Grove's first lesson for managers

as the backbone of the company, middle managers should pay attention to both business and management, so how to achieve efficient management?

For some time, MBA majors like cheung kong graduate school of business and China Europe Business School have been very popular in China. Many business managers are busy with the big and small affairs of the company from Monday to Friday. On weekends, they will gather in the MBA class of the business school to learn all kinds of knowledge and try their best to improve their management level.

However, many middle managers who came to class later found that it was not easy to love you for the courses in business school. Why? Because most of these MBA business school courses may be more oriented to top managers at CEO level. Much of the course content is about global vision, strategic vision, entrepreneurship, and even Confucian philosophy. Middle-level managers are generally just department heads or deputy-level cadres. They play a connecting role in an enterprise organization-it is their duty to do a good job by themselves, but also to teach others and maximize their work performance. For these people, what they are eager to know is actually what they should do to improve the work efficiency of their teams. For example, how to hold the meeting, how to implement the performance appraisal and so on. Then these subtle but important questions are answered in the practical manual "Grove's First Lesson for Managers".

The author of this book, andy grove, is a global supplier of computer chips and the founder of the famous Intel Corporation. In this book, he innovatively introduced the concept of manufacturing "output" into general enterprise management activities and creatively put forward the method of "high leverage management". From the aspects of meeting, decision-making, planning, organizational structure, employee recruitment, motivation and training, this paper analyzes how middle managers can really improve their productivity and obtain the most effective input-output ratio.

andy grove co-founded Intel Corporation in 1968 and spent 19 years as CEO. He has led the successful transformation of Intel many times, helping Intel to develop from a memory company on the verge of bankruptcy into a large semiconductor company and computer CPU manufacturer in the world. When personal computers became popular, Intel successfully formed an alliance with Microsoft, which almost dominated the whole PC era. In addition to being active in the front line of enterprise management, Grove also served as an honorary professor at Harvard University, giving lectures on strategic management courses in stanford graduate school of business for a long time. In 1997, he was named "Man of the Year" by Time magazine.

Besides, Grove is not only a brilliant management expert, but also a scientist with several patents on semiconductor technology. As a manager with a technical background, he used computers for examples many times in this book. The style of the whole book is also different from that of general management cases. Whether it is the division of content or the elaboration of concepts, it has the rigorous and meticulous style of a science and engineering man.

In this book, Grove shared his experience for us. Middle-level managers in enterprises can get the maximum output with the most effective input, and they can make a fuss about three key words: output orientation, team consciousness and performance appraisal.

first of all, the first key word that middle managers should pay attention to is: output orientation if they want to get the maximum output with the most effective input.

what does the author think is output orientation? Take Intel Corporation as an example, it has about 2, employees, of whom about 25% work on the production line, 25% are supervisors, maintenance personnel and engineers, 25% are responsible for scheduling production time, managing personnel and depositing and withdrawing funds, and the last 25% are responsible for product development, marketing and after-sales service.

Grove believes that no matter which department these employees are in, they all have different outputs, and the primary responsibility of middle managers is to try their best to improve the output capacity of the whole team with "maximum output" as the starting point.

For a middle manager, his output is equal to the sum of the output of the organization he leads. Every management activity that middle managers engage in has more or less influence on the whole organization, and the influence depends on the leverage ratio of middle managers in this activity.

In this book, Grove, who has a technical background, introduced the concept of "leverage" in physics into enterprise management. We have all heard about leverage. Archimedes once famously said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the earth".

