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101 " Will going to this meeting teach me about the new technology or the new market that I think is very important now? Will it introduce me to people who can help me in the new direction? Will it send a message about the importance of the new direction?” If so, go to it. If not, resist it. "
― Andrew S. Grove , Only the Paranoid Survive. Lessons from the CEO of INTEL Corporation
102 " can think of no better way to make the decision-making process straightforward than to apply before the fact the structure imposed by our six questions. "
― Andrew S. Grove , High Output Management
103 " Under the ferocious attack of aggressively priced, high-quality Japanese DRAMs, we were forced to retreat and cut prices to a level where being in the DRAM business brought us major losses. Ultimately, the losses forced us to do something extraordinarily difficult: to back out of the business that the company was founded upon, and to focus on another business that we thought we were best at—the microprocessor business. While this adjustment sounds quite logical and straightforward in theory, in reality its implementation required us to move and redeploy a lot of our employees, let some of them go, and shutter a number of factories. We did all this because under this strong attack, we learned that we must lead with our strength. Being second best in a tough environment is just not good enough. "
104 " 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. "
105 " Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment. "
106 " information-gathering is the basis of all other managerial work, which is why I choose to spend so much of my day doing it. "
107 " 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. "
108 " You often do things at the office designed to influence events slightly, maybe making a phone call to an associate suggesting that a decision be made in a certain way, or sending a note or a memo that shows how you see a particular situation, or making a comment during an oral presentation. In such instances you may be advocating a preferred course of action, but you are not issuing an instruction or a command. Yet you’re doing something stronger than merely conveying information. Let’s call it “nudging” because through it you nudge an individual or a meeting in the direction you would like. This is an immensely important managerial activity in which we engage all the time, and it should be carefully distinguished from decision-making that results in firm, clear directives. In reality, for every unambiguous decision we make, we probably nudge things a dozen times. "
109 " a strong and positive corporate culture is absolutely essential if dual reporting and decision-making by peers are to work. "
110 " 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. "
111 " It almost doesn’t matter what you know…it’s execution that matters most. "
― Andrew S. Grove
112 " Before you are horrified by how much time I spend in meetings, answer a question: which of the activities—information-gathering, information-giving, decision-making, nudging, and being a role model—could I have performed outside a meeting? The answer is practically none. Meetings provide an occasion for managerial activities. Getting together with others is not, of course, an activity—it is a medium. "
113 " As we founded, organized, and managed Intel, we found that all our employees “produce” in some sense—some make chips, others prepare bills, while still others create software designs or advertising copy. We also found that when we approached any work done at Intel with this basic understanding in mind, the principles and discipline of production gave us a systematic way of managing it, much as the language and concepts of finance created a common approach to evaluating and managing investments of any sort. "
114 " Managerial productivity—that is, the output of a manager per unit of time worked—can be increased in three ways: 1. Increasing the rate with which a manager performs his activities, speeding up his work. 2. Increasing the leverage associated with the various managerial activities. 3. Shifting the mix of a manager’s activities from those with lower to those with higher leverage. "
115 " The second idea is that the work of a business, of a government bureacracy, of most forms of human activity, is something pursued not by individuals but by teams. "
116 " The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence. The question then becomes, what can managers do to increase the output of their teams? Put another way, what specifically should they be doing during the day when a virtually limitless number of possible tasks calls for their attention? To give you a way to answer the question, I introduce the concept of managerial leverage, which measures the impact of what managers do to increase the output of their teams. High managerial productivity, I argue, depends largely on choosing to perform tasks that possess high leverage. "
117 " The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence "
118 " Indicators tend to direct your attention toward what they are monitoring. It is like riding a bicycle: you will probably steer it where you are looking. If, for example, you start measuring your inventory levels carefully, you are likely to take action to drive your inventory levels down, which is good up to a point. But your inventories could become so lean that you can’t react to changes in demand without creating shortages. So because indicators direct one’s activities, you should guard against overreacting. This you can do by pairing indicators, so that together both effect and counter-effect are measured. Thus, in the inventory example, you need to monitor both inventory levels and the incidence of shortages. A rise in the latter will obviously lead you to do things to keep inventories from becoming too low. "
119 " If it becomes clear that you are not going to get your subordinate past the blame-others stage, you will have to assume the formal role of the supervisor, endowed with position power, and say, “This is what I, as your boss, am instructing you to do. I understand that you do not see it my way. You may be right or I may be right. But I am not only empowered, I am required by the organization for which we both work to give you instructions, and this is what I want you to do…” And proceed to secure your subordinate’s commitment to the course of action you want and thereafter monitor his performance against that commitment. "
120 " The first rule is that a measurement—any measurement—is better than none. But a genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved. Obviously, you measure a salesman by the orders he gets (output), not by the calls he makes (activity). "