@DanLebrero.

software, simply

Book notes: High Output Management

  • Wed, 12 Apr 2023

Book notes on "High Output Management" by Andrew Grove

These are my notes on High Output Management by Andrew Grove.

A classic that layout the foundations for a lot of the current management and leadership principles and practices.

Key Insights

  • You need to plan the way a fire department plans.
  • You are not an employee. You are in a business with one employee: yourself.
  • Aim is not whatever the customer wants whenever he wants it.
  • Your task is to find the most cost-effective way to deploy your resources:
    • There is one right answer.
  • Use pairing indicators: together both effect and counter-effect each other.
  • Any measurement is better than none.
  • Quality:
    • Balance desired result of the inspection:
      • Improved quality.
      • Minimum disturbance to the production process.
    • Variable inspection: adjust monitoring rate to the recent quality levels.
  • Manager’s output: output of group reporting to her + output of group under her influence.
  • Individual contributors who gather and disseminate know-how and information should be seen as middle managers.
  • Much of what we do often seems so inconsequential that our position in the business hardly seems justified.
  • Information most useful to managers comes from quick, often casual verbal exchanges. Timely information is more valuable.
  • Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information:
    • Writing a report is important; reading it is often not.
  • Manager activities:
    1. Information-gathering: all other activities depend on this one.
    2. Conveying information.
    3. Decision-making.
    4. Nudging.
    5. Role model.
  • Increase output by either:
    1. Increase # activities, aka speed up work.
    2. Increase leverage.
    3. Shift to activities with higher leverage:
      1. When many people are affected by one manager.
      2. When a person’s activity/behaviour over a long period of time is affected by a manager’s brief, well-focused set of words/actions.
      3. When a large group is affected by an individual supplying a unique, key piece of knowledge/information.
  • Delegate only activities that you are familiar with.
  • Delegation without follow-through is abdication.
  • One-to-one meetings:
    • Frequency depends on the task-relevant maturity of the subordinate.
    • It is a subordinate meeting:
      • Agenda and tone set by subordinate.
      • Because subordinate must prepare only one, while supervisor would prepare several.
  • Staff meetings:
  • Anything that affect more than 2 subordinates.
  • Supervisor learn from the exchange and confrontation that often develops, better than on 1-2-1.
  • Supervisor role: leader, observer, expediter, questioner, decision-maker, moderator, facilitator.
    • NOT lecturer, as it undermines free discussion.
  • Managers get a little more obsolete (in the know-how) everyday.
  • Any decision to be worked out and reached at the lowest level: people closest to the issue and with the most knowledge.
  • Who should plan? Those implementing the plan.
  • Management by objectives:
    • Answer 2 questions:
      1. Where do I want to go? (Objective).
      2. How will I pace myself? (Key results).
    • Should provide focus (== few objectives).
    • Key results can be achieved, but the objective still missed.
    • Not for individual performance review, but an input for it.
  • All large organizations with a common business purpose end up in a hybrid organizational form.
  • Can an employee have two bosses? Tentative “yes”.
    1. Mission-oriented manager: what business problem to work on.
    2. Technical manager: technical proficiency and career development.
  • Most appropriate mode of control:

model of control

  • Two reasons why somebody is not doing his job:
    1. Not capable.
    2. Not motivated.
    • If his life depended on it, could he do it?
  • Motivation has to come from within:

maslow hierarchy

  • Manager as a coach:
    1. Takes no personal credit for the success of his team, and because of that his players trust him.
    2. He is tough on his team.
    3. Likely he was a good player himself at one time: he understands the game well.
  • Would you cringe to deliver a tough performance review to your subordinate-friend?
    • If so, don’t make friends at work.
  • Performance Appraisal:
    • One of the manager’s highest leverage activities.
    • Output measures (100% objective) + internal measures (what is done for the output of future periods).
    • No way to do it completely objective.
    • Will the subordinate remember all the messages? If not, remove the less important ones.
    • We should spend more time trying to improve the performance of our top achievers as they account for a disproportionally large share of the work.
    • Do not ask for a self-review: it is a supervisor responsibility.
  • If performance appraisal is difficult, interviewing is just about impossible.
    • The most insights come from discussing subjects familiar to both you and the candidate.
    • Don’t worry about being blunt: direct questions tend to bring direct answers.
    • A candidate can tell you a great deal by asking you questions.

