Book review: The New One Minute Manager

If I learned one thing from this book, that would be:

To become a one minute manager, deal with your team the way you deal with your dog. I always hated stereotypical organisations and employees/managers dilemma… I always regarded it as the “new slavery”.

I worked in organisations for many years, I’ve been an entry level staff, I’ve been in a supervisory roles, and I became a manager myself. I formed up a concept of demolishing organisations, taking every single policy and burning it to the ground…. I believe in manager-less, limit-less, boundary-less organisations where people work for themselves, accounted for their production and their inputs, and get paid for that….

An organisation where employees become an external contractors; they don’t have to be forced into a “culture” or being controlled by someone, they just finish what you want you hired them to do, and leave to live their own lives once they finish the inputs.

This is my vision and someday I will make it happen, it’s crazy enough idea but I think it will work.

I know I drifted away in my review of the book, the book itself isn’t bad, it promotes a healthy managerial behavior that if applied, would actually benefit the organisation, and the people within the team — but, that would be possible only in very ideal reality, maybe in a different universe.

The way businesses are run, is far more complex than that…. Team members are not all coming in a similar blocks, there are so many different personalities out there, and dealing with everyone the same way won’t work, believe me. I know what I am talking about..

There are people who get it straight away that you won’t even need a minute, there are others who need countless hours of your time to understand a basic concept.

So long story short, I appreciate what is delivered by this book, but I think it would only work in very few situations, however it won’t be effective in so so so many others.

P.S: This book would become a hit if if was entitled: “How to take care of your pets and make them loyal to you in just one minute” ;)