Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Review of Instaread Summary, Analysis & Review of Ken Blanchard’s and Spencer Johnson's "The New One Minute Manager"



Review of
Instaread Summary, Analysis & Review of Ken Blanchard’s and Spencer Johnson's The New One Minute Manager 

Five out of five stars
 The original book, “The One Minute Manager” was justifiably a bestseller as it contained some of the simplest and most effective advice in managing a team. The messages are presented in the form of a parable and the base principle is that both positive and negative messages from managers should be short, effective and frequent.
 From this summary, it appears that this book is not much of an update. This is explicitly stated in the first two sentences of the “Author’s Style” section.
“The ‘New One Minute Manager’ is a 2015 update of the 1982 book ‘The One Minute Manager.’ It follows much of the same plot as the original but updates the principles in unspecified ways.”
Furthermore, the context of the parable has not shifted much from the original book. This is demonstrated by the following two additional sentences from the “Author’s style” section.
“While the narrative may be updated from the 1982 version, the technology and workplace of the setting are not noticeably modern. The characters have screen savers on their computers and mostly communicate over the phone.”
 I consider this to be a fatal weakness of the book. In the modern world, people use email, Twitter and other social media outlets to communicate with workers. For some it is the dominant form of communication. To ignore all of that in the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century is foolish. The author of the summary is to be commended for pointing out this flaw. 

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