My boss recently gave me this book to read by Andrew Grove - It is a great book. Here are my notes on the book on leadership and business.

  • Someone either won’t do a task, or can’t do it. There is nothing else. So, only two things one can do to get work done: Train or Motivate. That’s literally the goal for all actions of a leader.

  • In production: know what you are delivering. To manage production delivery; identify steps in the process. Independent steps can be parallel. Find out “limiting” step in the process.

  • Value Material: For a product; the value of its material changes at every step. from raw material -> inventory -> production -> delivery. Rejecting the defective quality at lowest level is logical and most efficient. Inspect raw material from supplier and reject in that step itself if not well. Inspect quality at every step.
    • Hires to be rejected on skype first if initial screening not good to reduce the cost of their travel!
  • Product keys: Quality and Cost. To create USP:
    • Best quality at given cost
    • Optimal cost for given quality

Manager’s Duties

  • One on ones to achieve main goal: train and motivate.
  • Even supervisor needs training from subordinates.
  • Output of manager = output of his organization + his neighbouring org under his influence.
  • Manager’s productivity:
    • Increase rate at which manager performs his activities
    • Increase leverage associated with other managerial activities
    • mix of activities from those lower to higher leverage (not everything that is urgent is important)
  • Manager’s activity:
    • judgements & opinions
    • direction
    • allocating resources
    • detecting mistakes
    • planning
    • teaching
    • measuring quality
  • Managers have to be decisive.
    • Free discussion -> clear decision -> full support.
    • Group has to support the decision. Encourage disagreements and debates on personal views.
    • Reasons why people are reluctant to come out with an opinion in the presence of peers is the fear of going against the group, stating opinion which is different from the group.
  • Manager’s success is completed deliverables.

  • If employees are not skilled, they should be trained first. Before going on production. The customers are not paying for the employee’s training. They are paying for quality product.

  • Free market forces -> contractual obligations -> cultural values

Training & Motiviation

  • How to motivate a person goes hand in hand on what they need.
    • Mashlow’s hierarchy of needs. (measure of achievement after money is awarded for higher needs)
    • Recognition of good work.
  • Structured, Task-oriented, telling how-to-on-each-tasks-managers’ subordinates tend to show low maturity. Whereas the managers with characteristics of minimal involvement and who establish objectives and monitors the process tend to have subordinates with higher maturity.

References:

  1. High Output Management