The One Minute Manager

The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. and Spencer Johnson, M.D. ISBN 0-425-09847-8

From PushPeopleUntilTheyPushBack:

I'd suggest TheOneMinuteManager as a much better alternative to this technique.

That's a book, not a technique. What from that book did you have in mind?

The book contains the technique. Buy the book, it's very cheap and very short. I don't think I'd be able to describe the technique without being so vague as to be useless. The book is a much much better source.

I read TheOneMinuteManager a couple of years ago, and my recollection is that the basic technique is to make people feel good when they do things that please you and make them feel bad when they do things that displease you. You do this by expressing your own feelings about their work to them in private, and making sure it sinks in. It seemed to be lot like a book on parenting. I know that's an oversimplification, but that was the impression I was left with, and I didn't think I could do that myself. --KrisJohnson

Strange. What I got out of it was to set very clear expectations and to give very clear feedback. Much like XP or Scrum.

It seemed to me a rather old-fashioned view of corporate hierarchy, where the manager is at least as expert as the people reporting to him, and knows how to do each of their jobs, a "good job" is doing the job exactly how the manager would do it. Which is not to say it's useless - giving clear direction and immediate feedback are good things

Where does it say that? I seem to recall that it suggests that people should make their own goals, meaning "good job" is up to the person doing the job to define. A one-minute manager doesn't have time to define everybody's jobs for them, just to verify that the job definitions are reasonable.

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