High Output Management by Andrew Grove [Book Summary – Review]


Management looks like overwhelming work. Administrators are wanted to be any place, all the time, to pay attention and talk to their workers, to schedule and arrange assignments, to reveal the greatest of workers, and improve overall performance. However, how can someone master a lot of jobs?

With this review, you’ll learn about the key duties of an administrator and the things you have to understand about your workers and your duty. Also, you will discover how to gather the understanding you require to follow the correct choices, the way to give incentives to your group, and the way to enable your team to perform well.


Buy this book from Amazon



Chapter 1 – Administrating an organization is similar to preparing breakfast – it needs intellectual knowledge of manufacturing steps.


That may look like an odd idea; however, being a waiter would really get you ready to administer the manufacturing steps of a business.

How is that possible?

Administrating manufacturing steps is really similar to preparing breakfast. For example, if your duty is to make an egg boiled for 3 minutes, a toast, and a cup of coffee, you would already have experienced the vital necessities of manufacturing. You have to answer demands by providing your good based on a specific plan in addition to fulfilling wants of quality and minimizing costs.

To accomplish these difficult tasks, you have to bear in mind the initial inquiry of manufacturing: which stage is the most difficult to accomplish?

When we talk about preparing breakfast, it is absolutely boiling eggs since it requires the most time. The other stages should be organized according to the time required to finish this job.

Afterward, as soon as you’ve known the significant stage in manufacturing, it is your duty as an administrator to look for the cheapest method to utilize the resources that are available to you.

Assuming a waiter needs to wait each morning to make use of the toaster at the time customers have to wait for their breakfast. The way to fix the issue? His choices are asking a colleague for assistance, organize toasts prior to orders, or purchase another toaster.

Basically, administrators’ job is to find and fix these types of bottlenecks, therefore, their resolutions comprise employing a lot of people, improving inventory, or purchasing more equipment. However, bear in mind, these entire decisions require finance, and the duty of an administrator is to find the equilibrium with the cheapest approach.



However, that is not everything; administrators also have to identify issues. The reason is that problems occur every time during manufacturing; to fix the damage, it’s vital to identify and solve them as fast as they can.

For instance, if a lot of eggs are spoiled in the cookery, it is greater to check whether eggs are put into the fridge or serving them to customers before spoiled. This signifies that it’s vital for administrators to observe meticulously every production process.


Chapter 2 – Managers have to understand how to pick manufacturing measures and get significant data utilizing those.


Ordinarily, an administrator cannot be in all places at the time. For getting a detailed overview, the manager has to depend on great indicators.

In order to do that, she should pick a minimum of 5 measurements that are shown to her each day before starting working.

Initially, she would like the sales calculations immediately. Meaning, the number of breakfasts she needs to prepare in one day.

Secondly, the stockpiles are vital. The reason is that she has to know how many eggs, and how much bread or coffee she would need in store.

Third, she has to understand the state of her machines. Since her sole toaster stopped working yesterday, it’s vital to substitute that before customers start to flow in.

Fourthly, it is significant to know about employees. Nevertheless, when 3 servers got ill, the administrator has to look for substitutes immediately.

Lastly, she would like an excellence measurement that evaluates public view. Essentially, did people enjoy meals that were served to them?



However, possessing these manufacturing measurements is not sufficient; also, a manager has to understand how to get vital knowledge. A nice approach for this includes coupling 2 of these measurements.

For example, in order to know your stock levels more, you have to evaluate them contrary to your sales projections to know the possibilities for stock restrictions. This would assist you to choose the alarming stock level.

Also, you have to couple measurements with the real outcomes you obtained. For instance, if you would like to assess a sales employee, you should not only think about how many times she called clients but how many times she sealed deals as well.

Also, you can get beneficial knowledge from measurement by looking at trends. For example, our administrator may contrast how many breakfasts are served in the current month to former months to measure achievement and forecast how many she could serve for the next month.


Chapter 3 – An administrator has a lot of duties and her achievement relies on her group.


This may not usually look like it; however, administrating is group work. Therefore, an administrator is not only evaluated for her individual abilities and personal performance but their success with her group as well.

For example, if an administrator performs great at organizing manufacturing, distributing resources, and detect errors; however, her group cannot execute, the administrator would still be accountable.

Therefore, the way to enhance your general team’s performance?

One of the manager’s main duties when managing a group is gathering and publishing knowledge.

At times, the best method is fast, informal discussions. Nevertheless, a bunch of information discussed between an administrator and a worker while getting coffee would spread much quicker than emails.



But, wanting paper outputs from employees is important as well. The reason is that the training it needs to provide a paper output enables the worker to look back to his job and understand present issues better. This makes paper outputs vital for giving beneficial information to a manager.

