One-on-one meetings between a supervisor and a subordinate. Mutual education and the exchange of information. By talking about specific problems and situation, the supervisor teaches the subordinate his skills and know how, and suggests ways to approach things. At the same time, the subordinate provides the supervisor with detailed information about what he is doing and what he is concered about

Continually dedicate yourself to retraining your individual competitive advantage

You must compete with millions of individuals every day, and every day you must enhance your value, hone your competitive advantage, learn, adapt, get out of the way, move from job to job, even from industry if you must and retrain if you need to do so in order to start again

As a manager, are you adding real value or merely passing the information along? How do you add more value? The output of a manager is the output of his organization. Every hour of your day should be spent increasing the output or the value of the output of the people whom you're responsible for

Are you plugged into what's happening around you? Are you a node connected to a network of plugged-in people or are you floating by yourself? (Referring to your domain)

Are you trying new ideas, new techniques, and new technologies, and I mean personally trying them, not just reading about them?

The key to survival is to learn to add more value

The essenntial skill of entrepreneurship: how to manage

A manager's output = the output of his organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under his influence

A manager's skills and knowledge are only valuable if she uses them to get more leverage from her people

Energy put in early in the process pays off tenfold and energy put in at the end of the program pays off negative tenfold

Image yourself delivering a tough performance review to your friend. Do you cringe at the thought? If so, don't make friends at work

There are only two ways in which a manager can impact an employee's output: motivation and training

"CEOs always act on leading indicators of good news, but only act on lagging indicators of bad news"

'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 don't listen to leading indicators of bad news'

Your task is to find the most effective way to deploy your resources—the key to optimizing all types of productive work

A right answer, the one that can give you the best delivery time and product quality at the lowest possible cost. You must develop a clear understanding of the trade-offs between the various factors—manpower, capacity, and inventory

Whenever possible, you should choose in-process tests over those that destroy product

Opportunity at risk: what would it cost if you had to shut down for a day?

The material (or product) becomes more valuable as it moves through the process

Focus each indicator on a specific operational goal

A measurement is better than none. A genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved

What you measure should be a physical, countable thing

Ask to prepare a forecast, so that people are responsible for performing against their own predictions

Build a resonable amount of slack into the system

Parkinson's law: people would find ways to let whatever they're doing fill the time available for its completion

Manufacturing's charter is to deliver product at a quality level acceptable to the customer at minimum cost

The principle of variable inspection applied to managerial work nicely skirts both problems and gives us an important tool for improving managerial productivity

The productivity of any function occurring within it is the output divided by the labor required to generate the output. One way to increase productivity is to do whatever we are now doing, but faster

"work smarter, not harder"

Leverage: the output generated by a specific type of work activity

Substantial reduction could be achieved in the number of steps required to perform various tasks

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in the opposite

Individual contributors who gather and disseminate know-how and information are middle managers

It takes a team to win

A manager must keep many balls in the air at the same time and shift his energy and attention to activities that will most increase the output of his organization. Move to the point where his leverage will be the greatest

The more timely the information, the more valuable it is

Verbal sources are the most valuable

Visit a particular place in the company and observe what's going on there

Information gathering is the basis of all other managerial work

Nothing leads as well as example

Values and behavioral norms are simply not transmitted easily by talk or memo, but are conveyed very effectively by doing and doing visibly

Be role models for people in our organization

The single most important resource that we allocate from one day to the next is our own time. In principle, more money, more manpower, or more capital can always be made available, but our own time is the one absolutely finite resource we each have. Its allocation and use, therefore, deserve considerable attention. How you handle your own time is, in my view, the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader

Getting together with others is not an activity—it is a medium

Even after you delegate it, you are still responsible for its accomplishment, and monitoring the delegated task is the only practical way for you to ensure a result

Monitoring is checking to make sure an activity is proceeding in line with expectations

We should apply quality assurance principles and monitor at the lowest-added-value stage of the process. Review rough drafts of reports that you have delegated; don't wait until your subordinates have spent time polishing them into the final form before you find out that you have a basic problem with the contents

How often you monitor should not be based on what you believe your subordinate can do in general, but on his experience with a specific task and his prior performance with it

Batch similar tasks together to maximize the use of the mental set-up time needed for the task

Say "no" at the outset to work beyond your capacity to handle

Your time is your one finite resource, and when you say "yes" to one thing you are inevitably saying "no" to another

Allow slack in your scheduling

Continue to think critically about what we do and the approaches we use

A manager whose work is largely supervisory should have six to eight subordinates

