PDF Summary:The One-Minute Manager, by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
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1-Page PDF Summary of The One-Minute Manager
The One-Minute Manager is a guide for managers looking to empower their employees and teach them to succeed in their jobs, with minimal direct guidance. As the title suggests, most of what we consider “management” takes one minute or less. One-minute managers build their employees up by defining success through short one-minute goals and performance standards; providing immediate and direct positive feedback through one-minute praisings; and offering constructive criticism aimed at correcting behavior through one-minute redirects. This management style motivates employees and gives them the confidence and skills to become stewards and champions of their own success.
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New one-minute managers deliver immediate and thoughtful praise when an employee does something well.
How They Work
The key to a one-minute praising is that it be immediate. The manager has to be on the lookout for good behavior and praise it in real time. Instead of looking to catch their employees doing something wrong, one-minute managers make a conscious effort to catch their employees doing something right.
Good one-minute praisings are specific and consistent, and the manager must explain why the employee’s success has contributed to organizational goals. The manager then encourages the employee to do more of the same and reiterates that they are pushing for the employee to succeed.
Why They Work
Employees gain the confidence to achieve bigger goals later on when they receive quick praise for small accomplishments when they’re just starting out. They are also able to link their positive performance with the praising, because the praising is immediate and focused on a specific achievement. Contrast this approach with that of managers who deliver vague and dilatory positive feedback: the employee doesn’t know what they did right and therefore won’t be able to replicate it. One-minute praisings are also highly motivating for employees, as they begin catching themselves doing things right.
One-Minute Redirects
Managers deliver quick, specific, and consistent redirects when an employee who ought to know better makes a mistake.
How They Work
One-minute redirects must be linked to the defined goals above: you can’t hold people accountable for not doing things they weren’t told they needed to do.
Redirects happen in two parts. In the first part, the manager clearly conveys that they are disappointed in the employee because they failed to achieve a specific goal or meet a specific deadline. They also need to demonstrate to the employee why their mistake hurts the organization as a whole. This needs to immediately follow the mistake and it needs to be specific to that mistake.The goal is to help people learn from errors so they don’t repeat them: this won’t happen if the redirect is vague and scattershot.
In the second part, the manager pauses and then reminds the employee that they still think highly of them overall and that the behavior is being critiqued, not the person. Lastly, when the redirect is over, it’s over. The manager bears no lingering ill will and treats the employee no differently than before, as long as the mistake isn’t repeated.
Why They Work
Employees don’t feel mistreated and don’t view you as an enemy. They’re being criticized for a behavior they can improve, not for a personality flaw that they can’t change.
Employees also appreciate the honesty and openness. They’re being held accountable immediately following a mistake, instead of being blindsided by it months later at a performance review (as so many managers choose to do). The redirects give the employee an opportunity to improve right away and they offer negative feedback at a manageable volume: piecemeal, as it happens, instead of all-at-once.
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PDF Summary Shortform Introduction
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PDF Summary Introduction: Getting Results
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Investing in People
One-minute managers invest in the organization’s most important asset: its people. They know that the best minute you spend is the one spent investing in people. Think about this: 50-70 percent of a typical company’s budget gets spent on salary, but less than 1 percent on training. Given how important employees are to the achievement of company goals, this is a gross misallocation of resources: more gets spent on buildings and equipment than people!
One-minute managers put in the work to make their employees self-supported and self-motivated. They don’t make decisions for their employees: they guide them to make decisions for themselves.
This is more important than ever before. New technologies and tools of communication are transforming the way organizations operate every day. Your organization needs to be quick on its feet to survive: the old top-down, command-and-control style of management is simply too slow and unresponsive to keep organizations agile and adaptive. One-minute managers succeed where other managers fail, because they empower the people in their organization to take responsibility and manage themselves, with minimal...
PDF Summary One-Minute Goals
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This keeps the overall number of goals for each employee down to a manageable level, usually three to six goals total.
Why One-Minute Goals Work
What makes one-minute goals such an effective management tool?
Goals Define Success
They define what constitutes success and gives employees a target to drive toward. Many employees struggle because they don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing. This ambiguity around purpose is highly demotivating to employees. In this scenario, people get discouraged because there is no defined standard for success or failure, so any feedback they do receive seems arbitrary and capricious (especially if it’s negative).
With clearly defined goals, however, employees know exactly what to work on each day. They have an unambiguous idea of what success in their job means. Furthermore, they know how their work is contributing to the organization’s goals, which is motivating.
Goals Drive Accountability
One-minute goals enable accountability. It’s much harder for things to fall through the cracks, because everything is clearly set down in writing and can be checked at any time through email. As a manager, you can better...
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Learn more about our summaries →PDF Summary One-Minute Praisings
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Be Specific
Tell your employee precisely what they did right.
Don’t give generic compliments like, “You’re doing a great job.” An employee won’t know what they did specifically and won’t learn anything from a praising like that.
Instead, be specific and pointed. Example: “Excellent work on that Q3 sales projections presentation! Your research was thorough, you answered all the questions confidently, and you’ve improved your speaking voice.” Specificity like this shows them that you’re paying attention to their work product.
Share Your Feelings
Tell the employee how good it makes you as the manager feel and how it helps the organization.
People want to know that their individual efforts are contributing to the achievement of something larger. By connecting their performance with organization performance, you’re letting them know that their work is valuable (and valued).
Example: “That presentation made me really happy and proud to have you on our team. I hired you because I saw you had potential, and I can clearly see that you’re living up to it.”
Pause and Let the Employee Reflect
Let the employee savor the moment: pause, let them...
PDF Summary One-Minute Redirects
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Begin Immediately
Begin the redirect immediately following a mistake. Again, delay only breeds resentment and confusion, particularly with negative feedback like this. If you spring it on them weeks later, your employee will feel like you were being dishonest by not mentioning it during all of the intervening time.
Be Precise
Confirm the facts and explain precisely what went wrong. Tie it to the employee’s one-minute goals so that they clearly see the disconnect between the desired results and the actual performance.
For example, “That report you just delivered was past the deadline that we had set out in your goals. It was also poorly researched and incomplete because you omitted these items.” Your employees won’t learn from mistakes without this degree of specificity.
Explain Why
Explain your feelings as a manager (anger, disappointment, frustration) and why their mistake hurts the organization.
For example, “I’m disappointed because we were depending on that report to establish our quarterly marketing targets. Because you submitted a subpar report, we’re going to have to revise our targets downward, which sets the whole company back.”...
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