The One Minute Manager Balances Work and Life

By Ken Blanchard, D.W. Edington and Marjorie Blanchard

As the founder of the Situational Business model, which aligns the right leadership style to your people, Ken Blanchard is no stranger to business leadership. His original book The One Minute Manager focused on setting one-minute goals, one minute praising, and one minute re-directs.  Based on the success of the One Minute Manager, Blanchard released various spin-offs of this concept. A pertinent concept to emerge in a later publication is this book:

The One Minute Manager Balances Work and Life

The book tells the story of a remarkably successful manager who focuses so intently on his work that he neglects his physical wellness. This is presented as a conversation between the manager and a professor from a fitness centre at the university. In a very easy read, the discussion travels through the transformation of stress into strain in your life. A list characterising healthy aspects of a person is presented, along with how to adopt a healthy lifestyle and why this is each person’s individual responsibility. 

Combining the human side with the business focus, Blanchard then integrates the value of having healthy employees in the workplace, and how each person’s wellbeing affects the overall success of the organisation. In case the point is not emphasised sufficiently in the dialogue, a fact sheet giving figures and costs of illness to the business is given. 

All jam packed into just over 100 pages, this book gives a clear strategy of how to and more importantly, why to create a balance between your work life and caring for your physical self. The steps are methodical, and the suggestions seem implementable.

Despite the ease of reading, and the logical progression of activities, the book sits on the premise that the reader has the capacity to change their life. Or, that the reader’s company of employment will facilitate the type of changes required to create a healthy individual in a healthy business. For many, the work/life balance does not exist purely out of the number of demands and the inability to cope, regardless how simple it may seem to create.

Overall, this is a nice insight into how ‘In a stress-producing world, where it seems we can’t control very much, we can control our own health and lifestyle. And when we do it makes a difference to both people and organization.’ Pg 117