Quotes from Andrew S. Grove

management by objectives—MBO

A successful MBO system needs only to answer two questions: 1.  Where do I want to go? (The answer provides the objective.) 2.  How will I pace myself to see if I am getting there? (The answer gives us milestones, or key results.)

We all have a hard time saying things that are critical, whether we're talking to a superior employee or a marginal one. We must keep in mind, however, that no matter how stellar a person's performance level is, there is always room for improvement. Don't hesitate to use the 20/20 hindsight provided by the review to show anyone, even an ace, how he might have done better.

The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your buisness.

Obsessed for years with hardware, Jobs, 37, now recognizes that Next's 'crown jewel' is not its sleek computer but its operating system

In other words, the output of the planning process is the decisions made and the actions taken as a result of the process.

As a means to obtain this leverage, a manager must understand, as Andy writes: "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.

For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs. Accordingly, an MBO system should set objectives for a relatively short period. For example, if we plan on a yearly basis, the corresponding MBO system's time frame should be at least as often as quarterly or perhaps even monthly.

replacement of corporate heads is far more motivated by the need to bring in someone who is not invested in the past than to get somebody who is a better manager or a better leader in other ways.

But today's gap represents a failure of planning sometime in the past.

The one thing an MBO system should provide par excellence is focus. This can only happen if we keep the number of objectives small. In practice, this is rare, and here, as elsewhere, we fall victim to our inability to say "no"—in this case, to too many objectives.

Once responsibility has been assumed, however, finding the solution is relatively easy. This is because the move from blaming others to assuming responsibility constitutes an emotional step, while the move from assuming responsibility to finding the solution is an intellectual one, and the latter is easier.

Thus I will assert again that a meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed. That means we should not be fighting their very existence, but rather using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible.

When products and services become largely indistinguishable from each other, all there is by the way of competitive advantage is time. And that's where the second critical development of the eighties comes in—e-mail.

if you want to work and continue to work, you must continually dedicate yourself to retaining your individual competitive advantage.

I have seen far too many people who upon recognizing today's gap try very hard to determine what decision has to be made to close it. But today's gap represents a failure of planning sometime in the past.

My day always ends when I'm tired and ready to go home, not when I'm done. I am never done. Like a housewife's, a manager's work is never done.

Transactions between companies are usually governed by the free market. When we buy a commodity product from a vendor, we are trying to get it at the best possible price, and vice versa. But what happens when the value of something is not easily defined? What happens, for instance, when it takes a group of people to accomplish a certain task?

Everyone must decide for himself what is professional and appropriate here. A test might be to imagine yourself delivering a tough performance review to your friend. Do you cringe at the thought? If so, don't make friends at work. If your stomach remains unaffected, you are likely to be someone whose personal relationships will strengthen work relationships.

In return for stopping at a red light, we count on other drivers to do the same thing, and we can drive through green lights. But for lawbreakers we need policemen, and with them, as with supervisors, we introduce overhead.

What decision needs to be made? •  When does it have to be made? • Who will decide? •  Who will need to be consulted prior to making the decision? •  Who will ratify or veto the decision? •  Who will need to be informed of the decision?

I couldn't afford luxuries like embarrassment

We now discover that management is not just a team game, it is a game in which we have to fashion a team of teams, where the various individual teams exist in some suitable and mutually supportive relationship with each other.

Alfred Sloan summed up decades of experience at General Motors by saying, "Good management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization." Or, we might say, on a balancing act to get the best combination of responsiveness and leverage.