The one minute manager by ken blanchard and spencer johnson

When a leading American Management consultant (Ken Blanchard) and a psychologist (Spencer Johnson) decided to get together to write a book on management the result could be a learner tome which is incomprehensible to many of those for whom its message is intended. Authors avoid the pitfall and have produced a simple complication of what they have learned how people work best with other people. Contrary to this idea that the age and services are the best possible qualification to manage the people, The One Minute Manager explodes the myth that the ability to manage one’s own behavior and attitudes is an essential prerequisite to managing other people. The One Minute Manager provides Managers, an insight on how to be more effective in communication within their teams and with external interests. This book ensures that productivity (Quantity + Quality) of each individual as well as that of the organization increases multi folds if we make an organization “ people oriented rather than result oriented”. People will feel good in ‘ People Oriented Organizations’ and ensure the involvement in the product / services they provide.

Usefulness to intended audience:

This book proved very useful in any area where one has to interact with peoples especially for the administration and H. R department of the any organization as it address the key areas where most of the managers and management of an organization lack. Managing people is a fun and this book provides an opportunity by motivating the intended audience in a very short, simple way to manage people in “ One Minute” with specific examples from daily life. Simple and practical ideas may cause profaned difference on one’s management skills. After reading this book one surely gets a chance to become an effective manager by adopting and practicing three secrets of The One Minute Manager.

Introduction

“ The Best Minute I Spend Is the One I Invest In People”

About book

“ The One Minute Manager” is one of the best selling business books of all time and still make appearance Amazon’s list of Best -Selling business books. Very busy people as its target audiences it is designed to be read quickly. This is the symbolic book. The One Minute Manager’s symbol-a one minute readout from the face of a modern digital watch- is intended to remind each of us to take a minute out of our day to look into the faces of the people whom we manage and to realize that they are our most important resources.

An easily-read story, demonstrates three very practical management techniques. As the story unfolds, it discovers why these apparently simple methods work so well with so many people. By the end of this one will also know how to apply them to one’s own situation.

Authors

Dr. Kenneth Blanchard

Dr. Kenneth Blanchard Chairman of Blanchard Training and Development, Inc. (BTD), is an internationally known author, educator and consultant/trainer. He is the co-author of the highly acclaimed and most widely used text on leadership and organization behavior, Management of Organization Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources, which is in its fourth edition and has been translated into numerous languages. Dr. Blanchard received his B. A. from Cornell University in Government and Philosophy, an M. A. from Colgate University in Sociology and Counseling and a Ph. D. from Cornell in Administration and Management.

In addition, he is a member of the National Training Laboratories (NTL). He has extensive leadership experience as business executive and as a military officer. He has been a hands-on leader in a variety of organizations large and small. Most recently he was a human resources executive for a Fortune 100 company. His book – Victory Principles, Leadership Lessons from D-Day – illustrates seven bedrock leadership principles that all successful leaders use. He presently serves as a professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Books by author

Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing the human resources (with Paul Hersey).

Organizational Change through Effective Leadership: (with Robert H. Guest and Paul Hersey). The family game: a situational approach to effective parenting (with Paul Hersey).

Putting the One Minute Manager to Work: (with Robert Lorber, Ph. D.)

Dr. Spencer Johnson

Dr Spencer Johnson is the Chairman of Candle Communications Corporation, and an active author, publisher, lecturer and communications consultant. He has written more than a dozen books dealing with medicine and psychology, and has over three million copies of his books in print. Dr. Johnson’s education includes a degree in psychology from the University of Southern California, an M. D. degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and medical clerkships at Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic.

Books by author

The one minute father

The one minute mother

The precious present

Who moved my cheese

Summary of the book

Overall story

Authors Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson use a parable style story to describe the plight of a young manager who is not having success; however, he hears about a successful manager who is so effective that he has time to spare He wanted to work for one. He wanted to become one. He was beginning to see the full spectrum of how people manage people. But he wasn’t always pleased with what he saw. He had spoken with many managers. He saw that some managers are interested in results and some are interested in people. “ It’s like being half a manager,” he thought.

