High Output Management

by Andrew S. Grove

send out an agenda that clearly states the purpose of the meeting, as well as what role e...

to play to get the desir...

Once the meeting is over, the chairman must nail down exactly what happened by sending out minutes that summarize the discussion that occurred, the decision made, and the actions to be taken.

The minutes should also be as clear and as specific as possible,

telling the reader what is to be done, who is to do it, and when.

Ideally, a manager should never have to call an ad hoc, mission-oriented meeting, because if all runs smoothly, everything is taken care of in regularly scheduled, process-oriented meetings.

routine meetings will take care of maybe 80 percent of the problems and issues; the remaining 20 percent will still have to be dealt with in mission-oriented meetings.

the real sign of malorganization is when people spend more than 25 percent of their time in ad hoc mission-oriented meetings.

Issue debt or equity?

If your business depends on what it knows to survive and prosper, what decision-making mechanism should you use? The key to success is again the middle manager, who not only is a link in the chain of command but also can see to it that the holders of the two types of power mesh smoothly.

ideal model of decision-making in a know-how business.

The first stage should be free discussion, in which all points of view and all aspects of an issue are openly welcomed and debated.

The next stage is reaching a clear decision. Again, the greater the disagreement about the issue, the more important becomes the word clear. In fact, particular pains should be taken to frame the terms of the decision with utter clarity.

Finally, everyone involved must give the decision reached by the group full support.

This does not necessarily mean agreement:

Another desirable and important feature of the

model is that any decision be worked out and reached at the lowest competent level.

Thus, ideally, decision-making should occur in the middle ground, between reliance on technical knowledge on the one hand, and on the bruises one has received from having tried to implement and apply such knowledge on the other.

it is very important that everybody there voice opinions and beliefs as equals throughout the free discussion stage, forgetting or ignoring status differentials.

In our business we have to mix knowledge-power people with position-power people daily, and together they make decisions that could affect us for years to come.

status symbols most certainly do not promote the flow of ideas, facts, and points of view.

we need to think about what keeps decision-making from happening smoothly along the lines we’ve advocated.

The most common problem is something we call the peer-group syndrome.

the problem was resolved in very short order. We named this the peer-plus-one approach,

Peers tend to look for a more senior manager, even if he is not the most competent or knowledgeable person involved, to take over and shape a meeting.

members of the group were waiting for a consensus to develop. The dynamics are different, but the bottom line in both is that people didn’t really speak their minds freely.

Peer plus one helps to break up the round about thinking of a group with no clear lead. Someone, a peer or superior, must follow the discussion and stick their neck out, take a stand, to get to a decision.

You can overcome the peer-group syndrome if each of the members has self-confidence, which stems in

part from being familiar with the issue under consideration and from experience.

self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking ina...

If the peer-group syndrome manifests itself, and the meeting has no formal chairman, the person who has the most at stake should take charge.

One thing that paralyzes both knowledge and position power possessors is the fear of simply sounding dumb.

A related phenomenon influences lower-level people present in the meeting. This group has to overcome the fear of being overruled,

Sometimes no amount of discussion will produce a consensus, yet the time for a decision has clearly arrived.

When this happens, the senior person (or “peer-plus-one”) who until now has guided, coached, and prodded the group along has no choice but to make a decision himself.

If you either enter the decision-making stage too early or wait too long, you won’t derive the full benefit of open discussion.

The criterion to follow is this:

don’t push for a decision p...

Make sure you have heard and considered the real issues rather than the superficial comments that often dominate the early part of a meeting. But if you feel that you have already heard everything, that all sides of the ...

Like other managerial processes, decision-making is likelier to generate high-quality output in a timely fashion if we say clearly at the outset that we expect exactly that.

one of the manager’s key tasks is to settle six important questions in advance:

Employing consistent ways by which decisions are to be made has value beyond simply expediting the decision-making itself.

Consistent process makes clear how the decission was made and prevents denoralizing the parties involved in making the decision.

Politics and manipulation or even their appearance should be avoided at all costs.

make the decision-making process straightforward than to apply before the fact the structure imposed by our six questions.

One last thing. If the final word has to be dramatically different from the expectations of the people who participated in the decision-making process (had I chosen, for example, to cancel the Philippine plant project altogether), make your announcement but don’t just walk away from the issue. People need time to adjust, rationalize, and in general put their heads back together. Adjourn, reconvene the meeting after people have had a chance to recover, and s...

if he could make decisions without consulting anybody, so could everybody else.

Group decision making keeps everyone in support of a common goal that is in the interest of the company. Eliminates self interest and creates an environment of respect.

How one plans at the factory can then be summarized as follows: step 1, determine the market demand for product; step 2, establish what the factory will produce if no adjustment is made; and step 3, reconcile the projected factory output with the projected market demand by adjusting the production schedule.

Step 1 is to establish projected need or demand:

Step 2 is to establish your present status: What are you producing now?

Step 3 is to compare and reconcile steps 1 and 2.

your environment is made up of other such groups that directly influence what you do.