Putting the One Minute Manager to Work

In Putting the One Minute Manager to Work, Ken Blanchard teams up with Robert Lorber, a productivity expert, to give some simple, yet powerful, principles to apply the three steps in The One Minute Manager.

The ABCs of Management:

Activator: a manager is a person who activates behavior in others. (One Minute Goals are an activator.)
Behavior: the behavior or performance the manager elicits from the workers.
Consequence: what the manager does after the behavior or performance.



The ACHIEVE Model:

Ability: does the person have the skills and abilities required to do what you are asking him to do? If not, you must train them before you give them goals.
Clarity: make sure expectations are clear and know exactly what is expected of them.
Help: am I giving the support, training and resources they need to do an excellent job?
Incentive: what’s in it for the person to reach the goal and perform at the required standard?
Environment: am I providing the environment they need to perform at peak levels?
Validity: do you know why you are asking them to do what you are asking them to do?
Evaluation: do they know how they are going to be evaluated?

These are things you must do ahead of time for your team to be successful.

Activators account for 15% of behavior while 85% is the result of follow up. Therefore, focus on the consequences of behavior by spending most of your time giving One Minute Praises and Reprimands


In order to improve performance you must pay the PRICE:

Pinpoint: what are the areas that need to be improved?
Record: you must be able to measure what you want to improve.
Involve: bring everyone connected with the process together to work on setting goals, establishing a monitoring system, defining strategies for coaching, training and resources, and agreeing on standards for evaluation and clarify the incentives that will motivate them to improve performance.
Coach: observe performance and manage the consequences.
Evaluate: summarize what has gone on through the whole process.


The problem is not that systems don’t work but that people don’t work the system. People fail to honor their commitments so the system isn’t given a chance to work. You need to be committed to your commitment. The biggest problem is that people try instead of doing. “Trying is just a noisy of way of doing nothing. “ Don’t keep running around looking for the next fad; follow up on the one you have.