One Minute Manager

The One Minute Manager written by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson is one of the simplest ways to explain on how to plan, organize and reward people. It is not just applicable in large multinational corporations, but also in our daily lives.

If you have a father who likes to keep talking some sense into you, or you teacher who keeps motivating you to study or a boss who keeps telling you to do things in a right manner or a guru who tried to give you a spiritual path of enlightenment (or Moksh); then next one and half hour when you would be reading this book, you will all start realizing that the book just keep emphasizing all those points that have been told to you earlier in more structured manner.

The style of writing the book is to elucidate all the management concepts in the that one has studied and rephasizing on the importance of Goal Setting; giving individuals the opportunity to make their own decisions and reward them for it and repimanding behaviour and not people, if the deviate away from the objective or are unable to achieve it. Simple style of writing makes the concepts very easily understood and it makes you think, if you have diverted away from your path or no. It is inspiration, which will last for sometime, or untill you re-read it or read something else.

In the most simple terms, the three things that the book tells you is that
* Set your goals
* Reward people
* Reprimand people

On Manipulation
Hey, now that does not tell you everything about the book. You can still go ahead and read it. One of my question on manipulation got answered, after reading the book. Always thought that as public relations consultants we manipulate people emotions into achieving desirable goals for the orgnizations that we work for. My take from the book on manipulation is that if we inform everyone of our intentions and the objectives of the organization, then we would not manipulating them or making them think in terms of that we are using them. Manipulation is not just what organization decides to tell his employees and or hides from them, it is also which makes them think as what they want to achieve from the organization.

Question answered
Question that remains answered from the book is that on the concept of reprimanding people, it says that you do not target the people, you target their behaviour. That is something one will definately be very difficult to achieve cause your biases towards a person will surely creep in and the book subtly states that you would want to hold back shouting and getting back at people in more aggressive tone. Again, this also very difficult to achieve, even though knowing and understanding people, if they dont shout at you, they would surely be sarcastic about it.

Book easily available at all book stores at Rs. 125, you dont even wish to buy the pirated version of this book. Read it, get inspired and use the learning cause If you dont blow your own horn; someone else will use it as a spittoon.