Notes and Takeaways from The New One Minute Manager
When I read it: August 2021
Why I read it: I really enjoyed Who Moved My Cheese? so I decided to read another book by the same authors. The management framework in The New One Minute Manager provides a collaborative approach to leading, managing, and motivating people.
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My notes
Dr. Spencer Johnson was the author of thirteen New York Times bestsellers including Who Moved My Cheese? and The One Minute Manager.
The framework
The New One Minute Manager framework provides a collaborative approach to leading, managing, and motivating people.
Instead of taking a traditional top-down approach, you lead side-by-side. Top-down management can stifle long-term speed and innovation. Collaborative management unlocks long-term speed and innovation.
Results vs. people
Managers should take one minute out of every day to remind themselves that their people are their most important resource. Attracting, developing, and keeping talent are a manager's primary responsibilities.
According to authors Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, the number one expense for most companies is people’s salaries, but most organizations only spend a small fraction of their budget developing people. Most companies spend more time and money on maintaining their physical assets than they do developing their human capital.
One-minute managers are both results-oriented and people-oriented because people and results go hand in hand. The best way to achieve successful results is with people. Many managers prioritize people or results. They're either tough or caring. Great managers prioritize both people and results. They're both tough and caring.
One-minute managers don’t believe their reports work for them. They view direct reports as partners who work together to improve. People like working for one-minute managers because they work with their managers, for them.
Autonomy and facilitation
One-minute managers let their people decide what they're going to do. They believe in facilitating, but not in making other people’s decisions. For example, this could be accomplished in a weekly meeting that allows team members to review and analyze what they achieved the previous week, the problems they had, what remains to be accomplished, and their plans and strategies for getting those things done.
Clarity and accountability
When employees have clarity, they’re much more likely to succeed. It’s like bowling. If you can’t see the pins, how can you roll a strike or knock any of them down with confidence. When employees don’t know what they’re aiming at, it erodes their confidence and makes work unenjoyable. One common management mistake happens when you assume your employees know what they’re aiming for. Don’t assume your employees can see the pins.
When your people know what their job is and what high performance looks like, your expectations are clear. And when your expectations are clear, your people are empowered to self-manage and drive self-accountability. Alternatively, when roles and responsibilities are ambiguous, accountability is impossible.
Feedback and motivation
People want fulfillment from their work, and fulfillment comes from making meaningful contributions. People are most productive when they feel good about themselves. So, helping people feel good about themselves is part of maximizing productivity.
When people are motivated outside of work, but they’re not motivated while at work, it’s the manager’s performance issue. When people aren’t motivated period, that’s the individual’s performance issue.
The number one motivator of people is feedback on results. People want to know how they’re doing. Feedback keeps people going.
One-minute managers recognize that feedback is an invaluable management tool. They provide feedback on specific terms about what their people are doing well and poorly. They recognize that it's easier for people to do well when they receive crystal-clear feedback on how they are doing. Feedback helps people succeed. There are two types of feedback: praisings and redirects.
The one-minute manager's three secrets
There are three secrets to one-minute management:
One-minute goals. Goals create clarity about what is most important.
One-minute praisings. Praisings build confidence.
One-minute redirects Redirects address mistakes.
It takes substantial time to manage people, but it only takes a minute to refocus them on goals and provide actionable feedback on how they’re doing. These concepts represent only 20 percent of management activities, but they help us achieve 80 percent of results.
Goals provide direction and focus. Praisings and redirects are all about providing people with actionable feedback to help them accomplish goals sooner. By combining all three, you create clarity on what’s important, build confidence, and improve behavior on your way to achieving results.
1. One-minute goals
In most organizations when you ask someone what they do and then ask their manager the same question, you often get two different answers. This means some people don't know what their job is. In these situations, it's difficult to drive accountability. It's impossible to be a good manager without being on the same page with your team members about what high performance looks like.
With one-minute goals, managers make it clear what their peoples' individual responsibilities are and what they are being held accountable for.
One-minute managers don't set goals for their people. They help their people to develop their own goals.
Applying the Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule, 80 percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your effort. So, you want to set goals related to the key areas of your responsibilities that represent the 20 percent. This usually results in three to five goals. If an unexpected project or priority arises, you'll set a new one-minute goal to account for it.
Once agreed upon, each goal should be written down along with what needs to be done by when. Each goal should take no more than a paragraph or two to express so you can review it in less than one minute. This makes it easy to check progress and stay focused on what’s important.
One-minute managers regularly encourage their people to review what they're doing to see if it matches their goals.