He might have given up his search long ago, but he had one great advantage. He knew exactly what he was looking for. “ Effective managers,” he thought, “ manage themselves and the people they work with so that both the organization and the people profit from their presence.” Then he began hearing marvelous stories about a special manager who lived, ironically, in a nearby town. The young manager calls him up to find out what he can learn, and the successful One Minute Manager shares with him three secrets to his success. The young man excitedly explores his three secrets and adopts these secrets and himself became famous as One Minute Manager.

Key points: “ In the One Minute Manager”, there are three types of managers.

Autocratic Manager

They are rigid & demanding

They are decision maker

They are only interested in results.

They always keep on top of the situation

They are hard-nosed, profit minded individuals

Their organizations seemed to win while they lose people

Democratic Manager

They are participative, supportive and nice individuals

They want to be more close to their subordinates

They give more importance to people than results

They are friendly with staff

They are trusting & nurturing

Effective Managers

Effective managers, manage themselves and the people they work with so that both the people and the organization profit from their presence. Effective managers believe in that “ People Who Feel Good about Themselves Produce Good Results”. The One Minute Manager doesn’t make decisions for others; rather encourage them to take their own decisions.

One Minute Manager: One minute manager is an effective manager who value people and take keen interest in the welfare of people or his staff. He doesn’t believe in hiring the winners. He believes to train them and make them winners by themselves. He has three secrets of his One Minute Management which he shares with the young man (who came to him). These three secrets are:

One Minute Goal setting

One Minute Praising

One Minute Reprimand

The First Secret: ONE MINUTE GOALS Setting

The foundation for One Minute Management

80-20 goal-setting rule

Behavioral terms (observable, measurable) Versus Complaining (attitudes or feelings)

Summary

Agree on your goals.

Write out each of your goals on a single sheet of paper using less than 250 words

80% of really important results will come from 20% of your goals. So it’s important to do One Minute Goal Setting on that 20%.

Read and re-read each goal, which requires one minute or so each time when one’s do it.

See what good behavior looks like

Take a minute every once in a while out of day to look at your performance, and see whether or not your behavior matches your goal.

The Second Secret: One Minute Praising

“ How to handle when people do well”

Try to catch them doing something right

Crystal-clear feedback; Tell precisely what was right

Close contact

Habit: To catch yourself doing things right

“ People who feel good about themselves produce good results”

Summary

Tell people right from the start that you are going to let them know how they are doing.

Praise people immediately. Don’t wait for the praise discussion to praise them

Tell people what they did right, be specific

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 Secret: One Minute Reprimands

“ How to handle when people make mistakes”

Reprimand as soon as something wrong is done

Specify exactly what was wrong

Don’t attack anyone as a person

Be consistent

Summary: Two parts of one minute reprimand:

The first half of the reprimand

The second half of the reprimand

The first half of the reprimand

Reprimand people immediately

Tell people what they did wrong – be specific.

Tell people how you feel about what they did wrong – and 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 your are honest 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.

Overall Game Plan of One Minute Manager:

Analysis of Book

The One Minute Manager:

It’s very important to analyze that how the content of this book is affecting the different aspects of intended audience. So in the analysis, focus will be on the good points of the content of the book. After knowing the three secrets of One Minute Manager it’s important to know how these secrets work and benefited the managers and everyone who manages the peoples. The One Minute Manager doesn’t mean that One should do all work in One minute. This is allegory use for quick and clear response to people about their behavior. As a manager you have only three choices.

First: You can hire winners, they are hard to find. For winners One Minute Goal Setting is enough for productive behavior. Because they are experts of their fields and they try to achieve according to their abilities.

Second: If you can’t hire the winners, hire someone who has potential of winners. For the people who have potential to win, One Minute praising is enough, as you praise them they get more motivated and feel good with themselves and next time they try to do it better. By doing one minute praising they become winners.

Third: If you can’t do above two choices, then you have only one choice, prayer.