TOC

Introduction

  • Being second best is a tough environment is just not good enough.
  • Globalization: every person will compete with every person anywhere in the world who is capable of doing the same thing.
  • When products and services become largely indistinguishable from each other, all there is by the way of competitive advantage is time.
  • Book aimed to middle managers, and know-how managers (knowledge experts that sort of act as consultants).
  • 3 basic ideas:
    1. Output-oriented approach to management.
    2. Not individuals but teams: the output from a manager is the output of the org units under his supervision or influence.
      • Managerial leverage.
    3. A team will perform well only if peak performance is elicited from individuals in it.
      • Task-relevant feedback.
  • You need to plan the way a fire department plans.
  • You are not an employee. You are in a business with one employee: yourself.

Part I: The Breakfast Factory

Chapter 1: The Basics of Production: Delivering a Breakfast

  • Aim:
    • Scheduled delivery time.
    • Acceptable quality.
    • Lowest cost.
    • NOT: whatever the customer wants whenever he wants it.
  • Find the limiting step and schedule all work around it.
  • Production principles:
    1. Limiting step.
    2. Time offsets.
    3. Fundamental types of production operations:
      1. Process.
      2. Assembly.
      3. Test.
  • Example: compiler:
    1. Process: create the component.
    2. Test the individual components.
    3. Assemble into a compiler.
    4. System test.
  • Timing of the releases of various bodies of software from one stage to another can all be calculated and staged in advance. (Really???).
  • Your task is to find the most cost-effective way to deploy your resources:
    • There is one right answer.
    • You must develop a clear understanding of the trade-offs between the various factors, and reduce this understanding to a quantifiable set of relationships.
  • Choose in-process tests over those that destroy product (how this translates to software?).
  • Opportunity at risk: what would it cost to shut down until there are more raw materials? Customers lost * cost of bringing them back.

Chapter 2 - Managing the Breakfast Factory

  • You have to focus each indicator on a specific operational goal.
  • Use pairing indicators: together both effect and counter-effect each other.
  • Any measurement is better than none.
  • Effective indicators:
    1. Cover the output, not simple the activity involved.
    2. Should measure physical countable things.
    • Benefits:
      1. Spell out very clearly the objectives.
      2. Provide objectivity.
      3. Allow comparing teams.
  • Leading indicators:
    • Indication of what the future might look like.
    • Only useful if they entice you to act.
  • Linearity indicator: progress vs time.
  • Trend indicator: output measured against time and against some expected level.
  • Staggered chart:
    • Forecast and when what it made in.
    • Best means of getting a feeling for future business trends.
    • Actual value in black.
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun … …
Dec 20 30 40 50
Jan 18 25 35 45 55
Feb 21 31 35 45 60
Mar 33 45 65 70 75
…
…
  • Build to order vs build to forecast.
  • Build to forecast:
    • Two simultaneous processes (manufacturing and sales), each with a separate time cycle.
    • Both are somehow unpredictable, so “slack” must be added.
    • Most common form of slack: inventory.
    • Keep inventory at the lowest-value stage (what does it mean for SW? RFC?)
  • Quality:
    • Receiving inspection, in-process inspection, outgoing inspection.
    • Balance desired result of the inspection:
      • Improved quality.
      • Minimum disturbance to the production process.
    • Gate-like inspection vs monitoring:
      • Variable inspection: adjust monitoring rate to the recent quality levels.
  • Productivity:
    • output / labor.
    • To increase: work smarter or work harder.
  • Leverage:
    • Output generated by specific work activity.
    • Work smarter by simplifying work:
      • List activities to do the work and ask why they are needed.

