JESUS, THE ONE-MINUTE MANAGER

o doubt The One-Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson is an all-time best-selling business book. What's the secret of one-minute management? It's based on three simple principles: People are effective and more productive if

1. they are clear about what their manager wants them to do;
   
2. they are praised for doing things right; and
   
3. they are reprimanded for poor behavior or bad performance but are also reassured of their personal worth.
   

Let's examine these principles in more detail and try to see how Jesus has applied them in His earthly life.

One-Minute Goal Setting

It sounds strange that in most organizations, employees and their bosses have two different sets of objectives. Unless they communicate these objectives to each other and mutually agree on some, it follows that someone is sure to become resentful and frustrated. How to avoid this demoralizing attitude? Begin your management process with crystal clear goals and objectives so that everybody can understand from the very start what they are being asked to do and what good behavior is like. To finish the process, write the goals on a sheet of paper "so that both the worker and the boss can read and reread them daily to see if the worker's behavior matches the goals."

Good advice, isn't it? Let's see how Jesus does this one-minute goal setting. After choosing the Twelve Apostles, He starts training them. These twelve Jesus sends out, instructing them as follows: "Do not make your way to gentile territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town; go instead to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, proclaim that the Kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those suffering from virulent skin-diseases, drive out demons" (Mt 10:1-8).

Jesus restricts the Apostles' area of activity to the Jews. He sets this goal for their early apprenticeship. Much later on when they become more "professional", He will charge them to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28:19).

One-Minute Praising

The One-Minute Manager has a motto: "The key to developing people is to catch them doing something right." He then launches a one-minute praising, which comprises three key points:

1. Praise quickly. Praise the person immediately or as close in time to their good behavior as possible. Be liberal with praise. Don't save it for later.
   
2. Be specific. Everybody loves being told exactly what they did well.
   
3. Share feelings. Describe how you feel about what they did. In human relations, what count are feelings, not thoughts.
   

Our Master is lavish with his praise. Upon arrival in the region of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his disciples who they say He is. Simon Peter answers, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus immediately praises him for his faith, "Simon son of Jonah, you are a blessed man! Because it was no human agency that revealed this to you but by my Father in heaven" (Mt 16:13-17).

One-Minute Reprimands

The third principle in the art of one-minute management is to correct poor performance in a way that brings about positive results. Four things should be borne in mind while doing this correcting:

1. Do it now. Reprimand the person as soon after a poor performance as possible. Don't save up reprimands.
   
2. Be specific. Tell them exactly what they did wrong so that they can do something about improving.
   
3. Share feelings. After you have explained what the person did wrong, tell how you feel about it–angry, sad, annoyed, frustrated, disappointed, whatever.
   
4. Tell them how good they are. Tell the person that the behavior you criticize isn't what you expect from them, that you don't expect such behavior in the future, and that they still belong to your good people.
   

This last step is the most important. You should praise people after having reprimanded them because you want them to focus on what they did wrong, not on how you treated them. You want to them to realize that the behavior is a problem, not the person.

Let's see how Jesus corrects His disciples when they begin deviating from His plan. When He explains to them that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life, Peter takes Him aside and begins to rebuke Him. "Heaven preserve you, Lord!" he says, "this must not happen to you." Jesus turns and scolds Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do" (Mt 16:21-23).

Shortly before Jesus has praised Peter, "Blessed are you, Simon"; but now He reproves him, "Get behind me, Satan" because by standing in His appointed way, Peter becomes a stumbling block to the Messiah and a tool of Satan.

During his trips all over the world, Cardinal Nguyễn Văn Thuận has met several Protestant and Catholic businessmen. They assured him that it is possible to live the Gospel in this very modern time and draw from it valuable lessons on good management. After talking with these business CEOs, the cardinal was convinced about that and he himself has drawn from the Gospel fifty lessons for a successful manager. He declares that by studying Jesus' earthly life, we can find in Him and His way of preaching the essential qualities and characteristics of a manager.

In fact Jesus had even lived and applied the principles of management nearly twenty centuries before they were discovered and written down in the management textbooks!

Ðan Quang Tâm