However, managers are responsible for decision-making as well, which forges the former duty of gathering and disseminating knowledge more vital. For instance, it’s the manager’s responsibility to choose to build another store or employ new workers. In order to do that, she’ll require comprehensive knowledge on every likely option and its positive and negative aspects.

Lastly, it’s the manager’s duty as well to be an example for employees. An administrator who uses the time for working to make individual calls would be unlikely to be a role model for their group. Conversely, an administrator who works for hours and gives importance to his work would lay a good example for other people to pursue.

Just bear in mind, morals cannot be transmitted with emails and discussions only. This entails that managers have to demonstrate the appropriate way to act. Nevertheless, an example is better than anything else.


Chapter 4 – Gatherings are a vital administrative instrument and they appear in various forms.


A lot of administrators regard gatherings as a malediction to their beings, Peter Drucker who is a pioneer in contemporary administration, mentioned that using above 25% of work in gatherings is an indication of bad structure. However, meetings are vital to every administrator’s day-day routine.

The reason is that gatherings are the basis for every other managerial activity. For example, you recently mastered managers’ main responsibilities: gathering information, decision making, and delivering as examples. None could be performed well without having meetings.

Therefore, you don’t have to be scared if gatherings are using up ½ of the day. They are basically the essential means by which the administration functions.

Various kinds of meetings exist. Assignment-focused meetings are intended to fix certain issues by making a choice. These have a tendency to occur unpromptedly when a threat comes up, such as a gathering set suddenly to handle a big product malfunction fast.



A process-oriented meeting is a different type of gathering. With this meeting, information and ideas on lower stress issues are published. These gatherings depend on orderliness to function. A very common kind is an individual gathering between a mentor as well as her worker– a chance for both of them to become knowledgeable.

With unpracticed juniors, this kind of gathering should normally happen once a week; however, its repetition also relies on the work field and the pace of conditions to transform. For instance, you’ll have to gather them frequently in a sales surrounding in which the job would be quicker than a research surrounding.

Ideally, individual gatherings take about one hour and happen in or close to the worker’s environment as their surroundings might be illustrative. By watching your worker’s tables, you can know if he is tidy or whether he struggles from constant disturbances.


Chapter 5 – It’s the duty of a manager to nurture motivation.


Assuming a worker does not fulfill expectations. Would you understand the way to immediately determine if he doesn’t have abilities or only requires further motivation?

Just inquire, “might he do his work when his life would be linked to it?”

When you answer “yes”, he’s most likely dealing with low incentive. There can be no means you can make beautiful music without having a skilled musician. However, if you needed to race six miles to run from a murderer, you would most likely do that although you are not fit. The truth is workers who do badly often do not have abilities or incentives.

Hence, it’s not a shock that incentive is essential to contemporary management, mostly because of the increase of knowledge employees whose key location of assets is knowledge. Nevertheless, the grade of output done by an employee who works with hands is simple to evaluate. The reason is that, if a badly incentivized bricklayer constructs a fractured wall, the overseer will instantly see it and take necessary actions.

However, when we talk about knowledge employees, it’s difficult to instantly notice if a job was done well although not a specialist in the area they are working on. That entails that it is more significant to keep workers motivated to hinder these expensive, hard-to-understand mistakes.



Therefore, it’s the manager’s choice to incentivize her workers. However, incentives may only arise from the inside, which signifies that a manager’s duty is to promote a surrounding that assists workers retain their incentives.

In order to do that, the manager has to understand if her workers are skill-based or success-based people.

Skill-based are driven to increase their understanding and skills. Consider a star instrumentalist who works every day to increase his method. Administrators have to encourage these workers to provide solid outcomes and prevent them from concentrating only on self-advancement.

Success-based workers are motivated by achievement. Workers like this have to be placed in a situation where their goals are sufficiently passionate that they succeed.


Chapter 6 – Workers cannot be incentivized just by financial rewards; they require feedback as well as assistance from their administrators.


Employees expect to be awarded for occupational duties, and funding is most likely the clearest award. However, is money the greatest?

Until a specific level, funding is a great motivator; however, this has some boundaries.

For instance, some individuals who are wealthy already see money just as a ranking sign that reveals to others how achieved they are. A person in this situation does not essentially require extra income; hence, receiving 1 or 2 or 5 million extra would not have much effect on their motivation.

Conversely, even workers who rely on their incomes to back up themselves can feel funding’s restricted incentive potential. The reason is that money motivates individuals; however, just until they attain suitable living standards in which people fulfill their needs. Then, following this, workers would like more significant and important rewards.

Hence, the way to keep workers at top performance?

By creating a structure that assesses their success. As a matter of fact, it is the sole means for employees to make actual development.



Consider the competency-driven workers who would like to grow their understanding and abilities. The greatest method for incentivizing them is revealing to them that they can still get better. The reason is that when there is no such possibility, the yearn to do greater things vanishes.

