High Output Management

My career coach recommended this, and I’m glad I picked it up. While it’s an older title, the core concepts and frameworks are still incredibly relevant. Grove’s approach to management is practical, clear, and surprisingly applicable to modern teams. A worthwhile read for anyone in leadership or aiming to grow into it.

High Output Management provides a comprehensive overview of a managers role and purpose. The book focuses around a central thesis that a manager's objective is to increase the output of the work of those below and around him. A manager should therefore choose high-leverage activities that have a multiplicative impact on the overall output of his subordinates and peers. For example, providing clear direction to a team may only require a small amount of the manager's time, but yields tremendous value in terms of the output of the team.This book is great for both new and experienced managers since it provides valuable frameworks and strategies for all kinds of common managerial tasks. Below are the core topics covered in this book:* Delegation - In order to maximize leverage, a manager needs an optimal number of subordinates to whom he can delegate to. Successful delegation provides lots of leverage, whereas poor delegation ends up netting no leverage since it turns into errors and micro-management.* Meetings - Meetings are extraordinarily expensive to a company. There are three types of recurring meetings: one-on-one's, staff meetings, and operational reviews. Each of these meetings should have a clear framework for maximizing value and minimizing time-waste. There are also one-off meetings centered around making a particular decision - such meetings should be especially carefully planned and executed since they are often scheduled ad-hoc without a clear purpose and with too many participants.* Making decisions - When making decisions, there's a fragile power dynamic that needs to be carefully handled. Managers should facilitate free and open discussion amongst all parties until a consensus emerges. In cases where a consensus does not emerge naturally, the manager should push for a decision.* Dual reporting - Dual reporting is inevitable in most large organizations. Consider advertising: should each division of a company decide and pursue its own advertising campaign, or should all of it be handled through a single corporate entity? The optimum solution calls for the use of dual reporting where each division controls most of their own advertising messages but a coordinating body of peers consisting of the various divisional marketing managers chooses the advertising agency and creative direction.* Motivating employees - Our society respects someone's throwing himself into sports, but anybody who works very long hours is regarded as sick or a workaholic. Imagine how productive our country would become if managers could endow all work with the characteristics of competitive sports? Eliciting peak performance means going up against something or somebody, and turning the workplace into a playing field where subordinates become athletes dedicated to performing at the limit of their capabilities.* Performance reviews - Performance reviews are easily mistaken as simply a way to assess performance and evaluate compensation. The fundamental goal of a performance review is to improve the subordinates performance. A review will influence a subordinate's performance for a long time, which makes the activity one of the manager's highest-leverage activities. Thus great care needs to be taken in the preparation and delivery of a performance review.

I'm a Vice President at a small public company, and I've been managing people for over ten years, and have an MBA from a top ranked business school. Still, I wish I had read this book when I first started managing people.This certainly appears to me to be a book written by Andy Grove for his own managers at Intel, and I found it interesting to see how he thinks about management. Not surprisingly, he has a very pragmatic, operational view of what good managers do, and he presents a comprehensive guide for all the basics. His whole orientation is that managers are responsible for the total output of their teams, and his focus is always on accomplishments and outputs, not activities.Topics that are included- Looking at your operations and finding the bottle necks- How to monitor and check your processes for high quality and high output- How managers should spend their time, run team meetings, and stay in touch with subordinates through one on ones- How to hire, coach, and provide feedback to build your teamWhat you won't find in this book- How to think about strategy- Competitive advantage- Building a brand- Competitive analysisThe book has been around for a while, and it's not a trendy management book. There is no new catch phrase or research based on fMRI or paradigm shift. There is nothing sexy or trendy. But it is a very solid introduction from someone who has proven to be among the best at managing. This is one of the great CEOs of our times, and I brilliant mind, passing along what he wants his managers to know. I think that many managers could vastly improve their performance if they studied and mastered the basics covered here rather than the nifty new concept from the latest HBR.

I'm an avid reader, but this is the first book that has moved me to write a review. In summary it's brilliant and absolutely still 100% relevant.After finishing reading through the book, I immediately started re-reading it. In the forward by Ben Horowitz, he writes"First, in as little as one sentence, it lucidly explains concepts that require entire books from lesser writers. Second, it consistently uncovers brand-new management ideas or finds new insights into old standards. Finally, while most management books attempt to teach basic competency, High Output Management, teaches the reader how to be great."I think that's a really good summary. The first sentence is worth highlighting though. This book contains a ton of wisdom in 230 pages. If there's a flaw with the book, it's that it's too dense with wisdom. It's like an amazing teacher has condensed a full two-year Stanford MBA program into one small book. It is NOT a page turner (though he's a fine writer). There is so much in each page that you need to take breaks to think over what you just read before moving on.Regarding the forward, you can skip it the first time through. I think it's more useful as a summary review after reading through the book once.

"High Output Management" masterfully explains the mechanisms behind productivity, leverage, and output. It distills concepts from some of the best books on the subject, notably resembling the clarity of "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker. The book provides a straightforward and comprehensive guide on how to approach and enhance performance, making complex ideas easily accessible.