Why One Minute Goals Work:

“ Every one is a potential winner

Some People are disguised as Losers; don’t let their Appearance fool you”

The pinball game

Explanation: The One Minute Goal Setting work because of all the people in any organization is willing and motivated to do some thing and they become more motivated after work. Nobody ever work for anybody else. For example, if you are on the playing field and you are striking the ball to the pins. And when you strike, you started screaming and get more motivated to strike again.

This is the same as we do the One Minute Goal Setting. When you know, what are you going to do and how then you are more confident about your task. And you are motivated to do it again until you become expert in striking the pins. You can analyze yourself by reviewing your goals. When you assume that people know what’s expected from them, you are creating confusion and over-rating them. This happened all the time in our daily life, in our relations and doing our daily work routines. So One Minute Goal Setting is very important step in becoming the One Minute Manager. And when you feel that your performance is not up-to- the mark, go back to your goals and again spend One Minute to set your goal again.

Why One Minute Praising Work:

“ Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions”

“ People will go so far for money, however will go the

Extra mile for praise and recognition”

Sea aquarium shows – a huge whale jumping over a rope which is high above the water.

Explanation: When the trainers captured the whale, the whale knew nothing about jumping over ropes. So when they began to train the whale in the large pool, they started the rope from the bottom of the pool. Every time the whale swam over the rope-which was every time he swam past-whale got fed. Soon, trainers raised the rope a little. If the whale swam under the rope, he didn’t get fed during training. Whenever he swam over the rope, he got fed. So after a while the whale started swimming over the rope all of the time. Then they started raising the rope a little higher. But the question is why they raise the rope. Because they are clear on the goal: to have the whale jump high out of the water and over the rope. Over a time they keep on raising the rope until they finally get it to the surface of the water. Now the great whale knows that in order to get fed, he has to jump partially out of the water and over the rope. As soon as that goal is reached, they can start raising the rope higher and higher out of the water. So for whales, to get food is One Minute Praising. And by jumping again and again the whale become expert for high dive.

“ Catch fresher’s doing things right and slowly raise their bar”

This example illustrates that the most important thing in training someone to become a winner is to catch them doing something right. Slowly, you keep moving them towards the desired behavior. It can be done with children’s and as well as with new staff.

Why One Minute Reprimands Work:

“ We are not just our behaviors

We are the persons managing our behaviors”

Monthly feedback

Explanation: The feedback as One Minute Reprimand is very important. That is, you get to the individual as soon as you observe the ‘ misbehavior’ or your data information system tips you off. It is not appropriate to save up negative feelings about someone’s poor performance. The fact that the feedback is so immediate is an important lesson in why the One Minute Reprimand works so well. Most managers are ‘ gunnysack’ discipliners. That is, they store up observations of poor behavior and then some day when performance review comes or they are angry in general because the ‘ sack is so full,’ they charge in and dump everything on the table. They tell people all the things they have done wrong for the last few weeks or months or more. went on, and then the manager and subordinate usually end up yelling at each other about the facts or simply keeping quiet and resenting each other. The person receiving the feedback doesn’t really hear what he or she has done wrong.

“ After genuine reprimand a centric praise is needed”

So, One Minute Reprimand is very important because they are chances of improvement in their performances or people. The purpose of One Minute reprimand is to ensure the people that you want to eliminate the wrong behavior and keep the person. When the peoples know their value in an organization, they give their best to that organization and don’t repeat the same behavior again. Reaffirm that you think well of them but not of their performance in this situation. Your intent is to get them back on course, not to try to make them feel badly. Behaviors are not important what is really important is the person managing their own behavior. To becoming One Minute Manager you have to be

“ Tough and Nice manager rather than Nice and Tough manager”

Discussion:

Now-days it is wrong with the most organizations that their people do not produce-either quality or quantity. And the main reason of this poor performance is simply because the peoples are not managed properly.

The feeling of importance, psychologically satisfy peoples and motivates them to give the best. This “ One Minute Manager” is very much similar to the theory of behaviorism (psychology), in which main focus on the change in the behaviors by setting task, praising the good and punishing/pointing the wrong behaviors.

