High Output Management

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3 Sentence Summary

Andrew Grove teaches us through his experience as CEO of Intel how to manage and lead an organization. This book is a guide for how to measure productivity, conduct meetings, make decisions, plan ahead, organize resources, motivate performance, coach improvement, promote success, train potential, and retain high output individuals. It’s a handbook for business owners, entrepreneurs, and managers of all kinds, filled with practical advice for creating and managing highly productive teams.

5 Key Takeaways

1. The output of a manager is the sum of the output of her team.
2. Meetings are a medium through which a manager’s work gets done.
3. Create an environment where motivated people can flourish.
4. Turn the workplace into a playing field. Transform subordinates into athletes.
5. Training is one of the highest leverage activities you can perform.

High Output Management Summary

Introduction

• The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence.
• Great work is not accomplished by individuals, but rather by a team of people working together.
• As a general rule, you have to accept that no matter where you work, you are not an employee – you are in a business with one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses. There are millions of others all over the world, picking up the pace, capable of doing the same work that you can do and perhaps more eager to do it.
• Be plugged in. Try new ideas. Make sure what you are doing is actually valuable and worth paying for.

The Basics of Production

• How do we produce something in the most efficient way possible? By designing our processes to facilitate flow through the entire system.
• Design around the limiting step.
• Fix problems at the lowest-value step in the process.

Managing the Breakfast Factory

• Any measurement is better than none. But a good indicator is one that measures output, not simply the activity involved.
• What you measure should be a physical, countable thing.
• Increase productivity through simplification. Reduce the number of steps involved.
• The major problem to be overcome is defining what the output of such work is or should be.

Managerial Leverage

• Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information. Writing the report is important; reading it often is not.
• If you want good information, go and see what’s going on for yourself.
• Values are communicated by what you do.
• Our own time is the one absolutely finite resource we each have. It’s allocation in the use, therefore, deserve considerable attention. How you handle your own time is, in my view, the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader.
• Delegation without follow-through is abdication.
• You should move toward the active use of your calendar, taking the initiative to fill the holes between the time-critical events with non-time-critical though necessary activities. You should say ‘no’ at the outset to work beyond your capacity to handle.
• A manager should carry a raw material inventory in terms of projects…this inventory should consist of things you need to do but don’t need to finish right away.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Do what has worked before.
• Standardize procedures, but continue to think critically about what approaches we use.

Meetings

• A meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed. That means we should not be fighting their very existence, but rather using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible.
• One-on-ones should be an hour-long, at the desk of the subordinate, and held more frequently with less experienced team members.
• Always take notes, even though you may never look at them again. It keeps your mind focused. Active listening.
• Regard attendance at the meeting for what it is, work.
• Before calling a meeting, ask yourself, what am I trying to accomplish? Then ask, is a meeting necessary? Or desirable? Or justifiable? Don’t call a meeting if all the answers aren’t yes.
• Eight people should be the absolute cut off. Decision-making is not a spectator sport, because onlookers get in the way of what needs to be done.
• If the meeting was worth having, then it’s worth the effort to summarize what happened with meeting notes.

Decisions, Decisions

• Work hard to frame the terms of the decision that needs to be made with utter clarity.
• An organization does not live by its members agreeing with one another at all times about everything. It lives instead by people committing to support the decisions and the moves of the business.
• Self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking inappropriate action, or being overruled.

Six questions to ask before making a decision:

1. What decision needs to be made?
2. When does it have to be made?
3. Who will decide?
4. Who will need to be consulted prior to making the decision?
5. Who will ratify or veto the decision?
6. Who will need to be informed of the decision?

Planning

• Today’s gap represents a failure of planning sometime in the past.
• Remember that by saying “yes” – to projects, a course of action, or whatever – you are implicitly saying “no” to something else.

The Sports Analogy

• When someone isn’t doing their job, there can be only two reasons. Either they are incapable or unmotivated.
• To determine which, ask, “Could this person do it if their life depended on it?”
• Motivation has to come from within somebody. Accordingly, all a manager can do is create an environment in which motivated people can flourish.
• If we are to create and maintain a high degree of motivation we must keep some needs unsatisfied at all times.
• If we want to cultivate achievement-driven motivation, we need to create an environment that values and emphasizes output.
• The best way to get that spirit into the workplace is to establish some rules of the game and ways for employees to measure themselves. Eliciting peak performance means going up against something or somebody.
• Turning the workplace into a playing field can turn our subordinates into athletes dedicated to performing at the limits of their capabilities – the key to making our team consistent winners.

Task Relevant Maturity

• One managerial approach may not be equally effective in all conditions.
• A manager should always monitor his subordinate’s tasks close enough to avoid surprises.
• Supervisors are responsible for teaching their subordinates.
• Training is one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform.

Performance Reviews

• Performance reviews are the single most important form of task-relevant feedback we as supervisors can provide.
• They are used to improve performance by identifying what skills we need to improve and/or to intensify motivation.
• Managers are called to judge performance, not just see and record it.
• Three L’s to keep in mind when delivering a review: Level, listen and leave yourself out.

Interviewing and Promotion

• Don’t waste time. Interrupt the interviewee if they ramble off topic.
• Do they have the technical skills to perform the job? (What do they know)
• How well have they applied their skills and technical knowledge to their job in the past? (What did they do with what they know)
• What’s the reason for any discrepancy between their capabilities and their performance?
• What are their operational values?
• Peter Principle: People are promoted to the level of their incompetence.

More Like High Output Management

If you enjoyed High Output Management, then check out these similar book summaries:

• The Effective Manager
• Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re The Only Thing
• Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars
• The Effective Executive
• Rework

Blog Posts Inspired By High Output Management

These are the posts I’ve written that expound upon the key ideas presented in High Output Management.

• A 6-question framework for making group decisions