• Discussion: Time Management Techniques
  • Watch the video titled “More Management Techniques from The One Minute Manager”
    (6 min 28 s), shown below. From the video, give your opinion on the three (3) approaches discussed in the video (goal setting, praise, and reprimand). Assess how these are or are not applicable to a team setting, and whether this is still pertinent in today’s workforce given that the video is nearly three (3) decades old.
•  Title: Management Techniques from “The One Minute Manager”
  Date: Sep 6, 1982
  Duration: 00:06:28 

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Management Techniques from “The One Minute Manager”

CHRIS WALLACE, anchor:

With me this morning are the authors of an underground, business bestseller.  The book is titled, “One Minute Manager.”  It takes about an hour to read, but is priced high at fifteen dollars.  It was first published privately, and within a year executives from one hundred large corporations bought twenty thousand copies of the book for their colleagues and employees.  Kenneth Blanchard, a management consultant, and Spencer Johnson, a medical doctor, are here to demonstrate some of the one-minute techniques that they claim can greatly improve management skills.  Good morning on this Labor Day, good to have you with us. 

Mr. SPENCER JOHNSON, M.D.:  Good morning.

Mr. KENNETH BLANCHARD:  Good morning, Chris. 

WALLACE:  What is the secret of the one-minute manager?

Mr. BLANCHARD:  There’s actually three of them uh–Chris.  There’s one-minute goal setting, one-minute praising, and one-minute reprimands.  The one-minute goal setting really starts the whole process because it’s a way to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing, write it on a single sheet of paper, check you’re behavior against your goals to make sure that you’re actually doing what you say is important.

WALLACE: Alright.  Uh–why one minute? What’s so special about one minute?

Mr. JOHNSON:  Well there’s really nothing special about one minute.  In fact, most these things take less than one minute.  But, most of us don’t have enough time to get all the things done we want to get done, and we’ve designed a very simple way to get results very quickly.  One-minute goals, for example, are things that you can read in one minute.  So every morning, when you take a look at your list of things you want to accomplish, you look at your behavior, and you look at your goals–for example, you look at your appointment calendar, you see if your behavior matches your goals.  Often times you’ll see in your appointment calendar they don’t match you’re goals.  Most of us forget it, but if you can read it in a minute, you’re apt to read them every morning. 

WALLACE:  Alright.  You also talk about one-minute praisings, and you say that praise is very important to get people to work hard.

Mr. JOHNSON:  They key to developing good people is to catch them doing something right.  How often in this country do we catch each other doing something wrong?  Almost nobody catches someone doing something right, and its very powerful.

WALLCE:  Alright, why don’t the two of you demonstrate for us a one-minute praising.

Mr. JOHNSON:  A one-minute praising. 

WALLACE:  I think we have a clock on you.  Here it is…

Mr. JOHNSON:  Alright, let’s see. 

WALLACE:  Go.

Mr. JOHNSON:  Uh–Doctor Blanchard uh–you were supposed to turn in your report on Thursday to me and you uh–Thursday at three o’clock like you do every week.  And I want you to know that you turned in your report Thursday at one o’clock beautifully written, gave me the opportunity to read it in the afternoon, I was well prepared for my Friday morning meeting. 

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Good…

Mr. JOHNSON:  I want you to know how good…quiet…I want you to know how good that makes me feel.  I feel good and I was relieved.  I was well prepared and I just want to let you know I appreciate it. 

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Appreciate it.

WALLACE:  Alright that only–that only took about a half of a minute.  What were you guys doing there?

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Well what you–what you saw is that really…

WALLACE:  I mean besides the fact that you obviously were praising him.

Mr. BLANCHARD:  There’s really six parts of the praising.  The first thing is that the manager is honest.  Second, he is very specific.  He told exactly what I did.  Uh–thirdly, what he’s doing is sharing his feelings, how he felt about what he–what I did not what he thought about it.  Fourth uh–he really kind of pauses for a minute, lets me kind of feel how the thing is, and then what he does is he tells me again how good he feels about it.  It’s very, very specific steps. 

Mr. JOHNSON:  It sound so simple, but literally uh–there are chemicals in the blood, endorphins and enkephalins.  They’ve done studies where people that have good thoughts, who are being praised, those blood chemicals raise.  Their energy raises.  People that feel good about themselves produce good results.

