"The One Minute Manager" by Ken Blanchard & Spencer Johnson

• The essence of knowledge is, having it, to use it.
• Effective managers manage themselves and the people they work with so that both the organization and the people profit from their presence.
• By being organized we are a great deal more productive.
• People who feel good about themselves produce good results.
• Productivity is more than just the quantity of work done. It is also the quality.
• Quality is simply giving people the product or service they really want and need.
• Productivity is both quantity and quality.
• Don’t make decisions for other people.
• One Minute Goal Setting is the foundation for One Minute Management.
• The One Minute Manager always makes it clear what our responsibilities are and what we are being held accountable for.
• Once he has told me what needs to be done or we have agreed on what needs to be done, then each goal is recorded on no more than a single page. The One Minute Manager feels that a goal, and its performance standard, should take no more than 250 words to express. He insists that anyone be able to read it within a minute. He keeps a copy and I keep a copy so everything is clear and so we can both periodically check the progress.
• 80% of your really important results will come from 20% of your goals.
• Performance standards [should be] clear.
• A problem only exists if there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening.
• One Minute Goal Setting is simply:
• Agree on your goals.
• See what good behavior looks like.
• Write out each of your goals on a single sheet of paper using less than 250 words.
• Read and reread each goal, which requires only a minute or so each time you do it.
• Take a minute every once in awhile out of your day to look at your performance.
• See whether or not your behavior matches your goal.
• How can you be an effective manager unless you and your people are sure of what they are being asked to do?
• Help people reach their full potential. Catch them doing something right.
• The more consistently successful your people are, the higher you rise in the organization.
• Remember you don’t have to praise someone for very long for them to know you noticed and you care. It usually takes less than a minute.
• The One Minute Praising works well when you:
• Tell people up front that you are going to let them know how they are doing.
• Praise people immediately.
• 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.
• As soon as he [the manager] has learned about the mistake he comes to see me. First he confirms the facts.
• He looks me straight in the eye and tells me precisely what I did wrong. Then he shares with me how he feels about it.
• The One Minute Reprimand works well when you:
• Tell people beforehand that you are going to let them know how they are doing and in no uncertain terms.
• 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.
• 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.
• You set One Minute Goals with your people to make sure they know what they are being held accountable for and what good performance looks like. You then try to catch them doing something right so you can give them a One Minute Praising. And then, finally, if they have all the skills to do something right and they don’t you give them a One Minute Reprimand.
• Being a manager is not as complicated as people would have you believe. And also managing people doesn’t take as long as you’d think.
• The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people.
• Most companies spend 50% to 70% of their money on people’s salaries. And yet they spend less than 1% of their budget to train their people.
• I believe that most managers know what they want their people to do. They just don’t bother to tell their people in a way they would understand.
• Clearly the number one motivator of people is feedback on results. Feedback keeps us going.
• In order to look as good as a manage in most organizations, you have to catch some of your people doing things wrong. You have to have a few winners, a few losers, and everyone else somewhere in the middle.
• Everyone is a potential winner. Some people are disguised as losers, don’t let their appearances fool you.
• You really have three choices as a manager. First, you can hire winners. They are hard to find and they cost money. Or, second, if you can’t find a winner, you can hire someone with the potential to be a winner. Then you systematically train that person to become a winner. If you are not willing to do either of the first two, then there is only the third choice left -- prayer.
• All you have to do with a winner is do One Minute Goal Setting and let them run with the ball.
• But with everyone, winner or potential winner, One Minute Goal Setting is a basic tool for productive behavior.
• Take a minute: look at your goals; look at your performance; see if your behavior matches your goals.
• Just remember people are not pigeons. People are more complicated. They are aware, they think for themselves and they certainly don’t want to be manipulated by another person. Remember that and respect that. It is a key to good management.
• So the key to training someone to do a new task is, in the beginning, to catch them doing something approximately right until they can eventually learn to do it exactly right.
• The most important thing in training somebody to become a winner is to catch them doing something right -- in the beginning approximately right and gradually moving them towards the desired behavior. With a winner you don’t have to catch them doing things right very often, because good performers catch themselves doing things right and are able to be self-reinforcing.
• If inexperienced people don’t perform (that is, do what you want them to do), then rather than punish them we need to go back to One Minute Goal Setting and make sure they understand what is expected of them, and that they have seen what food performance looks like.
• You’re always trying to create situations in the beginning where you can give a One Minute Praising.
• The feedback in the One Minute Reprimand is immediate.
• It is not appropriate to gunny sack or save up negative feelings about someone’s poor performance.
• Unless discipline occurs as close as possible, it tends not to be as helpful in influencing future behavior.
• Performance review is an ongoing process, not something you do only once a year.
• When I give a One Minute Reprimand, I never attack a person’s worth or value as a person.
• I reprimand the behavior only.
• Tough and nice. This is an old philosophy that has worked well for literally thousands of years.
• If you are first tough on the behavior, and then supportive of the person, it works.
• Before giving a reprimand you have to see the behavior yourself -- you can’t depend on what someone else saw. You never give a reprimand based on ‘hearsay.’
• These three basic ingredients -- telling people what they did wrong; telling them how you feel about it; and reminding people that they are valuable and worthwhile -- lead to significant improvements in people’s behavior.
• People need to be in contact with people who care about them -- to be accepted as valuable just because they are people.
• It is very important when you are managing people to remember that behavior and worth are not the same things. What is really worthwhile is the person managing their own behavior. This is as true of each of us as managers as it is of each of the people we are managing.
• We are not just our behavior. We are the person managing our behavior.
• If you realize that you are managing people, and not just their recent behavior you will do well.
• You will be successful with the One Minute Reprimand when you really care about the welfare of the person you are reprimanding.
• There is a very simple rule about touching, “When you touch, don’t take. Touch the people you manage only when you are giving them something -- reassurance, support, encouragement, whatever.”
• Manipulation is getting people to do something they are either not aware of or don’t agree to. That is why it is so important to let each person know up front what you are doing and why.
• Being honest with people eventually works.
• Sometimes, you have to care enough to be tough. Be very tough on the poor performance -- but only on the performance. Never be tough on the person.
• Goals begin behavior. Consequences maintain behaviors.
• Go to work for yourself. Nobody ever really works for anybody else. I just help people work better and in the process they benefit our organization.
• You become a One Minute Manager not because you think like one, or talk like one, but because you behave like one. Set One Minute Goals. Give One Minute Praisings. Give One Minute Reprimands. Ask brief, important questions; speak the simple truth; laugh, work, and enjoy. And, perhaps most important of all, encourage the people you work with to do the same.
• The manager knew full well the very practical advantage of repetition in learning anything new.
• Don’t wait to use One Minute Management until you thing you can do it just right.
• By simply asking if his staff wanted to be managed by a One Minute Manager and by admitting that he might not always be able to do it right, he had accomplished something very important. The people he worked with felt that he was honestly on their side from the very beginning. And that made all the difference.
• Share it [One Minute Management] with others.