Reviews for High output management

The average rating for High output management based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-12-29 00:00:00 Adrian De Propertis I read this book for a book club at work. I wasn't exactly thrilled that a management book was chosen as our next book, especially since I am not a manager myself. However, I did see that High Output Management had received rave reviews here on Goodreads. I also saw an article from the Washington Post highlighting this book becoming a cult classic in Silicon Valley with plenty of recommendations from top CEOs. And the recently updated edition has a foreword by Ben Horowitz, who apparently has been the chief promoter of the book in tech circles. He's a gazillionaire. He's smart. And The Lean Startup, another Silicon Valley favorite, was quite good. Maybe this will actually be useful. I could not have been more wrong. High Output Management is one of the worst books I've ever read. I repeat. High Output Management, lauded by Brian Chesky, Mark Zuckerburg, and Ben Horowitz, is one of the worst books I have ever read. Now, if you liked this book, you might be thinking, "What do I care what this guy has to say about this book? He's not even a manager. It was probably just over his head. He doesn't understand." Allow me to make my case. The pain starts with the foreword. Ben Horowitz begins to froth at the mouth about Andy Grove, otherworldly CEO of Intel - the greatest company ever to exist. Horowitz seems to equate Grove and High Output Management to Jesus and the Bible. Anyone who was anyone in Silicon Valley read this book back when it was first released… Look how cool the cover is. He's still wearing his key card in the photo! Wow! Horowitz proceeds to explain the one decent piece of insight of the entire book, that a managers' output is the output of his subordinates and those under his influence. Then he explains how amazing, absolutely Earth-shattering it is that Andy Grove will share how he runs his meetings. This is what I get to look forward to for the next 200 pages? Kill me now… After Horowitz's teenage gush fest, Grove begins the book with a deeply technical explanation of the process to prepare breakfast at a restaurant. The first step is to identify the limiting step, the step in the breakfast prep that takes the longest to complete. Then plan the entire job around that step. Okay, cool... Not related to anything any of the people who probably read this book work on. It's more appropriate for an assembly line environment, but okay. He's using a metaphor. It'll probably come full circle later on. WRONG! It never comes full circle. And we arrive at my first major gripe about this book: High Output Management is meant for a production manager on the floor at a manufacturing plant whose sole job is to spit out as many bits and thingys as possible. Anyone not spending their job doing the same thing over and over again in a more-is-better environment will gain almost no value here. The back cover explains how it is "equally appropriate for consultants, teachers, as well as CEOs and startup founders." And yet, there is no real mention of how this relates to any of them or the modern knowledge worker in general. Which leads me to wonder, why are so many startup founders, in massively unpredictable and creative environments, worshipping this nonsense? Not only is the book mostly irrelevant, it's hard to follow. Andy Grove consistently uses grossly overcomplicated reasoning and terminology to explain simple concepts. One quote that I like is, "Most geniuses - especially those who lead others - prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities." Grove has no understanding of this concept. High Output Management is littered with complex formulas and unnecessary diagrams that will lull even the most studious professional into a blank stare. Entire chapters could have been written in one paragraph. The chapter called, "Task-Relevant Maturity," could have been written in one sentence: Learn about your subordinates so you know how to manage them. That's it. Instead we got a calculus lesson. I can only equate Grove's obfuscating to trying to sound smart. He also can't seem to call things as they are. Grove insists on using bizarre labels to describe very common things. A meeting organizer is a "chairman." Weekly updates are "operation reviews." WTF? NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT. And perhaps it's the use of buzzwords like "managerial leverage" and "task-relevant maturity" that deceives the reader that Grove actually isn't writing about anything new. All of his talking points, when you strip away the useless management-speak, are just the same tips you see in a typical article in Fast Company. Set a meeting agenda, train your employees, have one-on-one meetings with your subordinates. Useful for sure. But if this is your first time hearing that the meeting organizer should prepare the agenda, you don't read enough. Another theme of the book I have a problem with is that Andy Grove sees human effort as just another metric to quantify and optimize for. Our subordinates can be tinkered with to accomplish our goals if only we have the right equation. Maybe this is what attracts those in the startup community. That even human beings can be hacked by putting the right code into the machine. Grove obviously isn't the first to think this way about managing others. But it's a way of thinking that has caused generational resentment towards Corporate America. Somehow, despite all of these flaws, Andy Grove could almost be forgiven if he didn't commit this one fallacy: Grove doesn't acknowledge how he concluded which/if any of his methods actually caused Intel's or any of their managers' success. He didn't even isolate the characteristics of his top managers versus the average so we could at least guess for ourselves. All of the arguments were purely anecdotal and most likely suffering from confirmation bias, leaving the assembly line supervisors with only Grove's word that these tactics actually work. Grove mentions how delegation is an essential aspect of management. Um… Really? You're telling me Steve Jobs was a legendary CEO because he was great at delegating? This is all you need to know about this and practically every other management book. In my opinion, what every book about management misses is that management isn't nearly as important as a manager thinks it is. If you want to be a great manager, provide your guidance and get out of the way. No one wants to be managed. People want to be lead. Real leaders like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, notorious for being brutal bosses, have succeeded most likely in spite of their management skills. People like them succeed because they bring out the best in their team and inspire others to go where no one else has gone before. They seek to create a world that doesn't yet exist and bring others along for the ride. This is the difference between a manager and a leader. Of course tasks like delegation, planning, and running effective meetings play a role, but no one is buying that they were the crux of Andy Grove's success. This is a lesson that many people never learn. Most people, even the uber rich and successful, are terrible at understanding why they succeeded in a given domain. They often just pick the things that are obvious and easy to quantify. I think it's not a stretch to think that I'll be in a position of leadership at some point in my life. But when that day comes, I will not be using anything I learned from High Output Management.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-02 00:00:00 Todd Traub This is definitely one of the BEST Business Books one must read. And it's the best "Management to Engineers" book I can think of. This book is listed on Quora as the best people management book one can read. It has been recommended by so many top VCs there. Andrew Grove is the legendary CEO of Intel. Yet, his background is scientific research. This book is one of the best and concise guides on how to be an excellent manager (from managing a small team, all the way to a whole company). His language is filled with engineering examples. It's also concise and to the point. And has an amazing clarity of thought. I highly recommend it. (along with Collin's Good to Great, and Lencioni's Advantage)