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every hour of your day should be spent increasing the output or the value of the output of the people whom you’re responsible for.
The key to survival is to learn to add more value—and
So, Ms. Manager, you know more about our product’s viral loop than anyone in the company? That’s worth exactly nothing unless you can effectively transfer that knowledge to the rest of the organization. That’s what being a manager is about. It’s not about how smart you are or how well you know your business; it’s about how that translates to the team’s performance and output.
“When a person is not doing his job, there can only be two reasons for it. The person either can’t do it or won’t do it; he is either not capable or not motivated.” This insight enables a manager to dramatically focus her efforts. All you can do to improve the output of an employee is motivate and train. There is nothing else.
there are only two ways in which a manager can impact an employee’s output: motivation and training. If you are not training, then you are basically neglecting half the job.
With limited toaster capacity, making the toast becomes the limiting step.
the best delivery time and product quality at the lowest possible cost.
the material becomes more valuable as it moves through the process. A boiled egg is more valuable than a raw one, a fully assembled breakfast is more valuable than its constituent parts, and finally, the breakfast placed in front of the customer is more valuable still.
which five pieces of information would you want to look at each day, immediately upon arriving at your office?
Because your business depends on people wanting what you sell, you must be concerned with the public’s opinion of your service.
the more inventory we have, the more change we can cope with and still satisfy orders. But inventory costs money to build and keep, and therefore should be controlled carefully.
The key principle is to reject the defective “material” at its lowest-value stage.
To implement the actual simplification, you must question why each step is performed. Typically, you will find that many steps exist in your work flow for no good reason.
the output of a manager is a result achieved by a group either under her supervision or under her influence.
My day always ends when I’m tired and ready to go home, not when I’m done. I am never done. Like a housewife’s, a manager’s work is never done. There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.
Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information. Writing the report is important; reading it often is not.
information-gathering is the basis of all other managerial work, which is why I choose to spend so much of my day doing it.
How you handle your own time is, in my view, the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader.
the activities—information-gathering, information-giving, decision-making, nudging, and being a role model—could
The manager became depressed. Though he didn’t realize it, he almost immediately began to affect people around him and soon depression spread throughout his organization.
Picture this. I am your supervisor, and I walk over to you with pencil in hand and tell you to take it. You reach for the pencil, but I won’t let go. So I say, “What is wrong with you? Why can’t I delegate the pencil to you?”
delegation without follow-through is abdication. You can never wash your hands of a task. Even after you delegate it, you are still responsible for its accomplishment, and monitoring the delegated task is the only practical way for you to ensure a result.
Remember too that your time is your one finite resource, and when you say “yes” to one thing you are inevitably saying “no” to another.
As a rule of thumb, a manager whose work is largely supervisory should have six to eight subordinates; three or four are too few and ten are too many.
At Intel we use three kinds of process-oriented meetings: the one-on-one, the staff meeting, and the operation review.
you should have one-on-ones frequently (for example, once a week) with a subordinate who is inexperienced in a specific situation and less frequently (perhaps once every few weeks) with an experienced veteran.
What is the role of the supervisor in a one-on-one? He should facilitate the subordinate’s expression of what’s going on and what’s bothering him. The supervisor is there to learn and to coach.
“The good time users among managers do not talk to their subordinates about their problems but they know how to make the subordinates talk about theirs.”
I also think that one-on-ones at home can help family life. As the father of two teenage daughters, I have found that the conversation in such a time together is very different in tone and kind from what we say to each other in other circumstances.
If the meeting degenerates into a conversation between two people working on a problem affecting only them, the supervisor should break it off and move on to something else that will include more of the staff, while suggesting that the two continue their exchange later.
What do I have to do today to solve—or better, avoid—tomorrow’s problem?
If you don’t know where you’re going, you will not get there.
if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.
if the subordinate’s objectives are met, the supervisor’s will be as well.
if the person’s life depended on doing the work, could he do it? If the answer is yes, that person is not motivated; if the answer is no, he is not capable.
Maslow defined a set of needs that tend to lie in a hierarchy: when a lower need is satisfied, one higher is likely to take over.
misery loves not just any company, but the company of other miserable people. Nobody who is miserable wants to be around someone happy.
objectives should be set at a point high enough so that even if the individual (or organization) pushes himself hard, he will still only have a fifty-fifty chance of making them.
Our society respects someone’s throwing himself into sports, but anybody who works very long hours is regarded as sick, a workaholic. So the prejudices of the majority say that sports are good and fun, but work is drudgery, a necessary evil, and in no way a source of pleasure.
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.
create indicators so that his subordinates can watch their “racetrack” take shape.
Among friends and peers you are not supposed to discuss politics, religion, or anything that might possibly produce a difference of opinion and a conflict. Football scores, gardening, and the weather are okay.
the move from blaming others to assuming responsibility constitutes an emotional step, while the move from assuming responsibility to finding the solution is an intellectual one, and the latter is easier.
The stages of problem-solving: The transition from blaming others to assuming responsibility is an emotional step.
“Andy, you will never convince me, but why do you insist on wanting to convince me? I’ve already said I will do what you say.” I shut up, embarrassed, not knowing why. It took me a long time before I realized I was embarrassed because my insistence had a lot to do with making me feel better and little to do with the running of the business.
Most managers seem to feel that training employees is a job that should be left to others, perhaps to training specialists. I, on the other hand, strongly believe that the manager should do it himself.
A manager generally has two ways to raise the level of individual performance of his subordinates: by increasing motivation, the desire of each person to do his job well, and by increasing individual capability, which is where training comes in.
training needs to be a continuing process rather than a one-time event,
You yourself should instruct your direct subordinates and perhaps the next few ranks below them. Your subordinates should do the same thing, and the supervisors at every level below them as well.
Training must be done by a person who represents a suitable role model.
