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the chairman must have a clear understanding of the meeting’s objective—what needs to happen and what decision has to be made. The absolute truth is that if you don’t know what you want, you won’t get it.
Decision-making is not a spectator sport, because onlookers get in the way of what needs to be done.
it’s very important that attendees get the minutes quickly, before they forget what happened. 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.
the real sign of malorganization is when people spend more than 25 percent of their time in ad hoc mission-oriented meetings.
Another desirable and important feature of the model is that any decision be worked out and reached at the lowest competent level. The reason is that this is where it will be made by people who are closest to the situation and know the most about it.
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.
we don’t link our engineers with our managers in such a way as to get good decisions, we can’t succeed in our industry.
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.
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.
As a manager, you should remind yourself that each time an insight or fact is withheld and an appropriate question is suppressed, the decision-making process is less good than it might have been.
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 prematurely. 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 issue have been raised, it is time to push for a consensus—and failing that, to step in and make a decision.
• What decision needs to be made? • When does it have to be made? • Who will decide? • Who will need to be consulted prior to making the decision? • Who will ratify or veto the decision? • Who will need to be informed of the
“Group decisions do not always come easily. There is a strong temptation for the leading officers to make decisions themselves without the sometimes onerous process of discussion.”
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.
As you formulate in words what you plan to do, the most abstract and general summary of those actions meaningful to you is your strategy. What you’ll do to implement the strategy is your tactics.
What do I have to do today to solve—or better, avoid—tomorrow’s problem?
For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs.
The system requires judgment and common sense to set the hierarchy of objectives and the key results that support them.
a manager’s output is the output of the organizations under his supervision or influence.
“Good management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization.”
Intel’s functional groups allow the business units to concentrate on mastering their specific trades rather than having to worry about computers, production, technology, and so forth.
All large organizations with a common business purpose end up in a hybrid organizational form.
The first would specify how the job ought to be done, and the second would monitor how it was being performed day by day.
our behavior in a work environment can be controlled by three invisible and pervasive means. These are: • free-market forces • contractual obligations • cultural values
When the environment changes more rapidly than one can change rules, or when a set of circumstances is so ambiguous and unclear that a contract between the parties that attempted to cover all possibilities would be prohibitively complicated, we need another mode of control, which is based on cultural values.
complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity, which we’ll call the CUA factor.
Bring young people in at relatively low-level, well-defined jobs with low CUA factors, and over time they will share experiences with their peers, supervisors, and subordinates and will learn the values, objectives, and methods of the organization. They will gradually accept, even flourish in, the complex world of multiple bosses and peer decision-making.
motivation is closely tied to the idea of needs, which cause people to have drives, which in turn result in motivation.
if we are to create and maintain a high degree of motivation, we must keep some needs unsatisfied at all times.
The physiological, safety/security, and social needs all can motivate us to show up for work, but other needs—esteem and self-actualization—make us perform once we are there.
Two inner forces can drive a person to use all of his capabilities. He can be competence-driven or achievement-driven.
Money in the physiological- and security-driven modes only motivates until the need is satisfied, but money as a measure of achievement will motivate without limit.
You cannot stay in the self-actualized mode if you’re always worried about failure.
The role of the manager here is also clear: it is that of the coach. First, an ideal coach takes no personal credit for the success of his team, and because of that his players trust him. Second, he is tough on his team. By being critical, he tries to get the best performance his team members can provide. Third, a good coach was likely a good player himself at one time.
regardless of what the TRM may be, the manager should always monitor a subordinate’s work closely enough to avoid surprises.
It is partly because managers think of themselves as perfect delegators. But also, sometimes a manager throws out suggestions to a subordinate who receives them as marching orders—furthering the difference in perceptions.
A test might be to imagine yourself delivering a tough performance review to your friend. Do you cringe at the thought? If so, don’t make friends at work. If your stomach remains unaffected, you are likely to be someone whose personal relationships will strengthen work relationships.
it is to improve the subordinate’s performance. The review is usually dedicated to two things: first, the skill level of the subordinate, to determine what skills are missing and to find ways to remedy that lack; and second, to intensify the subordinate’s motivation in order to get him on a higher performance curve for the same skill level (see the illustration on this page).
if performance matters in your operation, performance reviews are absolutely necessary.
To make an assessment less difficult, a supervisor should clarify in his own mind in advance what it is that he expects from a subordinate and then attempt to judge whether he performed to expectations.
the performance rating of a manager cannot be higher than the one we would accord to his organization!
It is very important to assess actual performance, not appearances; real output, not good form.
No matter how well a subordinate has done his job, we can always find ways to suggest improvement, something about which a manager need not feel embarrassed.
There are three L’s to keep in mind when delivering a review: Level, listen, and leave yourself out.
This is what I mean by listening: employing your entire arsenal of sensory capabilities to make certain your points are being properly interpreted by your subordinate’s brain.
The purpose of the review is not to cleanse your system of all the truths you may have observed about your subordinate, but to improve his performance. So here less may very well be more.
You will probably begin to notice that certain items are different manifestations of the same phenomenon, and that there may be some indications why a certain strength or weakness exists.
Preferably, a review should not contain any surprises, but if you uncover one, swallow hard and bring it up.