Part II - Management Is a Team Game

Chapter 3 - Managerial Leverage

  • Manager’s output: output of group reporting to her + output of group under her influence.
  • Individual contributors who gather and disseminate know-how and information should be seen as middle managers.
  • Much of what we do often seems so inconsequential that our position in the business hardly seems justified:
    • Activities seem trivial, insignificant and messy.
    • But output seems important, significant and worthwhile.
  • Information most useful to managers comes from quick, often casual verbal exchanges. Timely information is more valuable.
  • Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information:
    • Writing a report is important; reading it is often not.
    • (Similarly) preparation of an annual plan is in itself the end, not the resulting bound volume.
  • Visiting a particular place in the company and observe what’s going on there is an especially efficient (and underutilized) way to get information.
  • Transmitting objectives and preferred approaches is key to successful delegation.
  • Manager activities:
    1. Information-gathering: all other activities depend on this one.
    2. Conveying information.
    3. Decision-making.
    4. Nudging.
    5. Role model.
  • How you handle your own time is the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader.
  • Meetings provide an occasion for managerial activities:
    • Meetings are a medium.
  • Managerial output == Leverage1 * Activity1 + L2*A2 + L3 * A3
    • Increase output by either:
      1. Increase # activities, aka speed up work: Good time management:
        • Identify limiting step and schedule around it.
        • Batching: to reduce task switching.
        • Forecast:
          • Large portion of managerial work can be forecasted.
          • Use your calendar as the medium to forecast.
        • Do not accept more work if you are at max capacity.
        • Be proactive at filling holes in your calendar between the time-critical events.
        • When you say “yes” to one thing, you are inevitably saying “no” to another.
        • Allow for slack.
        • Keep an inventory of project not urgent but important over the long term, so free time is used in these projects and not meddling.
      2. Increase leverage.
      3. Shift to activities with higher leverage.
    • High leverage activities:
      1. When many people are affected by one manager.
      2. When a person’s activity/behaviour over a long period of time is affected by a manager’s brief, well-focused set of words/actions.
      3. When a large group is affected by an individual supplying a unique, key piece of knowledge/information.
  • Managerial meddling has negative leverage:
    • Subordinate will show less initiative.
  • Delegate only activities that you are familiar with.
  • Delegation without follow-through is abdication:
    • You are still responsible for its accomplishment.
    • Monitoring is the only practical way to ensure a result.
    • Monitoring != meddling.
    • Monitoring == QA. Same principles:
      • Do it early, variable inspection.
      • Go into some details randomly but not all details all the time.
  • A manager should have 6-8 subordinates:
    • Half day per week per subordinate.
    • For know-how managers, each planning, advisory, or coordination group counts as a subordinate.
  • Interruptions - the plague of managerial work:
    • Strive towards regularity.
    • Because you need to coordinate with other managers, you can only move towards regularity if others do too.
    • Reduce time spend handling interruptions by using standard responses.
      • Have regular scheduled time (like 1-2-1).
      • Force interrupters to make an active decision about whether an issue can wait.
      • “I am doing individual work. Please don’t interrupt me unless it really can’t wait until 2pm”.

Chapter 4 - Meetings - The Medium of Managerial Work

  • 2 types:
    1. Process-oriented meetings:
      • Knowledge is shared and information exchanged.
      • Regular.
      • Kinds:
        1. One-to-one:
          • Mutual teaching and exchange of info.
          • Frequency depends on the task-relevant maturity of the subordinate.
          • Also depend on how fast things change.
          • Should last one hour minimum.
          • In or near the subordinate work area.
          • Key point: it is a subordinate meeting:
            • Agenda and tone set by subordinate.
            • Because subordinate must prepare only one, while supervisor would prepare several.
          • Content:
            • Performance/Indicators figures.
            • Any problems or potential ones (even it is only intuition).
            • Criteria: anything that preoccupy or nag the subordinate.
          • Supervisor role: learn and coach.
          • Both take notes: help focus, commitment and follow up.
        2. Staff meetings
          • Supervisor + all subordinates.
          • Interaction among peers.
          • Decision-making by a group of peers is not easy.
          • Supervisor learn from the exchange and confrontation that often develops, better than on 1-2-1.
          • Content:
            • Anything that affect more than 2 subordinates.
            • Agenda + open session.
          • Supervisor role: leader, observer, expediter, questioner, decision-maker, moderator, facilitator.
            • NOT lecturer, as it undermines free discussion.
          • Supervision should be “inactive” while subordinates “active”.
        3. Operation reviews:
          • Teaching and learning between employees several organizational levels apart.
          • Roles:
            • Organizing manager:
              • Help chose topics and level of detail.
              • Housekeeping.
              • Timekeeper.
            • Reviewing manager:
              • Senior supervisor at whom the review is aimed.
              • Ask questions, make comments, catalyst to audience participation.
              • Role model for junior managers.
              • Should never preview the material.
            • Presenters:
              • Look at body language of audience.
            • Audience:
              • You are being paid to attend: pay attention, ask questions, make comments.
    2. Mission-Oriented meetings:
      • Adhoc to produce a specific output.
      • The chairman is responsible for the result and must have a clear understanding of the meeting objective. Ask yourself:
        • What I am trying to accomplish?
        • Is a meeting necessary/desirable/justifiable?
      • Beware of the dollar cost of the meeting.
      • Avoid more than 6 people. 8 Max.
      • Chairman:
        • Agenda.
        • Role of each participant.
        • Commitment from each participant.
        • Send minutes + decision + actions asap.