To show the environment for development, an administrator may give assessments and responses via performance feedback that grade a worker on his accomplishments.

However, bear in mind, while grading work, it is important for an administrator to understand the way an unwillingness to insufficiency may change specific success-based employees into excessively wary underperformers. That is vital to transmitting the significance of admitting unsuccess and back up those kinds of workers anytime they require it.


Chapter 7 – In order to increase performance, managers have to stimulate competition at the office and undertake the character of a mentor.


Perhaps you’ve encountered people at your place of work that do tasks slowly and have small motivation; however, may force themselves to complete a marathon. The thing that incentivizes people that are like this?

Basically, the willingness to defeat others.

The reason is that at the time of rivalry, individuals have more tendency to accept challenges. This determination to win the place or the clock and rivalry is an outcome of self-realization, a notion that became important by Abraham Maslow the psychologist in the year 1954.

Someone who senses that she can win a competition would as well be willing to enter it. She would experience this urge since there is a necessity to reach her full potential – realize herself – via the competition. Hence, it is not a surprise that the greatest place for self-realization is sports that require rivalry.

Therefore, the meaning for an administrator?

You need to make your office filled with this competitive spirit of sports, and that entails allowing workers to contrast themselves with colleagues. For example, the maintenance staff that kept Intel’s buildings did badly for a long time until events were formed to make the groups of facilities compete with each other by grading the outputs and contrasting the marks.

Although there have been no extra motivations than the urge to win over others, the hygiene of each building really got better, showing that competition only can enhance output.



For some matters, a great administrator needs to behave as though she would be the mentor of sports groups. For instance, a mentor would not take recognition for the success of a team, and should not an administrator take credit for the success of the team since this might cause the group to sense cheating on their earned compliments.

Also, at times coaches have to be hard on group members to realize the greatest output from them. Likewise, managers have to understand the way to give workers constructive criticism.


Chapter 8 – No management technique can be perfect; however, some means exist to get the appropriate technique for the circumstance.


You may think, can I find a technique of administration that is better than every other one? Most likely not.

The reason is that management techniques are liable to changes and no excellent technique has appeared yet. For example, during the initial times of the 20th century, the administration was strict and sternly hierarchical. Workers abided by commands and cannot inquire about anything to superiors.

Administrative theory, afterward, progressively grew into a tender tactic that considered the individual worker rather than just his efficiency. However, in spite of this change, scholars of incentives and guidance could not agree on one ideal technique.

But, for any particular condition, scholars may indicate a factor that shows which technique should be depended on. This method of evaluating your inferiors is known as TRM.

That is a mixture of a worker’s inclinations toward duties in addition to accomplishment, and her experience, training, and education. Due to that, an employee’s TRM may be more for duty or area and lower for the other one.

For example, a marketing administrator’s TRM might be more for marketing however lower for handling a manufacturing process. Telling her to take care of the production process might be like enforcing someone who’s accustomed to driving on little town roads to suddenly navigate on a big highway.



Therefore, TRM levels differ, and various administration techniques are needed based on a worker’s ranking. For example, if a worker has lower TRM for specific tasks, an administrator needs to outline the structure in bright, comprehensive commands.

Afterward, as workers’ TRM rises, the administrator may minimize her participation while still watching the progress. By doing this, the administrator-work intercourse imitates the relationship between a mom or father and her or his kid.

As the kid grows old, parenting technique changes. Nevertheless, a child has to be explained not to contact things that are dangerous; however, there is no point in telling a teenager the reason he/ she does not need to contact a dangerous object. Also, the same applies to your workers. As they develop, they can grasp the way they can flourish the best.


High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove Book Review


The duties of an administrator are diverse and the shifting work environment changed the duty. This entails that contemporary managers are in charge of collecting data, choosing, serving as examples, nurturing incentives, and comfortably evaluating their workers.


Choose if acting as peers with employees would be appropriate.

Individuals usually think about whether that would be nice to build companionship with subordinates. The reason is that those kinds of companionships might be hard to maintain, particularly at times the greater need to have penalizing movements against an employee. Therefore, as an administrator, you need to be open about the place you stand on this matter. Just think about providing evaluative feedback to a peer. If you are capable of doing that, then building personal connections might be sensible and might be utilized to fortify your occupational intercourses.



Download Pdf


https://goodbooksummary.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/High+Output+Management+by+Andrew+S.+Grove+Book+Summary+-+Review.pdf


Download Epub


https://goodbooksummary.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/High+Output+Management+by+Andrew+S.+Grove+Book+Summary+-+Review.epub


Audiobook


Savaş Ateş

I'm a software engineer. I like reading books and writing summaries. I like to play soccer too :) Good Reads Profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/106467014-sava-ate

Recent Posts