Book Reviews

The One Minute Manager Builds High Performance Teams

By Kenneth Blanchard, Donald Carew & Eunice Parisi-Carew

Reviewed by Steve Buchwald, CIRM

How often are you involved in group meetings? According to the One Minute Manager, "most managers spend less than 30% of their time directly supervising their people individually". Does this apply to you? In fact, most managers spend most of their time in group meetings dealing with their people or with other people directly or indirectly involved in their current task. Now ask yourself how much training have you received in managing people and how much training have you received in building successful well-motivated teams? If you're like most managers, your answer will be not much. Well, that was the case for me when I was recently asked to facilitate the forming of a highly important cycle time reduction team at one of our operating units.

I will say that in my consulting experience, I have had ample opportunity to lead teams and I felt that I did a fairly decent job of it. However, this assignment was too important to do by the seat of my pants. Luckily, APICS came to my rescue. When I checked our library for a book to read for my book review, I hit pay dirt when I found this book.

"Never before in the history of the workplace has the concept of teamwork been more important to the functioning of successful organizations." This message, which the authors wrote in the book's introduction, is still apropos. Published in 1990 in the United States, the ideas and suggestions contained in this book are still current. They are as important, if not more important today than ever before. Yet we still don't do enough to train our managers in this area. However, this book is a great start. If you have never been exposed to any of the One Minute books this is a great place to begin and if you have experienced the One Minute series, this is a great addition. At less that 120 pages, this small but powerful book can be exposed in less than 3 hours. A small investment for such a huge gain.

The book begins with a discussion about the limitations of the One Minute Manager technique as being too "one-on-one" oriented and too concentrated on control. It goes on to say that "we need managers who can foster teamwork, facilitate group problem solving and focus the group's attention and enthusiasm on continuous improvement." From that introduction , the authors explain how all groups move through four stages of development on their way to becoming a high performance team. The stages are: Orientation (p. 39), Dissatisfaction (p. 46), Resolution (p. 64), and Production (p. 57). Next, the authors explain how an effective leader must be able to diagnose which stage the group is in (p. 66), must be able to adapt his leadership style to that stage (p. 74 & 79), and must be able to empower the team (p. 84 &93). It is hard to believe that there is still more. The book has a team rating form and many charts to make sure you know how to apply the ideas.

However, to be perfectly honest, as good as this book is it will not work for everyone. Some of the ideas are very soft, and not everyone will be able to know what to do when. Remember, leadership is part training and part instinct. Nonetheless, get a copy as soon as you can and see if it can help you. Even if you are not a team leader, it can't hurt to get a copy, read it and pass it on to the team leader. The investment will be well worth it! This is a great book and I can't emphasize enough that everyone should give it a try. In conclusion, high performance teams can 'PERFORM". They have Purpose, Empowerment, Relationships & Communication, Flexibility, Optimal Performance, Recognition & Appreciation, and Morale (p. 21). This book can help you achieve that state.

Good reading!