**39th book of 2020: Silicon Valley’s Plato **
Among the many ‘management and tech’ books I’ve tackled, only Grove offers a definition of his subject: “The output of a manager is the output of the various organizations under [her] control and influence.” Starting with definitions given in pseudo-math, the book is an extreme left-brain approach to a right-brained topic. Strap in for Grove’s footnotes on how a manager can ‘increase their output’.
Like ‘The Lean Startup’, ‘Design of Everyday Things’ and ‘How to Measure Just about Anything’, High-Output Management has become one of the canonical about how to run a silicon valley company. Hallmarks of silicon valley corporate culture such as high-level individual contributors, cross-functional team design got their start in Grove’s frameworks, making many lessons familiar to any tech employee. However unlike its peers among silicon valley holy works, the subject of management may have become something of a lost art from the perspective of barbarian fast-growing companies like Facebook. Thus much of the advice is not only relevant, it is novel, like reading about Greek philosophy during the dark ages.
As mentioned above, “The output of a manager is the output of the various organizations under their control and influence,” First, a manager should avoid activities that provide negative value such as bringing negative emotional state or micromanaging. Next, a manager must use their limited time to pursue * leveraged activities * that can help the overall organization achieve higher output. This falls into categories such as setting common goals, improving common activities such as meetings, and improving the output of others, either through direct reporting structures or indirect influence. Easier said than done of course but the framework is useful to apply to everyday organizations and dilemmas.
Often the highest leverage point is to spend time with subordinates in the organization and ensure that they are maximizing their own output. Inefficiencies often arrive when *“person either can’t do it or won’t do it: they are either not capable or not motivated.” * It is a manager’s responsibility to both diagnose and rectify the situation. This puts the manager in the position of coach, in which *“The 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 the team. By being critical, he tries to get the best performance his tam members can provide.” * At the end of the day, the output of the team relies on the manager, though *“Delegation without follow-through is abdication.” * The book is short, but each chapter provides a logical framework for key elements of work life such as meetings, performance feedback, status reports, all done in a way that ties back to how to achieve ‘high output’. Sometimes Grove can become dogmatic with statements lacking substantial evidence, but I suspect that is a result of editing the book down to a few hundred pages. Any chapter has more learnings than a typical tech-management book, and for that I can highly recommend it as worth a read.