High Output Management

Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information. Writing the report is important; reading it often is not.

A common rule we should always try to heed is to detect and fix any problem in a production process at the lowest-value stage possible.

training should be a process, not an event.

Promotions must be based on performance, because that is the only way to keep the idea of performance highlighted, maintained, and perpetuated.

To make sure you’re being heard, you should watch the person you are talking to

the performance rating of a manager cannot be higher than the one we would accord to his organization

To make an assessment less difficult, a supervisor should clarify in his own mind in advance what it is that he expects from a subordinate and then attempt to judge whether he performed to expectations. The biggest problem with most reviews is that we don’t usually define what it is we want from our subordinates, and, as noted earlier, if we don’t know what we want, we are surely not going to get it.

Though monitoring is on paper a manager’s most productive approach, we have to work our way up to it in the real world

Turning the workplace into a playing field can turn our subordinates into “athletes” dedicated to performing at the limit of their capabilities—the key to making our team consistent winners.

This is key to the manager’s approach and involvement: he has to see the work as it is seen by the people who do that work every day and then create indicators so that his subordinates can watch their “racetrack” take shape.