Product Description

The team-building book for the 21st Century. The author of One Minute Manager proves, with a parable, the guiding notion that "none of us is as smart as all of us". Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager, and his co-authors, do here for teamwork what Gung Ho! does for motivation and Raving Fans for Customer Service. Using the entertaining and easily-digested parable style that made those books so successful, Blanchard et al have a simple but very powerful message to convey. They disclose four management secrets and highlight the key principles of "repeated reward and repetition". The story is about Alan, who gets fired, despite being highly successful, because of his lone wolf mentality. He breaks through his initial resistance to new ways of working by spending some of the new-found time on his hands coaching his son's hockey team, and in the process learns all about the power of teamwork. An inspirational guide to the art of working successfully together (and the power that derives from being part of a team), this is an invaluable read for anyone who has to work with other people, from one of the world's most successful business authors.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50655 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Ken Blanchard is the founder and Chairman of The Ken Blanchard Companies. His One Minute Manager series has sold over thirteen million copies and been translated into more than 25 languages. He has also written or co-authored numerous other books, including Gung Ho!, Big Bucks! and Raving Fans

Customer Reviews

Another great book hitting the messages home in parables
easy to read, exciting and has fully motivated me to direct my small company to improving client services and profitability through team building. we can see that we will get the most out of this by using it in conjuction with his other books ' raving fans' and 'big bucks' about to buy 'gung ho'. Very exicted by these books and can't wait to implement the host of concepts that have come from them. Will let you know later how we got on. Derek Williams

Great Advice for Adult Coachs of Children's Sports Teams!
I found this book to be totally delightful as a model for how to be a better adult coach of a children's team. For many years, I have recommended that all those who want to learn how to be better leaders and managers begin by taking on these coaching chores. This is the first book I have ever seen that successfully captures the important principles of coaching these teams. This book deserves many more than five stars for that accomplishment!

The benefits of that are many. First, the players will get a role model of how to cooperate in order to be more effective. Second, the coaches will learn how to be better leaders, and will be able to use that skill in other areas of their lives. Third, the parents will learn what to encourage their children to do in order to get the most from the team experience, and this will bring parents and their children closer together.

The book's fable boils down to four key principles:

(1) The team needs a shared purpose, values and goals.

(2) Skills need to be developed individually that enhance the team's effectiveness.

(3) Enhance team effectiveness by integrating the individual skills properly.

(4) Repeatedly reward and recognize individuals for taking actions that enhance team effectiveness.

A weakness of the fable is that it doesn't give enough attention to how to achieve the first principle for the typical team. My suggestion is that you poll your players before the first practice to find out what their purposes, goals, and values are. Then hold a meeting to discuss what you learned, and build a consensus from there. My experience has been that 99 percent of the players want to have fun, want to improve, and win at least a few games. Be sure to find out what they think is "fun" because it's often different from what the coaches would assume. Fun usually turns out to be loosely supervised scrimmaging time. When that was the case, I ran a brief such scrimmage at the end of every practice until the last player was picked up by her or his parents.

The other place where I would like to make a suggestion is about recognition. I was a coach for 14 years, and I found that giving individual awards to every player for every game worked very well. Everybody does something right at least once in a game. I would make a note of it, describe the reasons for each award, and hand out a little token at the end of each game for each such award. At the end of the season, the player could turn in these tokens for other forms of recognition. I also shouted out the person's name and award when they won one. That way, each child could be a winner every time we played, even if the team lost. And we did not lose very often. The players loved to win those awards for passing, defense, and offense. Scoring accounted for well less than 10 percent of the awards in my experience.

This book has one of the best exercises I have ever seen for convincing people to work on team skills. You divide the players into the "best" math students and the least good ones. Then you teach the least good ones how to cooperate to win an addition game. You let the "best" math students struggle on their own. The least good ones will win almost every time. That will make quite an impression on the players about the importance of teamwork.

The book is probably intended to encourage teamwork on the job, as well. That translation will be harder for most to make. The work environment is mentioned relatively little in the book. Also, how is the sense of shared purpose, values and goals supposed to emerge? You may know how to do that from your own experience and reading other books, but most people reading this book will be at sea. Also, how do you decide which skills the team needs to work on? That is also something you may already know how to do, but most people do not. And the book doesn't explain. I'm sure you see the problem.

I do think that the book will be somewhat effective in making those who focus on their individual work performance rather than the company performance think twice. The analogy (not used in the book) that may help is of Michael Jordan. As a young player, he focused on his own statistics and the Bulls did not win championships. Later, he worked on making the other players better, and the Bulls won all the time. Phil Jackson, as coach, played an important role in that transition. That example will be known to most basketball fans.

Let me compliment the authors on their fable. I have read their other books, and this one is both more interesting and more heartwarming than the others.

After you have finished reading this book and applying its lessons to a coaching situation with youngsters, I suggest that you read The Goal and The Fifth Discipline to get ideas about how shared purposes, goals, and values can be developed in the workplace. These books will also give you many ideas about the skills that a business team needs in order to be more effective.

By the way, if one of your children or grandchildren is about to start a sport where you will not be coaching, I suggest you give a copy of this book to the coach and ask how you can help the team. He or she will undoubtedly get the message.

May your life be filled with high fives!

Why your star performers can do more harm than good......
This book unlocks the key for any manager/coach who is struggling to maximise the performance of his people even though he/she has star performers who are capable of achieving great results. Blanchard once again uses his story telling technique, using everyday people we have all come across, to demonstrate that teamwork will always bring greater success than uncoordinated stella efforts of a group of individuals. High Five creates a bridge between the philosophy from "Gung Ho!" and "One Minute Manager Builds High Performing Teams" allowing you to build on the experience and knowledge gained from them. Your average workforce, football team, scouts club, etc. can become energised and outstanding after applying Blanchards usual "simple" advice presented to you (on a plate) through-out these pages.....