Then, the leverage ratio that Grove thinks is actually the ratio of the output of middle managers through their own management ability to the previous management cost in each specific work activity. In the author's view, if a management activity has a relatively high leverage ratio, it means that under the same input, this activity will have higher output than the activity with low leverage ratio. For example, if a waiter in a breakfast shop can cook two breakfasts at the same time, his leverage ratio is higher than that of an employee who can only cook one breakfast at the same time.

how to do it? The author believes that every manager must consciously find out the "limiting steps" of the whole production process, which is the key to determine whether the management activities can have a high leverage ratio. The author gives an example: suppose you are a waiter in a restaurant, and your daily responsibility is to prepare a breakfast for the guests, which includes eggs, bread and butter and coffee that have been boiled for 3 minutes. When you bring breakfast to the customer's table, everything should be freshly baked and hot. In order to satisfy customers' wishes, you can either leave the kitchen idle and wait for customers to come, or you can always keep this breakfast in stock, but neither of these practices is practical.

you can see which breakfast combination takes the most time to prepare first. There is no doubt that the answer is boiled eggs. Because coffee has been cooked in the pot and baking bread only takes about a minute, we should take the longest time to boil eggs as the limiting step. Boiling eggs is not only the longest, but also the most important breakfast combination for most customers. The formulation of the process plan should focus on the most critical limiting steps. As the saying goes, if you hit the snake seven inches, you should lead the cow by the nose. In order to improve the output of breakfast shop staff, it is necessary to give priority to the time of cooking eggs, and then consider the output time of other items and arrange them alternately into the production process. Boiling eggs here is actually the limiting step of the whole production process.

in our daily life, we often find restrictive steps. For example, when recruiting fresh graduates, in the past, Intel's practice was: HR first went to the campus to recruit, invited outstanding candidates to visit the company, and the company was responsible for the meal travel expenses of these students, and then after continuous evaluation, finally hired those students whose comprehensive quality best met the needs of Intel.

in this process, in order to maximize the output, it is necessary to focus on the limiting steps, that is, the most expensive project design process. Because the cost of students' meals and travel expenses is the highest, Intel asked some HR to go directly to the campus for recruitment to minimize the overall cost. In addition, in order to reduce the recruitment cost required for each position, before inviting students to visit Intel, they will first screen candidates by telephone interview, which not only saves money, but also improves the employment rate of job seekers invited to visit the company and reduces the expenditure of inviting job seekers to visit the company.

So, besides finding out the limiting steps, are there any other ways to achieve high leverage ratio and maximize production capacity?

The author really gave several reference methods. One is that middle managers use their special skills or knowledge to influence many people at the same time. These skills can be specialized knowledge and technology, or they can have unique opinions on trends and market conditions. Every time middle managers impart knowledge, skills or values to their subordinates, it is a highly leveraged activity, especially when these subordinates impart what they have learned to others, and the leverage ratio is further improved.

another way is to influence others with simple management skills. For example, performance evaluation, middle managers' performance evaluation of subordinates will have a great influence on their actions. Of course, if some small things of middle managers are not done well, they will also have negative leverage ratio. For example, if middle-level managers often have negative emotions or delay decision-making and interfere excessively with their subordinates' work, their subordinates will be negatively affected and the output of the whole organization will be reduced.

The above are basically how middle managers can lead others to increase their output, and how can they improve their leverage ratio? The author summed up several dry goods from more than ten years' personal experience: for middle managers, there are some activities that must be done and must be included in the schedule, which is the middle managers' own limiting steps. After making clear what must be done at a certain time, it can improve work efficiency by inserting other relatively less important activities.

For another example, if similar work is done together, if there are a lot of reports waiting to be read or a lot of performance evaluations waiting to be reviewed, the best solution is to set aside a period of time and read them one by one, so the preparation time spent on switching work scenes can be greatly reduced. In addition, in the face of the same thing, we should also try to make the methods of dealing with the same thing more consistent, that is to say, establish standardized procedures, turn irregularities into laws, and establish a fixed model for dealing with problems, which can also improve our work output.

At last, the author gives a suggestion: build inventory. What do you mean? That is to say, middle managers should save those projects that are not in a hurry to complete, such as some projects to improve the long-term productivity of the department. Although these projects are not in a hurry to complete at one time, they have long-term significance for the development of the whole organization. After the middle managers deal with urgent and important things, they spend their spare time thinking about completing them. Otherwise, as soon as middle managers have nothing to do, they will involuntarily want to interfere with their subordinates' work. It is estimated that when it comes to this, many middle managers will feel stabbed.

