One Minute Entrepreneur, 2nd half

Authored by Ken Blanchard of other “One Minute” books
enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz 4/09

· Priorities continued
“His most-significant Other”. Ken seems to be really putting that into practice. He spoke more about his wife during the conference, than about his job. He seems completely enthusiastic about his life, and has accepted the bad things that happened to him recently (loss of his house during the fires in San Diego) without too much pain, because he has a clearly defined set of priorities.

· People:
o Entrepreneurship is about Mentorship: you don’t have to do everything by yourself, you just have to send positive energy and a lot of motivation to get people to help you. In the story of the book, it is clear that the entrepreneurs manage to find the advice of the right people at the right moment. Being able to ask for help appears in this case to be their main success factor
o You need to be a Servant Leader: You have to empower your people to take decisions (bottom up approach, rather than top down).

A leader can’t be there during all the interactions with a customer, so he has to Empower his employees to make the right decisions during the Moments of Truth of the customer relationship with the company. It reminded me of what “A Lesson on Customer Service” by Tony Hsieh says. It’s about creating & communicationg a strong culture, so that your employees do the right thing without being obsessed by processes & rigid rules.

o You need to Help your people to do Well: As a professor, Ken Blanchard never understood the need for a normal distribution, and mentions that nobody recruits according to a normal distribution, which is really true! He advocates that in companies, the role of a manager is to help his people do well (good performance), rather than grading them. Therefore, evaluations shouldn’t be a surprise, but only a collection of ongoing discussions toward improvement.

Comments: This book is well worth reading for many other insights you’ll gain. What could you add?