Chapter 5 - Decisions, Decisions

  • The faster the change in the know-how, the greater the divergence between knowledge and position power is likely to be.
    • Managers get a little more obsolete everyday.
    • Key to success is middle manager that mesh smoothly the holder of the two types of power.
  • Ideal decision model:
    1. Free discussion.
    2. Clear decision.
    3. Full support.
    4. Go to 1 if decision was wrong.
    • Easy one to follow for senior managers and newly graduates.
    • Any decision to be worked out and reached at the lowest level: people closest to the issue and with the most knowledge.
    • Good decisions need expertise + judgment (== experience).
  • The Peer-Group Syndrome:
    • Peers are afraid to stick out their necks.
    • Peers going in circles until consensus is developed, due the fear of:
      • Sounding dumb (specially seniors).
      • Being overruled (specially juniors).
      • Not enough business or technical knowledge.
    • No proper discussion happens, hence best decision is not made.
    • Push for consensus, and failing that, step in and make a decision.
      • Not too early, not too late.
  • Answer:
    • What decision?
    • When?
    • Who will decide?
    • Who needs to be consulted?
    • Who can veto/ratify?
    • Who needs to be informed?
  • Politics and manipulation or even their appearance should be avoided at all costs.

Chapter 6 - Planning: Today’s Actions for Tomorrow’s Output

  • Steps:
    1. Determine environmental demand:
      • What your clients want now?
      • What your clients will want in X months/years?
    2. Determine present status:
      • Should be stated in the same terms (currency, widgets, outputs) as the demand.
    3. Determine what to do to close the gap:
      • What do you need to close the gap?
      • What can you do to close the gap?
  • Today’s gap represents a failure of planning sometime in the past.
  • The output of the planning process is the decisions made and the actions taken as result of the process.
  • How often to plan? Give enough time to get feedback on the last planning process.
  • Who should plan? Those implementing the plan.
  • Management by objectives:
    • Concern only with steps 2 and 3 of planning.
    • Answer 2 questions:
      1. Where do I want to go? (Objective).
      2. How will I pace myself? (Key results).
    • Should provide focus (== few objectives).
    • Key results can be achieved, but the objective still missed.
    • Not for individual performance review, but an input for it.
    • No room for ambiguity in key results.

Part III - Team of Teams

Chapter 7 - The Breakfast Factory Goes National

  • Centralization-decentralization dichotomy.

Chapter 8 - Hybrid Organizations

  • Two extremes:
    1. Totally mission-oriented:
      • Completely decentralized.
      • Independent.
      • Responsible.
      • More responsive: this is critical for a business unit.
    2. Totally functional form:
      • Economies of scale.
      • Increase leverage.
      • More flexibility moving resources/people on corporate-wide priorities.
  • Hybrid: mix of both:
    • Business units: decentralized.
    • Functional groups:
      • Centralized.
      • Viewed as internal subcontractors.
      • Information overload to serve all business units.
      • Negotiation and competition for their time/resources.
  • All large organizations with a common business purpose end up in a hybrid organizational form.

matrix organization

  • Most important task of hybrid orgs is the optimum and timely allocation of its resources and the efficient resolution of conflicts arising over that allocation:
    • Central “allocators” is not the answer.
    • Middle managers are:
      1. They are numerous.
      2. They are close to the problem.
      • To succeed they need:
        1. Accept the hybrid org form.
        2. Develop and master dual reporting.

Chapter 9 - Dual Reporting

  • Can an employee have two bosses? Tentative “yes”.
  • Matrix management:
    • Core idea is that a project manager (outside the contracting company) could wield as much influence on the work of units within a given contractor company as could the company management itself.
  • We want the immediacy and the operating priorities coming from the general manager, plus a technical supervisory relationship.
  • The technical supervisor role can be filled by a group of peers:
    • Required the voluntary surrender of individual decision-making to the group.
    • This requires trust in the peer group, which requires a strong and positive culture.
    • Makes manager’s life ambiguous.
  • Two bosses:
    1. Mission-oriented manager: what business problem to work on.
    2. Technical manager: technical proficiency and career development.
  • Multi-plane organization:
    • Mission-oriented org chart is a plane, while technical org chart is another.
    • There can be more than two planes, some will be temporal.
    • Having multiple planes (org charts) allow for the optimal organization for a given problem/objective.

