"Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos."
Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) fled Communist Hungary as a refugee, immigrated to the United States, and rose to become Intel's third employee, its CEO, and one of the most influential management thinkers of the 20th century. His book High Output Management remains a foundational text for Silicon Valley leadership and popularized the goal-setting system Google later made famous as OKRs.
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Andy Grove's classic on treating management as a production process — leverage, task-relevant maturity, one-on-ones, and decision-making done right.
Read Summary →A manager's output is the output of their team plus the output of neighboring teams they influence. Measure managers by what their organization produces, not by how busy they appear.
Some activities generate far more output per hour than others. High-leverage work — like training a subordinate who then trains others — multiplies a manager's impact well beyond their own hours.
Regular one-on-one meetings between a manager and each direct report are the single highest-leverage activity in management — a small, consistent investment that surfaces problems long before they become crises.
"Remember too that your time is your one finite resource, and when you say 'yes' to one thing you are inevitably saying 'no' to another."— High Output Management
"The absolute truth is that if you don't know what you want, you won't get it."— High Output Management
"My day always ends when I'm tired and ready to go home, not when I'm done. I am never done."— High Output Management
"Remember that by saying 'yes' — to projects, a course of action, or whatever — you are implicitly saying 'no' to something else."— High Output Management
Andy Grove's classic on treating management as a production process — leverage, task-relevant maturity, one-on-ones, and decision-making done right.
