If your performance happens to be judged in some way by the performance of others, you’re a manager. Maybe not directly of people, but of resources, knowledge, and some sort of productive output that keeps you employed.
So now we’ve established that, the real question is, how good of a manager are you?
When you actually manage people or the work they do, being high performing will improve their performance as well, so you should care about this.
One of my favorite management books is High Output Management by Andy Grove, former Intel CEO. I read this in 2018 and have referred to it almost every year since. It’s the one book i recommend for new managers because it’s 232 pages, meaning you can finish it in 8 hours, or a month of reading about 30 minutes daily, at least every other day. Not a bad investment in improving your management skill.
However, most people who give it rave reviews do not mention one of the most unique things about it – in addition to going beyond the trivial to the real issues of management throughout the book, Grove includes a checklist of some useful exercises to increase your management output right at the end.
If you’re too busy to read books, he organized these ‘assignments’ under three themes of Performance, Production and Leverage, all with a minimum score of 10 points for each assignment and recommended that folks who had read the book, should invest the extra time in completing at least 100 points worth, or 10 assignments.
I think even people who haven’t read it should too. Some of the most novel thinking was around production and leverage, which he covers thoroughly in the book.
My favorite assignments have been:
- What is the most important strategy (plan of action) you are pursuing now?
- Define the 3 most important objectives for your organization for the next 3 months.
- Generate an inventory of projects on which you can work on at discretionary times.
- Give subordinates a racetrack: define performance indicators for each subordinate.
- For a project you are working on, identify the limiting step and map out the flow of work around it.
- Take a Tour. Afterwards, list the transactions you got involved in during its course.
So with this context, are you a high output manager? How many of these assignments do you routinely complete?