Chapter 10 - Modes of Control

  • Means:
    1. Free-market forces:
      • Like choosing what/where tires to buy.
      • Self-interest.
      • Requires a clear dollar value, which within an org is hard to establish.
    2. Contractual obligations:
      • Like stopping at a ref traffic light.
      • Obey the law.
    3. Cultural values:
      • Like helping on an accident while exposing yourself to danger.
      • When environment changes more rapidly than one can change rules.
      • When a set of circumstances is so ambiguous and unclear that a contract would be prohibitively complicated.
      • Interest of the group takes precedence over the interest of the individual.
      • Emotions.
      • Requires shared values, objectives and methods.
        • It is management’s role to articulate these and be an example.
      • Requires shares experiences.
  • Most appropriate mode of control: model of control
  • New employee are in self-interest:
    • Promotion from within tends to be favored by corporations with strong cultures.

Part IV - The Players

Chapter 11 - The Sports Analogy

  • A team will perform only as well as the individuals on it.
  • Manager can elicit peak individual performance.
  • Two reasons why somebody is not doing his job:
    1. Not capable.
    2. Not motivated.
    • If his life depended on it, could he do it?
    • To improve performance:
      1. Training.
      2. Motivation.
  • Motivation has to come from within:
    • All a manager can do is create an environment in which motivated people can flourish.
    • Maslow’s theory of motivation:
      • Needs cause people to have drives, which in turn result in motivation.
      • No need, no motivation.
      • When a lower need is satisfied, one higher is likely to take over.
      • Physiological needs: things money can buy.
      • Security/safety needs: protect oneself from going back to physiological needs.
      • Social/Affiliation needs: belong to a group that share something in common.
      • Esteem/recognition needs: need to keep up with or emulate someone/some group.
      • Self-actualization:
        • Personal realization: “What I can be, I must be”.
        • Two types:
          1. Competency-driven: mastery.
          2. Achievement-driven:
            • Abstract need to achieve in all that you do.
            • Spontaneously test the limit of their abilities.
            • This is why OKR should be unachievable/impossible.
        • Person needs to measure his progress/achievements.
        • Measure by feedback on his performance.
        • For competency-driven, feedback comes from within that individual.
        • At work, performance indicators and milestones linked to the individual’s performance.
        • Fear of failure can become a negative source of motivation if it becomes preoccupation.

maslow hierarchy

  • Self-limiting: once achieved, no longer motivates.
  • The sport analogy:
    • Marathon: people try to beat others or the stopwatch.
    • Cultural prejudice:
      • Respect for sportsman training long hours but somebody working long hours is a workaholic.
    • Manager as a coach:
      1. Takes no personal credit for the success of his team, and because of that his players trust him.
      2. He is tough on his team.
      3. Likely he was a good player himself at one time: he understands the game well.

Chapter 12 - Task-Relevant Maturity

  • See Chapter 2 of No-nonsense Leadership.
  • High output is associated with particular combinations of certain managers and certain groups of workers:
    • The fundamental variable that tells you what management styles is most appropriate is task-relevant maturity (TRM) of a subordinate.
    • TRM:
      • Achievement orientation +
      • Readiness to take responsibility +
      • Education +
      • Training +
      • Experience.
    • TRM is task specific.
  • Three levels:
    1. Low:
      • Structured task-oriented
      • Tell what/when/how.
      • Detailed instructions.
    2. Medium:
      • Emphasis on two-way communication.
      • Emotional support.
      • Encouragement.
      • Focus more on the individual than the task.
    3. High:
      • Minimal involvement.
      • Focus on agreeing on objectives.
      • Monitoring.
  • Highest levels of TRM the training is complete, and the subordinate’s motivation is likely self-actualization.
  • Deciding on your subordinates TRM is not easy, but even if the manager knows the TRM, his personal preferences tend to override the proper choice of management style.
  • Would you cringe to deliver a tough performance review to your subordinate-friend?
    • If so, don’t make friends at work.

