Ken Blanchard’s High Five is a blast from the past. It was published in 2001, on the heels of several popular management books like Raving Fans and The One Minute Manager and Gung Ho! They are all based around “common sense” ideas that might not be terribly common practice. The afterward explicitly says as much, presenting a couple drawings that tie the ideas together. All of them are intended to be easy to read and pick up the key concepts.
High Five is about creating teams that perform at top levels, and there are plenty of folksy aphorisms peppered throughout the book. It uses a framing of coaching a 10-12 year old boys hockey team as the main framework, though there are several examples where they apply the concepts into business. I liked the overall flavor of the book, though I wondered how often they were going to hammer home the main points - particularly in a book that one can read in an hour or two.
Given the emphasis on hockey, the main concepts were distilled into the acronym PUCK, though it was a little awkward
P - Provide a clear purpose, values and vision. All around a compelling story of why the team exists and what it is about. While this seems obvious, how many teams are clear on this - a common goal that everyone can articulate AND a common set of operating principles that will bring them along. (It’s an interesting exercise to ask team members what is the goal of the team - and then see how each ends up focusing on different elements that need to be delivered without being clear. Imagine what happens then when the work of the team starts - what gets priority depends upon whose goal is front of mind, rather than the common goal driving the discussion.)
U - Unleashing and developing skills. In the context of the boys’ hockey team this was around developing the skills of the sport. In the context of business teams, it is around developing familiarity and comfort with everyone’s skills. Not everyone should be able to do all the jobs, but the familiarity and “standing in the shoes” really helps the team members see how the parts contribute to the whole. This discussion also emphasized the idea that even the “great” players can always learn and develop more. Or maybe by teaching one another we end up learning more about our own roles.
C - Creating team power. This was one topic that came up over and over. None of us is as smart as all of us. It is the collective drive and skill of the team that really brings about amazing results. A “star” player can only take you so far if the alignment and value of all the members isn’t appreciated.
K - Keeping the accent on the positive. This is maybe one of the hardest and easiest at the same time. We all know when we’ve failed or fallen down on the job - and sometimes we need coaching around those kinds of improvements. But so much more improvement comes from reinforcing and doing well in the areas where we can bring more and more to the effort - to the team. In the case of the story, they linked the importance of recognizing and rewarding the right behaviors. And this seems to play out in the larger sense too - what you focus on and what you reward are what you will get more of. If you focus on the “bad”, you end up getting more of that. But when you focus on the positive, you get more of that. It crowds out the occasional negative thing that happens. Interesting to think about this in the context of organizations which are heavily focused on being “perfect” by removing all errors.
Cutting close to my own style, there was a discussion of people who focus on the process so much that they end up forgetting why they are doing it. Organizations or people “can get so focused on beautiful processes that they forget what they’re really supposed to be doing. Getting it right starts to get in the way of getting it done.” (p. 38)