“ The One Minute Manager” may help you to go beyond for better results, you will have to learn and use other beneficial habits as well. These are simple and easy-to-use basic management skills; however, many managers don’t use them. Like any other skill, it takes practice in the beginning. Once you use these skills, then they will become second nature. If you are not using the “ One Minute Manager’s secrets”, try them out and see how you can make them work for yourself and your team. If you do them well, you too can become an effective One Minute Manager. “ The One Minute Manager” is a remarkably simple system to learn and apply and will help you improve employee performance. The One Minute Manager is a happy manager because of following reasons:

Peace of Mind

Reduce Stress Levels

Increase Productivity

Criticism of the Book

One Minute Manager and Change:

“ The rapidity of change that is taking place in the social, political and economics environment is creating a marked impact on organizations as well as individual.

K. Harigopal

One Minute Manager may be proved very effective at the time of change. No organization is stable today. Globalization makes the Business and organizations doubtful and undeceive. And the most effected part of any organizations due to change is the HR department. If there is any type of change weather it is a behavioral change, no matter its internal and external, rather to hire the people from outside to cope with change, managers should have vision of ” One Minute Manager”.

People are afraid and conscious about change. They don’t tolerate any type of changes in their circumstances, so as a One Minute Manager you can manage your staff very simply by setting their goals and addressing their behavior. You can train staff and develop vision of change in them. Being a “ One Minute Manager” you don’t need to tell your staff to set one minute goal which is a very important target in any type of change in the organization. Similarly “ The One Minute Praising” and “ The One Minute reprimand” alerts people and motivate them to adopt and face the change.

This book lacks one important point which is about managers him/her self. It is not possible that every time manager is right, his vision is broad and he understands each and every thing. He can make mistakes. So as managers, having powers you have to take right decisions at right times.

This book deals with very simple approach to the complex art of managing people. There is much more to management than the one minute manager, depending on the culture and decorum of the organization.

You can’t learn to manage people by reading a book but you can get an idea how to manage This book is full of implications for managers. But the focus has been on one minute. When every process is reduced to one minute, it leads to over simplification of the process which a manager has to undertake. It has ignored the dual role that a manager performs in structured organization where there are both subordinates and seniors.

No doubt this is the effective book on One Minute Manager but it doesn’t deal with the complexities of the organizations as the organizations and behaviors are more complex as discussed in this book.

Key Message of the book

Too many organizations leave employees uncertain over what is expected of them and provide little feedback until the annual review. At that time a series of criticisms are laid out with smattering the praise but neither the manager nor employee can remember the details. At other times, managers are quick to blame employees for things going wrong and will criticize in a way that leaves the employee resenting the way he or she has been treated by the manager. The One Minute Manager boils management down to three actions – goal setting, praising and reprimands on the basis that clear objectives and quick, accurate feedback are the basis for improved performance. After reading the one minute manager you will not become a autocrat and democrat manager, but you try to become an effective manager.

Conclusion

“ An eye opener for many indeed”

A measurement of a good leader is ability to develop other leaders, not followers. In today’s world, many new supervisors are thrust into a “ baptism by fire” management environment. I found this book to be an easy to read and arm newcomers to management with the basic tools for building worker relationships and getting the best out of their staffs. As a result, their efforts are guided into decisions that generate increasingly positive outcomes in uncomfortable situations. Self confidence builds and leadership/management styles improve.

This book talks of empowering people and giving them onus of their lives through applications of various principles of human relations and communications. It will make your feel that you are a better manager because you have become proactive rather than reactive. You are setting goals and providing quick feedback on performance – whether good or bad. The secrets of one-minute management will help a manager boost profits and productivity immediately through increases employee morale, job satisfaction and manage people in time of change.

Unlike most business books, this one is short and easy to read. The academic language has been banished, and it is well written.

For any person who is currently a manager and striving to get the most from people, or who is planning to become one in the near future, “ The One Minute Manager” is an indispensable success tool. After knowing the secrets of One Minute Manager; you can also become a “ One Minute Manager”.

“ Goals beings behaviors, consequences maintain behaviors”

Now you are a new One Minute Manager,

You can set One Minute

You can give One Minute Praising

You can give One Minute Reprimands

You can also speak the simple truth

You can laugh and you can enjoy your work.