexperienced people (new members joining the team), yet let them who are experienced enough to do one minute praisings by themselves.

In order for this technique to works well, both parties (the manager and team member) must follow the following rules:

• Tell people beforehand that you are going to let them know how they are doing and in no uncertain terms (good or bad)
• Praise people immediately
• Tell people what they did right specifically
• Tell people how good you feel about what they did right, and how it helps the organization and the other people who work there
• Stop for a moment of silence to let them “feel” how good you feel
• Encourage them to do more of the same
• Shake hands or touch people in a way that makes it clear that you support their success in the organization.

The Third Technique: One Minute Reprimands

If the second technique looks for something right, this third technique looks for the otherwise.

This technique emphasizes that the managers should express their feelings towards the poor performance, but not towards the people.

This technique is divided into two stages. The first one, called as the first half of the reprimand, shows people what went wrong specifically, expresses what the managers feel about the poor performance, let the team members fell how the manager feel, and so forth. Meanwhile, the second one, called as the second half of the reprimand, shows people that the managers respect and value them, let them know that only their current performance is poor but not themselves as humans, and let them know that when the reprimand is over, it’s over.

In order for this technique to works well, both parties (the manager and team member) must follow the following rules:

• Tell people beforehand that you are going to let them know how they are doing and in no uncertain terms (good or bad)

The first half of the reprimand:

• Reprimand people immediately
• Tell people what they did wrong specifically
• Tell people how you feel about what they did wrong in no uncertain terms
• Stop for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to let them feel how you feel

The second half of the reprimand:

• Shake hands, or touch them in a way that lets them know you are honestly on their side
• Remind them how much you value them
• Reaffirm that you think well of them but not of their performance in this situation
• Realize that when the reprimand is over, it’s over

THE ONE MINUTE MANAGEMENT GAME PLAN

At the end of the book, the authors provide a diagram that clearly summarizes the One Minute Management approach.

Source: https://clewor.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/one-minute-manager-game-plan.jpg

In short, I loved this book since each of the management technique is presented clearly, thus it’s really easy to understand. The whole approach is simple, yet powerful enough to get as much information as possible in a short amount of time (effective & efficient).

At the end of the day, this technique really enables people to work for themselves, not for other people. The task of a manager is to help them work better (reach their full potential) and in a way that benefits the organization.

This article was originally posted on https://www.linkedin.com/ as The One Minute Manager