PDF Summary:The One-Minute Manager, by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

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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...

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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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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...

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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.”...