Book Review of Whale Done by Ken Blanchard

Book Review of Whale Done by Ken Blanchard

I was excited to get through my first Ken Blanchard book. I have read a lot of his principles and being that he is ranked a top 10 leadership guru, it was about time I got to it. Wale Done! is actually also coauthored by Thad Lacinak and Chuck Tompkins (experts in animal training) as well as Jim Ballard who has worked on 3 other books with Blanchard. Whale Done! is a fictional anecdote designed to deliver some uncommon yet amazingly powerful management methods.

So does Whale Done! hit the mark?

I jammed through this book in basically one afternoon and found myself taking less notes due to the fictional nature of the story and the lack of facts, figures, etc. While the reading may be light, I found the core principles outlined in Wale Done! to be truly powerful. It may have dragged on a little but perhaps this was in effort to reinforce the message.

The whole concept of the book is to focus on "catching people doing this right," as apposed to focusing on criticizing them when they do things wrong. This is the method in which Sea World trainers use to train killer whales such as Shamu; thus the title of the book and the ensuing pun.

Core Concepts From Wale Done!

*

"The more attention you pay to a behavior, the more it will be repeated"

*

"If you don't want to encourage poor behavior, don't spend a lot of time on it."

3 Steps for positive relationships

1. Build trust

2. Accentuate the positive

3. When mistakes occur redirect the energy

The ABC's of performance management

* A = Activator - Whatever gets performance going

* B = Behavior - The performance that occurs

* C = Consequence - Your response to the performance

The key is then to focus on what reaction or consequence you are giving rather the outcome is desirable or not. This makes up the 4 C's, or the 4 consequence options, good or bad.

1.

No response

2.

Negative

3.

Redirection

4.

Positive

The