Grove said that the output of a middle-level manager is the sum of the results of the subordinate work he manages and influences. In order for the whole group to maintain its continuous creativity and combat effectiveness, it is essential to exchange opinions, reach a * * * understanding and further form a sense of team through meetings.

But in fact, meetings are almost notorious, and endless meetings are just one nightmare after another for middle managers who are desperate for time. Some people have done research and found that middle managers spend more than 5% of their time in meetings.

Drucker, a master of management, once said that if a middle manager spends more than 25% of his time in meetings, there is probably something wrong with the organization. But in the author's opinion, the meeting is useful and necessary. Meetings are the only medium for management. Middle managers can't avoid meetings, but they can make them more efficient.

why do you say that? Because a very important part of the middle-level manager's work is to provide information and technology, and to impart efficient and high-quality ways of doing things to people under his jurisdiction or influence. In addition, middle managers have to make decisions or help others make decisions. These two responsibilities can only be better performed through face-to-face meetings.

how can we make the meeting efficient? The author has given several tips, so you can listen to them. In the author's opinion, the middle manager should convene his subordinates to hold one-on-one meetings regularly. By discussing specific issues during the meeting, the middle manager can impart his skills and experience to his subordinates, and can also give suggestions to his subordinates on the way to cut into specific problems. For subordinates, he can also report the problems encountered in his usual work to middle managers at the meeting and ask for help.

some managers may ask. I often meet my subordinates in the company's tea room and elevator, and just say what's wrong. Is it necessary to have a one-on-one meeting? The author's answer is: YES. Because the meeting is completely different from this kind of work report anytime and anywhere. Before a one-on-one meeting, the subordinate will prepare an outline of the meeting, which will prompt him to carefully consider the topics to be discussed in advance; At the meeting, subordinates will be responsible for the progress of the agenda and the atmosphere of the meeting, which can not only make subordinates think deeply about the problems they face, but also assess the comprehensive quality of subordinates in all aspects.

One-on-one meetings have a huge leverage ratio, because it allows supervisors and subordinates to establish the same information base and similar ways of doing things at meetings. In this way, the whole team will have a sense of unity, and the efficiency will naturally be high.

Not only that, one-on-one meetings are actually very helpful to our family life. When you communicate with your parents or children one-on-one, the face-to-face way allows you to talk about some subtle and complicated things seriously in a quiet environment. In this case, the topics and conversation atmosphere are different from those in other occasions, and the knowledge you can finally achieve will be more quality.

so, how to hold a one-on-one meeting? We can start with some performance figures, such as orders, production and project progress, which are used as assessment indicators, report the current situation, make a comparison with the previous situation, and predict the general trend of the next stage. One-on-one meetings should cover anything important that happened after the last meeting, but more importantly, subordinates should be responsible for raising potential problems.

what are the potential problems? Anything that bothers you or unknown so is something that needs to be discussed. These problems are often not obvious, and it will take some time to surface, but if they are not discovered promptly and keenly, they will be caught off guard when these problems really emerge.

how often will the meeting be held? In fact, the frequency of meetings mainly depends on the familiarity of subordinates with their work. If subordinates are comfortable with this project, then managers can appropriately reduce the frequency of meetings. If he is dealing with a new project, then the middle manager should increase the frequency of meetings with subordinates, communicate the latest progress in time, and give suggestions and guidance as soon as possible for the problems found.

For example, there is an army stationed in the battlefield. At the beginning, there may be no fighting to be fought. As long as the soldiers practice on time every day, the officers can rest in the office and maintain a relaxed relationship with the soldiers. Because the whole army has a high degree of work maturity, the supervision work of superiors has been greatly reduced. However, if one day the enemy suddenly appears and the bullet attack begins, the chief executive's management style will immediately take a 18-degree turn, become highly organized and will clearly arrange specific combat tasks. He may constantly shout and give orders to every soldier, tell them what to do, and make it clear when and how to do it. Maybe he will ask the soldiers to repeat it. If this state continues for a while, the enemy will continue to attack, and the work maturity of the troops in the battle will be re-established. At this time, there is no need to yell. The work maturity of subordinates will vary with the working environment