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Author: Andy Grove (1936-2016), employee #3 and later CEO of Intel. He was the "guy who drove the growth phase of Silicon Valley" and "The Father of OKR Approach to Management."
Overall Summary - High Output Management provides operating advice for large companies, but more specifically managers. Managers are measured and rewarded on output (performance) of their team and the teams they influence. As a manager, you can improve output by increasing your managerial leverage, and you can improve your managerial leverage by reading this book.
- Chapter 1: Intro (This book is for middle managers)
- Chapter 2: Indicators
- Summary - KPIs or metrics are key tools for managers. Output is the most important goal for a manager, so he must regularly measure internal measures (leading indicators) and output to make sure his team is tracking towards their goals.
- Chapter 3: Managerial Leverage
- Summary - Managerial Leverage should be the focus of a manager to perform better (increase output). There are many ways to achieve leverage successfully and many ways that would pose a threat to high productivity/leverage activities.
- Chapter 4: Meetings
- Summary - Meetings are a necessary (and expensive) evil. They should be done properly to not waste anyone's time. Most meetings should be routine (process-oriented) and occasionally ad hoc (mission-oriented) to come to a decision.
- Chapter 5: Decisions
- Summary - Middle managers help bridge technical people and senior leaders with experience through decision-making
- Chapter 6: Planning
- Summary – Planning is a critical management activity. Those involved should have skin in the game (operators) and it should be done through gap analysis. Then use MBO (or OKRs) to put plans into action.
- Chapter 7: Interlude
- Chapter 8: Hybrid Organizations
- Summary – Hybrid organizations are necessary to scale for every organization (exception are conglomerates). Hybrid orgs combine mission driven (decentralized) and functional (centralized) orgs.
- Chapter 9: Dual Reporting
- Summary – Matrix/Dual Reporting organizations are necessary to create a hybrid organization (while challenging, there is a lot of work on how to execute this)
- Chapter 10: Modes of Control
- Summary – Our behavior is driven by free market forces (buy low, sell high), contractual obligations (employment agreements), and cultural values (group>individual). As a manager, you should leverage each of these depending on which is most effective for the situation, not which is the ‘nicest.’
- Chapter 11: Sports Analogy
- Summary – Managers should create environments where people can stretch themselves to be the best they can be.
- Chapter 12: Task Relevant Maturity
- Summary - as a manager you should try and raise a subordinate's task-relevant maturity (TRM) as rapidly as possible to create more managerial leverage; likely at that point the subordinate's motivation is from within from self-actualization. Also, it's difficult to be friends with your subordinates, so might be best avoided.
- Chapter 13: Performance Appraisals (reviews)
- Summary - Performance reviews are the most important task-relevant feedback you can give as a manager. It will influence an employee's performance (positively/negatively) for a long time and they should be done right.
- Chapter 14: Two Difficult Tasks (interviewing and saving good talent)
- Summary - Managers must also do two important, but difficult tasks: interview and talk good performers out of quitting.
- Chapter 15: Compensation as Task-Relevant Feedback
- Summary - utilize and reward high achievers with promotion, and measure them (increasingly) with variable compensation based on performance.
- Chapter 16: Manager Checklist pg221