A Review: The New One Minute Manager

The New One Minute Manager
by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

I rarely read a book more than once (unless it’s set in Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space Universe), but this is the third time I’ve read the New One Minute Manager, and It’s not just because it’s a quick and easy book to read, with clear, concise digestible advice.

Many years ago, when I ran my own business, I was working with the conflicting practice of asking my employees to assume that everything was ok unless I said otherwise, and the desire for them to be happy in their work. This meant that most of the time feedback was sparse and, when it did come, it was predominantly negative - although I didn’t operate a blame culture.

The New One Minute manager has quite a different approach. Now that I’m leading a team again, I read it through to remind myself of the approach. I’m currently experimenting with the One Minute Goals in a software engineering context. I use something similar to the One Minute Praisings already and the book has reminded me to structure how I give feedback, generally and for the individual, by applying the One Minute Redirect.

And of course, I’ve also written out the details of the secrets and stuck them to my wall.

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