2. One-minute praisings
One-minute managers try to catch their team members doing something right. And when they do, they provide a one-minute praising as soon as possible.
The most important thing to do to help an employee succeed is to catch them doing something approximately right in the beginning so they’re motivated to eventually learn to do it entirely right. Don’t wait until people do something exactly right to provide praise.
When you give a one-minute praising, you spend the first 30 seconds letting the person know the specific thing they did right along with how good you feel about it and why. You then pause for a moment to allow the person to feel good about what they've done. Then, you spend the next 25 seconds, encouraging them to do more of the same and reminding them that you have confidence in them to succeed.
3. One-minute redirects
One-minute redirects are about helping people manage themselves so they can succeed when you are not around. Making a mistake is not a problem, but failing to learn from one is. Redirects help people learn by showing them what they need to do differently.
One-minute managers do not shy away from negative feedback. When a team member makes a significant mistake, they provide a one-minute redirect as soon as possible. When you address things early and often, it allows you to deal with one poor behavior at a time. This makes the person more likely to internalize and act on the feedback. Redirects allow you to deliver feedback in small doses instead of waiting until your frustration builds from multiple, repetitive mistakes.
When someone makes a mistake, first make sure their goals are clear. If the goals are unclear, take responsibility and create clarity. Ensuring your team members have clear targets is your job as the manager.
When someone makes a mistake and the goal is clear, provide a redirect as soon as possible. First, confirm the facts and review the mistake together. Be specific. Explain how you feel about the mistake and how it impacts results. Then, pause and be quiet for a moment to allow the person to reflect. Finally, let the person know that they’re better than their mistake and that you think they are a good person. Remind them that you have trust and confidence in them and want to support their success. Then, move on together.
With one-minute redirects, don’t attack the person. You want to get rid of the bad behavior, but keep the good person. The goal is not to tear people down. You want to build them up. To do this, avoid attacking someone’s self-concept. When our self-concepts are under attack, we become emotional and defensive. Behavior and worth are not the same things. We are not our behavior. We are the person managing our behavior.
The trick is to separate the person’s poor behavior from their worth. This is why reaffirming your belief in them after you redirect a mistake is important. The idea is to be tough on the behavior while remaining supportive of the person. You tell them what they did wrong, you tell them how you feel about it, and you remind them that they’re better than that. Their performance is bad, but they are good. A proper redirect is both tough and caring. It’s respectful.
One-minute managers don't make decisions for their people. When a team member asks you to make a decision for them, provide a one-minute redirect. For example, say "I don’t make decisions for other people. Make that decision yourself.” Then, pause for a long moment and allow them to process the redirect. Finally, reaffirm your confidence in them.
One-minute managers don't solve problems for their people. When a team member comes to you with a problem, provide a one-minute redirect. For example, say "‘Good! That’s what you’ve been hired to solve.’ Then, pause for a long moment and allow your team member to process the redirect. And don’t forget to finish by reaffirming your confidence in them.
If a team member asks you for help solving their problem, you may want to help them facilitate a solution so you can teach the person how to help themselves in the future. Be sure to play the role of facilitator and not problem-solver by asking the kinds of questions the team member can ask themselves in the future.
Hiring new people
When you hire someone new, don’t leave them alone. When you leave people alone, you miss out on opportunities to catch them doing things right. You also miss out on opportunities to redirect them and clarify what’s expected of them and what high performance looks like. In the beginning, it’s all about finding opportunities for legitimate praisings.
One-minute managers spend extra time with their people upfront when they are taking on new tasks, projects, or responsibilities. They do this in two ways. First, they observe their activities and provide feedback. Second, they require their people to send progress reports. The goal is two-part. They want to catch people doing things right so they can provide one-minute praisings and they want to notice when people are doing things wrong so they can provide one-minute redirects.
When a team member starts a new task, prioritize catching them doing something right over pointing out what they're doing wrong. You still need to provide redirection and hard feedback, but prioritize praise when possible. Top performers catch themselves doing things right often. People who are learning need praise and encouragement from others. One-minute praising build your team members' confidence in what good performance looks like. In time, they start to catch themselves doing something right and praising themselves.
Random anecdotes
Good management leads to fewer personnel issues and less absenteeism.
Good managers ask brief, important questions, keep things simple, and speak truth. They also enjoy the journey.
The more we understand why something works, the more likely we’ll do it.
When someone has learned how to do something, but they choose not to. You have to decide whether you can afford to keep them on your team. You usually can’t.