Quotes from Andrew S. Grove

When products and services become largely indistinguishable from each other, all there is by the way of competitive advantage is time.

Suitably thought through, intelligent inspection schemes can actually increase the efficiency and productivity of any manufacturing or administrative process

e-mail is also the first manifestation of a revolution in how information flows and how it is managed.

Because the art and science of forecasting is so complex, you might be tempted to give all forecasting responsibility to a single manager who can be made accountable for it. But this usually does not work very well. What works better is to ask both the manufacturing and the sales departments to prepare a forecast, so that people are responsible for performing against their own predictions.

What is the role of the supervisor in a one-on-one? He should facilitate the subordinate's expression of what's going on and what's bothering him. The supervisor is there to learn and to coach.

Because it is easier to monitor something with which you are familiar, if you have a choice you should delegate those activities you know best. But recall the pencil experiment and understand before the fact that this will very likely go against your emotional grain.

because of the ease with which Japanese office workers communicate, they have, in fact, been slow to embrace electronic mail.

How is this done? By applying Grove's Principle of Didactic Management, "Ask one more question!" When the supervisor thinks the subordinate has said all he wants to about a subject, he should ask another question.

I'd like to suggest some mechanical hints for effective one-on-one meetings. First, both the supervisor and subordinate should have a copy of the outline and both should take notes on it, which serves a number of purposes

How you handle your own time is, in my view, the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader.

A real time-saver is using a "hold" file where both the supervisor and subordinate accumulate important but not altogether urgent issues for discussion at the next meeting.

Our society respects someone's throwing himself into sports, but anybody who works very long hours is regarded as sick, a workaholic. So the prejudices of the majority say that sports are good and fun, but work is drudgery, a necessary evil, and in no way a source of pleasure.

In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most people would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.

as a manager in such a workplace, you need to develop a higher tolerance for disorder.

Andy introduces management with this classic equation: A manager's output = the output of his organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under his influence.

So even if you're just an invited participant, you should ask yourself if the meeting—and your attendance—is desirable and justified.

When a person is not doing his job, there can only be two reasons for it. The person either can't do it or won't do it; he is either not capable or not motivated." This insight enables a manager to dramatically focus her efforts. All you can do to improve the output of an employee is motivate and train. There is nothing else.

In effect, the lack of a decision is the same as a negative decision; no green light is a red light, and work can stop for a whole organization.

If you only understand one thing about building products, you must understand that energy put in early in the process pays off tenfold and energy put in at the end of the program pays off negative tenfold.

High managerial productivity, I argue, depends largely on choosing to perform tasks that possess high leverage.

Thus, a very important way to increase productivity is to arrange the work flow inside our black box so that it will be characterized by high output per activity, which is to say high-leverage activities.

The "delegator" and "delegatee" must share a common information base and a common set of operational ideas or notions on how to go about solving problems, a

Andy replied with an answer that I did not expect: "CEOs always act on leading indicators of good news, but only act on lagging indicators of bad news." "Why?" I asked him. He answered in the style resonant of his entire book: "In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most people would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.

But be sure to know exactly what you're doing, and avoid the charade of insincere delegation, which can produce immense negative managerial leverage.