High Output Management Quotes

“as you review a manager, should you be judging his performance or the performance of the group under his supervision? You should be doing both. Ultimately what you are after is the performance of the group, but the manager is there to add value in some way.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“The biggest problem with most reviews is that we don’t usually define what it is we want from our subordinates, and, as noted earlier, if we don’t know what we want, we are surely not going to get it.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“The long and short of it: if performance matters in your operation, performance reviews are absolutely necessary.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“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).”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“giving performance reviews is a very complicated and difficult business and that we, managers, don’t do an especially good job at it. The fact is that giving such reviews is the single most important form of task-relevant feedback we as supervisors can provide. It is how we assess our subordinates’ level of performance and how we deliver that assessment to them individually. It is also how we allocate the rewards—promotions, dollars, stock options, or whatever we may use. As we saw earlier, the review will influence a subordinate’s performance—positively or negatively—for a long time, which makes the appraisal one of the manager’s highest-leverage activities.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“commonality of operational values, priorities, and preferences—how an organization works together—is a must if the progression in managerial style is to occur. Without that commonality, an organization can become easily confused and lose its sense of purpose. Accordingly, the responsibility for transmitting common values rests squarely with the supervisor. He is, after all, accountable for the output of the people who report to him; then, too, without a shared set of values a supervisor cannot effectively delegate.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“we must first overcome cultural prejudice. 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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“our role as managers is, first, to train the individuals (to move them along the horizontal axis shown in the illustration on this page), and, second, to bring them to the point where self-actualization motivates them, because once there, their motivation will be self-sustaining and limitless.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“what self-actualization means: the need to achieve one’s utter personal best in a chosen field of endeavor. Once someone’s source of motivation is self-actualization, his drive to perform has no limit. Thus, its most important characteristic is that unlike other sources of motivation, which extinguish themselves after the needs are fulfilled, self-actualization continues to motivate people to ever higher levels of performance.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“For Maslow, motivation is closely tied to the idea of needs, which cause people to have drives, which in turn result in motivation. A need once satisfied stops being a need and therefore stops being a source of motivation. Simply put, if we are to create and maintain a high degree of motivation, we must keep some needs unsatisfied at all times.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“all a manager can do is create an environment in which motivated people can flourish. Because better motivation means better performance, not a change of attitude or feeling, a subordinate’s saying “I feel motivated” means nothing. What matters is if he performs better or worse because his environment changed. An attitude may constitute an indicator, a “window into the black box” of human motivation, but it is not the desired result or output. Better performance at a given skill level is.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“This is why promotion from within tends to be the approach favored by corporations with strong corporate cultures. 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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Let’s apply our model to the work of a new employee. What is his motivation? It is very much based on self-interest. So you should give him a clearly structured job with a low CUA factor. If he does well, he will begin to feel more at home, worry less about himself, and start to care more about his team. He learns that if he is on a boat and wants to get ahead, it is better for him to help row than to run to the bow.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“In return for stopping at a red light, we count on other drivers to do the same thing, and we can drive through green lights. But for lawbreakers we need policemen, and with them, as with supervisors, we introduce overhead.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“The nature of control is now based on contractual obligations, which define the kind of work you will do and the standards that will govern it.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Transactions between companies are usually governed by the free market. When we buy a commodity product from a vendor, we are trying to get it at the best possible price, and vice versa. But what happens when the value of something is not easily defined? What happens, for instance, when it takes a group of people to accomplish a certain task?”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“the system is needed to make hybrid organizations work, and while people will strive to find something simpler, the reality is that it doesn’t exist. A strictly functional organization, which is clear conceptually, tends to remove engineering and manufacturing (or the equivalent groups in your firm) from the marketplace, leaving them with no idea of what the customers want. A highly mission-oriented organization, in turn, may have definite crisp reporting relationships and clear and unambiguous objectives at all times. However, the fragmented state of affairs that results causes inefficiency and poor overall performance.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“a strong and positive corporate culture is absolutely essential if dual reporting and decision-making by peers are to work.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“To put a man on the moon, NASA asked several major contractors and many subcontractors to work together, each on a different aspect of the project. An unintended consequence of the moon shot was the development of a new organizational approach: matrix management.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“the most important consideration should be this: the shift back and forth between the two types of organizations can and should be initiated to match the operational styles and aptitudes of the managers running the individual units.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Do any exceptions exist to the universality of hybrid organizations? The only exceptions that come to my mind are conglomerates, which are typically organized in a totally mission-oriented form. Why are they an exception to our rule? Because they do not have a common business purpose.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Here I would like to propose Grove’s Law: All large organizations with a common business purpose end up in a hybrid organizational form.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“What are some of the advantages of organizing much of a company in a mission-oriented form? There is only one. It is that the individual units can stay in touch with the needs of their business or product areas and initiate changes rapidly when those needs change. That is it. All other considerations favor the functional-type of organization. But the business of any business is to respond to the demands and needs of its environment, and the need to be responsive is so important that it always leads to much of any organization being grouped in mission-oriented units.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Having so much of Intel organized in functional units also has its disadvantages. The most important is the information overload hitting a functional group when it must respond to the demands made on it by diverse and numerous business units. Even conveying needs and demands often becomes very difficult—a business unit has to go through a number of management layers to influence decision-making in a functional group. Nowhere is this more evident than in the negotiations that go on to secure a portion of centralized—and limited—resources of the corporation, be it production capacity, computer time, or space in a shared building. Indeed, things often move beyond negotiation to intense and open competition among business units for the resources controlled by the functional groups. The bottom line here is that both the negotiation and competition waste time and energy because neither contributes to the output or the general good of the company.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“The one thing an MBO system should provide par excellence is focus. This can only happen if we keep the number of objectives small. In practice, this is rare, and here, as elsewhere, we fall victim to our inability to say “no”—in this case, to too many objectives.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs. Accordingly, an MBO system should set objectives for a relatively short period. For example, if we plan on a yearly basis, the corresponding MBO system’s time frame should be at least as often as quarterly or perhaps even monthly.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“A successful MBO system needs only to answer two questions: 1.  Where do I want to go? (The answer provides the objective.) 2.  How will I pace myself to see if I am getting there? (The answer gives us milestones, or key results.)”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“management by objectives—MBO”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Finally, remember that by saying “yes”—to projects, a course of action, or whatever—you are implicitly saying “no” to something else. Each time you make a commitment, you forfeit your chance to commit to something else.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“remember that as you plan you must answer the question: What do I have to do today to solve—or better, avoid—tomorrow’s problem? Thus, the true output of the planning process is the set of tasks it causes to be implemented. The output of Intel’s annual plan, for instance, is the actions taken and changes prompted as a result of the thinking process that took place throughout the organization. I, for one, hardly ever look at the bound volume finally called the Annual Plan. In other words, the output of the planning process is the decisions made and the actions taken as a result of the process.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management