WALLACE:  So you say the–the manager who lets good work kind of go ignored, he’s going to be the gruff, tough type…

Mr. JOHNSON:  Yes.

WALLACE:  He’s–he’s really not doing himself any favors in terms of not getting full productivity.

Mr. JOHNSON:  Good point.  In fact, we have more fun in a one-minute manager seminar.  We use–we take that typical, now that’s the American manager, he believes that, that’s how we’re all taught.  He…

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Doesn’t pay any attention.

Mr. JOHNSON:  He’s a good punisher.  And when things go well his attitude is, well that’s what they’re paid for; that’s–they’re just doing their job.  And they don’t realize it when you catch people doing something right, they knock themselves out.  In this country, we have s–a significant productivity problem. 

WALLACE:  Alright, now let’s look at the one minute reprimand…

Mr. JOHNSON:  Alright.

WALLACE:  …which isn’t going to be so pleasant. 

Mr. JOHNSON:  No.

WALLACE:  Again, the two of you. 

Mr. JOHNSON:  This is not pleasant, and this should be reserved.  Before we do this I want to set this up and say you don’t reprimand learners.  It just immobilizes them.  You don’t reprimand people that you’re sure don’t have a skill.  If you’re not sure why they’re not performing well, you take them back to one-minute goals.  You look at your goals again; do you understand what’s expected of you? 

Mr. BLANCHARD:  In other words you forget punishment as a training technique. 

Mr. JOHNSON:  You catch them doing something right, and you have to do that fairly frequently.  If that’s not–if they’ve demonstrated they have the skill but they have an attitude problem then they are in for a one-minute reprimand. 

WALLACE:  Alright…

Mr. JOHNSON:  It is not pleasant.  It’s very brief. 

WALLACE:  Gentlemen I’m going to reprimand you, get on with the one-minute reprimand. 

Mr. JOHNSON:  Alright. Uh–Ken, you know that your report is supposed to be in Thursdays at one o’clock.  This is Friday morning, it still isn’t in, this is the second week it’s happened.  And I want you to know I am annoyed. 

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Mhm.

Mr. JOHNSON:  Annoyed!  I also want you to know you’re better than that.  Last week you turned them in on time, it was well written, I need you, you’re one of our best people.  Let’s not let this happen again.  You are good, your last behavior was not. 

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Mhm.

WALLACE:  A one-minute reprimand in thirty seconds.  Again, what…what’s the point, what’d you do?

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Okay, what–what happened was again he was honest, he was specific, he told me how he felt about it.  And then what he did is he kind of paused, let the thing settle in, and then the most important part of the reprimand is that he made sure that I knew that I was good and it was the behavior that he was angry with not me as a total performer.  That’s really so key. 

WALLACE:  Let me just ask you one last quick thing.  You know, if–if you make it this mechanized aren’t I going to know as an employee, oh gee here my boss is he’s going to give me the one-minute reprimand. 

Mr. JOHNSON:  See I’m–yeah I’m really glad you asked that question because we learned that after we wrote the first edition of the book.  A businessman who began using “The One Minute Manager” did something very smart they told us about.  Instead of just trying it, without telling your people what you’re going to do, which is very suspect, is manipulating, its powerful but nobody wants to be manipulated or felt manipulated.  What they’ve done is they give a copy of “The One Minute Manager” to everyone that reports to them and says this is what I’m going to do, this is why I’m doing it, they tell them upfront and it becomes it’s us…

Mr. BLANCHARD:  Then you get rid…

Mr. JOHNSON:  We’re working together. 

Mr. BLANCHARD:  …you get rid of the whole concept of manipulation.  You know what’s happening; I know what’s happening.  And everybody becomes a one-minute manager, which is really what we want. 

Mr. JOHNSON:  The other thing, Chris, quickly is that you touch the person to let them know that I’m on your side, I want you to do well, that’s why I’m giving you the feedback. 

WALLACE:  Ken Blanchard, Spencer Johnson, thank you both for coming in.  You must believe in–in what you’re writing because you’ve given a money-back guarantee on you’re book.  So, uh–that–that’s real confidence.  The name of the book again, “One Minute Manager.”  Thank you.