High Output Management Quotes

“Take, for instance, the task of training a sales force to sell a new product. The three types of production operations can be easily identified. The conversion of large amounts of raw data about the product into meaningful selling strategies comprehensible to the sales personnel is a process step, which transforms data into strategies. The combination of the various sales strategies into a coherent program can be compared to an assembly step. Here the appropriate product-selling strategies and pertinent market data (such as competitive pricing and availability) are made to flow into one presentation, along with such things as brochures, handouts, and flip charts. The test operation comes in the form of a “dry run” presentation with a selected group of field sales personnel and field sales management. If the dry run fails the test, the material must be “reworked” (another well-established manufacturing concept) to meet the concerns and objections of the test audience.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“The key idea is that we construct our production flow by starting with the longest (or most difficult, or most sensitive, or most expensive) step and work our way back.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“The two basic managerial roles produce two basic kinds of meetings. In the first kind of meeting, called a process-oriented meeting, knowledge is shared and information is exchanged. Such meetings take place on a regularly scheduled basis. The purpose of the second kind of meeting is to solve a specific problem. Meetings of this sort, called mission-oriented, frequently produce a decision. They are ad hoc affairs, not scheduled long in advance, because they usually can’t be.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“as a manager in such a workplace, you need to develop a higher tolerance for disorder.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“because of the ease with which Japanese office workers communicate, they have, in fact, been slow to embrace electronic mail.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“e-mail is also the first manifestation of a revolution in how information flows and how it is managed.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“When products and services become largely indistinguishable from each other, all there is by the way of competitive advantage is time.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“This means that even as we try to standardize what we do, we should continue to think critically about what we do and the approaches we use.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“In effect, the lack of a decision is the same as a negative decision; no green light is a red light, and work can stop for a whole organization.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“How you handle your own time is, in my view, the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most people would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“A manager’s output = the output of his organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under his influence.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

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

“Globalization simply means that business knows no national boundaries. Capital and work—your work and your counterparts’ work—can go anywhere on earth and do a job.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management