The One Minute Manager

The One Minute Manager is a parable about a young man who is studying leadership and management. He has interviewed many managers but has never really been inspired until he meets the “One Minute Manager”. Subtitled ‘The world’s most popular way to manage your life and work’, this is a short and simple book that provides you with a short a simple way to manage yourself and others. There are Three Secrets to One Minute Management: One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Re-Directs.

It is only about 80 pages long. As it’s a parable, it presents all of the ideas but allows you to interpret and internalize how you can best apply these in your life. This book isn’t just for “managers”. The OMM is also a great way to approach your own life and better manage your time and output.

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If you’d prefer to read instead of listening, you can check out Adam Ashton’s blog. There’s a full summary of The One Minute Manager here.

The One Minute Manager Summary

“Take a minute: look at your goals, look at your performance, see if your behavior matches your goals.”  

Spencer Johnson breaks down effective management through the tale of the ‘One Minute Manager’ with  3 simple secrets.

Secret 1 – One Minute Goals

Most organisations when you ask people what they do and then ask their boss, normally you get two different lists. You would get in trouble for doing something that isn’t your job. But the One Minute Manager always makes it clear what our responsibilities are and what we are being held accountable for.  

Once the manager has told you what needs to be done, or you have agreed what needs to be done, each goal is recorded on no more than a single page. The OMM then feels that a goal and its performance standard should take max 250 words. It should be able to be read in a minute and both the manager and employee keep a copy to check on the process periodically.

The OMM believes in the 80-20 goal setting rule, 80% of your important results will come from 20% of your goals So we only do One Minute Goal setting on the 20% , that’s 3-6 goals total.  

Why One Minute Goals Work  

You’ve seen unmotivated people at work in the various organizations. But you’ve probably never seen an unmotivated person after work. If you go to the bowling club you will see employees  approach the line, roll the ball, and then start to scream, yell and jump around. Why are they so happy? Because they got a strike. She knocked down all the pins! Why do you think she and other people are that excited at work? Because they don’t know where the pins are. How long would they bowl if there were no pins?  

 Take a minute – look at your goals – look at your performance – see if your behavior matches those goals.

The Second Secret – One Minute Praisings  

Hardly anyone sees the One Minute Manager, except at the initial period after being hired. He knows it would be a lot easier for employees to do well if they get crystal clear feedback from him on how they’re doing. After the goals are set, the OMM is watching the employee like a hawk. He always keeping a close eye and taking notes. At first they think it is because he doesn’t trust you. But after some time they notice he was actually trying to catch employees doing something right! “  

When the OMM catches you doing something right, he gives the One Minute Praising. He looks you straight in the eye and tells you precisely what you did right. He then shares with you how good he feels about what you did. It happens straight away, you don’t wait until the annual performance review.  

Why One Minute Praising’s Work  

Suppose you have an untrained pigeon that you want to enter a box in the lower left hand corner, run across the box to the upper right hand corner and push a lever with the right foot. Suppose that not too far from the entry point is a pallet machine releasing pellets of food to reward and reinforce the pigeon. What do you think would happen if we put the pigeon in the box and wait until the pigeon runs over to the right hand corner and pushes the lever before we give him food. He would starve to death, we would lose lots of pigeons. But what if you draw a line at half way and give food when pigeon crosses it. Gradually you progress – soon you draw the line in the upper right hand corner and give food, then finally draw a tiny line near the lever.  

By setting up these series of lines we are establishing goals that the pigeon can achieve. So the key to training someone to do a new task is in the beginning catch them doing something approximately right until they eventually learn to do it exactly right. Most managers do something entirely different.  Not only they don’t catch them doing something right, but periodically we zap them to just keep them moving. This is the most popular leadership style of all – “the ‘leave it alone zap style'”

The Third Secret – The One Minute Reprimands   

For those who have been there a while, they typically only see the OMM when they do something wrong. If you make a mistake, that’s when you get the one minute reprimand. He looks you straight in the eye, and tells you precisely what you did wrong. Then he shares how he feels – angry, annoyed, frustrated or whatever he is feeling. He gives it as soon as you do something wrong. You won’t get away with sloppiness. He doesn’t attack you as a person, only the behavior – it’s easy not to become defensive. When it’s over it is over. It doesn’t last long but you don’t forget it. You won’t make the same mistake twice.  

Why One Minute Reprimands Work  

One reason it works is that the person receiving the reprimand can ‘hear’ the feedback. When the manager deals with one behavior at a time, it seems more fair and clear. Another is that you never attack a persons value or wealth as a person, only reprimand the behavior

The goal is to eliminate the behavior and keep the person.  

Understand that:

• We are not just our behavior
• We are the person managing our behavior
• You will be successful with the one minute reprimand when you really care about the wealth fare of the person you are reprimanding