Customer Reviews

Empowerment Takes More than a Minute

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If you are a new manager or a manager with outdated skills, this novel little book will have an absolutely positive impact if you follow the simple three keys to success. The book is based on a story of a real or contrived (who knows) manager and his adventure in discovering the importance of empowerment and why his technics have failed with his employees. Within the first week of reading this book, I used one of the exercises that was recommended. This simple exercise showed me that my employees are infact on track to becoming empowered. If your employees are struggling to complete everyday work because of a motivational problem instead of an ability problem, this book will show you how to get your team to respond. After you read this book, you may discover that the problem is supervisory and not employee related. However, this read gave me ideas of how to correct both!

The author of The One Minute Manager switches gears and tells you not to manage your employees minute-by-minute. Instead, Ken Blanchard, along with John P. Carlos, and Alan Randolph, advocates and explains the notion of empowerment - giving your employees the information and authority to act and make decisions on their own, within a structured set of organizational goals and values. Presented as the story of a turnaround manager getting tutored by an empowerment mentor, the book establishes the fundamentals of the (now ubiquitous) theory of empowerment in a conversational and enjoyable style. We [...] recommend this quick, informative read, which will expand your management horizons in only a few short minutes.

If the authors are right about how they defined `empowerment' and the three essential keys for achieving true empowerment, then leaders, managers, and employees of all organizations should read, discuss, and decide to apply this easy-to-read book's lessons. I am convinced this book has the potential to lead organizations to unheard of levels of effectiveness and productivity.

In typical Ken Blanchard fashion, the authors taught their important lessons through a logical and believable fictional story based on their years of research and experience. The story "guides readers step-by-step through one manager's struggle to discover the three essential keys to empowerment. By following the manager's odyssey to the Land of Empowerment, readers discover that they can take the same journey, which, like any heroic journey, is filled with paradox, challenge, and fitful stops and starts."

The authors defined empowerment as not giving power to people, but releasing the knowledge, experience, and motivation they already have. They then identified and explained the three essential keys for achieving true empowerment:
1. Share information with everyone
2. Create autonomy through boundaries
3. Replace hierarchical thinking with self-managed teams
These simple definitions are deceptively powerful when teamed with patience and persistence. I found the title of this book was most appropriate.

From my experience, the term `empowerment' is frequently spoken, largely misunderstood, and rarely applied to its maximum extent. This book took the mystery out of the concept of empowerment and left me with a great appreciation for what true empowerment is and how it can be achieved. I am excited about what it could release in me and others who read it.

The authors use a story format to explain the nature and process of achieving empowerment. The focus is on sharing information with everyone, creating autonomy through boundaries, and replacing the old hierarchy with self-directed teams. Clear and concise.

Blanchard has done it again! For all those managers who bought into the "empower your employees at all costs" paradigm only to find out that it was the surest way to the chaos theroy of management, Blanchard brings sanity back to the process. He defines the empowerment process in terms that are easy to understand and utilize. Blanchard describes a process, not unlike fly fishing, were you offer your direct reports power to do the things they need to do to be effective and productive (letting the fishing line out), while at the same time setting boundaries for their new found empowered behavior by reeling them in a bit at a time, checking to see how they are doing, and then letting them fly again. Recently empowered employees need to learn how to use their new found independence and Blanchard stresses that this needs to be done in increments and with great care. This book couple with Blanchard's LEADERSHIP TAKES MORE THAN A MINUTE and THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER MEETS THE MONKEY makes a truly wonderful trilogy of books for any manager. They should be on every manager's must read list.

In the audio tape, the reader tells stories of Marvin the old style manager. The stories are so contrived that they get in the way of the message. I have found myself stuggling to want to hear the second half of the tape.

Empowered employees are powerful, but I don't expect to be belittled by the goofy stories told in this tape. It's not the readers fault, the material is weak. The book may present a better approach, but I would recomment you look somewhere else for information on empowering employees.

In the modern business world of global competition and rapid change, the traditional management model of delaying decisions while the facts filter up the hierarchy to a manager simply does not work. Even with modern communication modes such as e-mail, the delays in transfer and response are too great to allow for decisions to be made quickly enough. The solution to this is to empower the employees of first contact to make the daily decisions that keep the action going.
Blanchard and the co-authors once again demonstrate their managerial expertise in this book, where they describe the tactics that one applies in empowering people to make the decisions. All of it can be summed up in one word, "courage." It takes courage on the part of managers to allow the employees to make the decisions and courage on the part of the employees to be willing to make the decisions. Honest errors will be made and they must be treated as learning opportunities rather than as grounds for ridicule or termination.
It is an astonishing fact that despite all the evidence to the contrary, many organizations still follow the rigid hierarchy with a command and control mechanism that reduces the actions of employees to that of worker drones and reduces organizational potential. Fortunately, it is possible to recover from this affliction and in this book Blanchard et. al. show you how to do it.

This book is extremely simple, well written and a very fast read. It provides a few key principles that, if you give them some thought, will immediately become clear whether or not you are using them effectively already. Most of us are good at some, but not all.

Changing a company culture is one of the most challenging activities there is, and we can become disappointed and cynical very easily in the process. This is one of the tools that will get you "over the hump" in the process.

Check it out! Go Blanchard!

As usual, I am never disappointed by Ken Blanchard's books and tapes. The subject of empowerment is brought home successfully and I walked away from this easy read with more insight than before.

I also suggest a related top-selling book that has as one of its themes empowerment: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills"

This is a very easy read. The format was entirely different than I expected and initially I was unimpressed. The format proved extremely useful and made the book simple to reference