Chapter 13 - Performance Appraisal: Manager as Judge and Jury

  • One of the manager’s highest leverage activities.
  • Main purpose is to improve the subordinate’s performance:
    1. What skills are missing and how to remedy that lack.
    2. Intensify subordinate’s motivation.
  • Delivering a good performance review is very hard due to our professional training and our cultural background as our society values avoiding confrontation.
  • Assessing performance:
    • Output measures (100% objective) + internal measures (what is done for the output of future periods).
    • No way to do it completely objective.
    • Weight of output vs internal should be clear from the beginning.
    • Time offset: time it takes the subordinate’s activity to have an effect on the output.
    • Manager’s review should include both the performance of his group and his own performance.
    • Avoid the “potential trap”: manager shows good forms but output of group is poor.
    • No matter how well a subordinate has done his job, we can always find ways to suggest improvements.
  • Delivery the assessment:
    • Three “L”s:
      1. Level:
        • The credibility and integrity of the entire system depend on you being totally frank.
      2. Listen:
        • If your subordinate’s response (verbal and non-verbal) to the assessment do not completely assure you that what you’ve said has gotten through, it is your responsibility to keep at it until you are satisfied that you have been heard and understood.
      3. Leave yourself out:
        • Control your emotions, so they do not affect your task.
  • Review should have no surprises, but if you uncover one, swallow hard and bring it up.
  • 3 types of performance review:
    1. On the one hand … on the other …:
      • Most reviews.
      • Avoid: superficiality, cliches, and laundry list.
      • People has finite capacity, so target a few key areas.
      • Prep:
        1. Write down everything you can think of (brain dump, no mental editing).
        2. Find relationship between items.
        3. For each relationship, write a “message” for the subordinate.
      • Will the subordinate remember all the messages? If not, remove the less important ones.
    2. The blast:
      • Major performance problem.
      • Stages:
        bad performance stages
      • Outcomes:
        1. Agree on assessment and solution.
        2. Disagree on assessment but agree/commit on solution.
        3. Disagree on assessment and solution.
        • Outcomes 1 and 2 are ok.
    3. Reviewing the Ace:
      • Typical issue: review is about past achievements, and not about future performance improvements.
      • We should spend more time trying to improve the performance of our top achievers as they account for a disproportionally large share of the work.
      • Concentrating on the top achievers is a high leverage activity: if they get better, the impact on the group output is very great indeed.
  • Do not ask for a self-review: it is a supervisor responsibility.
  • Provide the appraisal before the face-to-face meeting.

Chapter 14 - Two Difficult Tasks

  1. Interviewing:
    • If performance appraisal is difficult, interviewing is just about impossible.
    • Applicant should do 80% of the talking, but you are in control:
      • Gently interrupt if things go off track.
    • The most insights come from discussing subjects familiar to both you and the candidate.
    • 4 categories:
      1. Technical/skills:
        • Describe some project.
        • What are your weakness.
      2. What he did with knowledge:
        • Past achievements.
        • Past failures.
      3. Discrepancies:
        • What did you learn from failures.
        • Problem in current position.
      4. Operational values:
        • Why are you ready for a new job.
        • Why should my company hire you.
    • You must judge potential contribution.
    • Don’t worry about being blunt: direct questions tend to bring direct answers.
    • A candidate can tell you a great deal by asking you questions.
  2. “I quit!”:
    • High value employee that quits from reasons other than compensation.
    • Usually he feels unrecognized.
    • Your initial reaction to his announcement is absolutely crucial:
      • Drop everything, sit down and ask him why.
      • Let him talk and then ask him more questions until real reasons emerge.
      • Don’t argue, lecture or panic.
      • Buy time for next round.

Chapter 15 - Compensation as Task-Relevant Feedback

  • Money has significance at all levels of Maslow’s motivation hierarchy.
  • The percentage the bonus represents of a manager’s total compensation should rise with his total compensation.
  • Base salary should be a mix of experience and merit.
  • Peter Principle: employee gets promoted until he reaches his level of incompetence, and then stays there:
    • More accurate: an employee moves in cycles:
      1. “Meets expectations”.
      2. “Exceed expectations”.
      3. Promotion. Go to 1.
    • If employee does not meet expectations after promotion:
      1. Should be “recycled” to previous position until ready.
      2. Is a management misjudgement.

Chapter 16 - Why Training Is The Boss’s Job

  • For training to be effective, it has to be closely tied to how things are actually done in your org.
  • Training should be a process, not an event.
  • Training must be done by a person who represents a suitable role model.
  • Skills that you have had for years are much harder to explain than to practice.
  • Regard the first time you teach a course as a throw-away:
    • No matter how hard you try, it won’t be great.
    • Give this first course to the most knowledgeable of your subordinates, who won’t be confused and will help to improve it.
  • If it is your first time teaching, you’ll discover:
    1. Training is hard.
    2. You are the one that will learn the most.
    3. If training goes well, it is nothing short of exhilarating.
Did you enjoy it? or share!

Tagged in : book notes