We should do everything we can to prevent little stops and starts in our day as well as interruptions brought on by big emergencies

By maintaining an archive of information, a manager doesn't have to do ad hoc research everytime the phone rings

Force his frequent interrupters to make an active decision about whether the issue can wait

A meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible

You should have one-on-ones frequently (once a week) with a subordinate who is inexperienced in a specific situation and less frequently (once every few weeks) with an experienced veteran

A one-on-one: should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting

Ask one more question

As the chairman, you must identify who should attend and then try to get those people to come. Follow up and get commitments

Send out an agenda that clearly states the purpose of the meeting. What is to be done, who is to do it, and when

Free discusions: all points of view and all aspects of an issue are openly welcomed and debated

Reach a clear decision

Everyone involved must give the decision reached by the group full support. This does not necessarily mean agreement

Judgement is developed through experience and learning from the many errors one has made in one's career

Self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking inappropriate action, or being overruled

We are all human beings endowed with intelligence and blessed with willpower. Both can be drawn upon to help us overcome our fear of sounding dumb or of being overruled, and lead us to initiate discussion and come out front with a stand

What do I have to do today to solve—or better, avoid—tomorrow's problem?

Remember that by saying 'yes'—to projects, a course of action, or whatever—you are implicitly saying 'no' to something else. Each time you make a commitment, you forfeit your chance to commit to something else

Management by objectives—MBO. If you don't know where you're going, you will not get there

For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs

If we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing

Motivation has to come from within somebody. All a manager can do is create an environment in which motivated people can flourish

A subordinate's saying 'I feel motivated' means nothing. What matters is if he performs better or worse because his environment changed

Motivation is closely tied to the idea of needs, which cause people to have drives, which is turn result in motivation. A need once satisfied stops being a need in motivation. If we are to create and maintain a high degree of motivation, we must keep some needs unsatisfied at all times

Physiological needs are things that money can buy. Food, clothing, and other basic necessities of life

Social needs stem from the inherent desire of human beings to belong to some group or other. People don't want to belong to just any group; they need to belong to one whose members possess something in common with themselves

The physiological, safety/security, and social needs all can motivate us to show up for work, but other needs—esteem and self-actualization—make us perform once we are there

The need to keep up with or emulate someone is a powerful source of positive motivation. The person or group whose recognition you desire may mean nothing to someone else—esteem exists in the eyes of the beholder

Self-actualization stems from a personal realization that "what I can be, I must be."

Self-actualization means: the need to achieve one's utter personal best in a chosen field of endeavor. Once someone's source of motivation is self-actualization, his drive to perform has no limit

Self-actualization continues to motivate people to ever higher levels of performance

Competence-driven or achievement-driven

Some people simply must test themselves

Both competence and achievement oriented people spontaneously try to test the outer limits of their abilities

When the need to stretch is not spontaneous, management needs to create an environment to foster it. Objectives should be set at a point high enough so that even if the individual pushes himself hard, he will still only have a 50-50 chance of making them

If we want to cultivate achievement-driven motivation, we need to create an environment that values and emphasizes output

When one is self-actualized, money in itself is no longer a source of motivation but rather a measure of achievement

Money as a measurement of achievement will motivate without limit

Once in the self-actualization mode, a person needs measures to gauge his progress and achievement. The most important type of measure is feedback on his performance

If the possibility for improvement does not exist, the desire to keep practicing vanishes

In the upper levels of motivation, fear is not something coming from the outside. It is instead fear of not satisfying yourself that causes you to back off. You cannot stay in the self-actualized mode if you're always worried about failure

Performance of the organization as a whole depends on how skilled and motivated the people within it are. Our role as managers is, first, to train the individuals and bring them to the point where self-actualization motivates them because once there, their motivation will be self-sustaining and limitless

People will exert themselves to previously undreamed heights, forcing themselves to run farther or faster, while their efforts fill barrels with sweat. They will do this not for money, but just to beat the distance, the clock, or other people

We must first overcome cultural prejudice. Our society respects someone's throwing himself into sports, but anyone who works very long hours is regarded as sick, a workaholic

Majority say that sports are good and fun, but work is drudgery, a necessary evil, and in on way a source of pleasure

One of the big impediments to a fully committed, highly motivated state of mind is preoccupation with failure

An ideal coach takes no personal credit for the success of his team, and because of that his players trust him. Second, he is tough on his team. By being critical, he tries to get the best performance his team members can provide. Third, a good coach was likely a good player himself at one time. And having played the game well, he also understands it well

A manager's most important responsibilitiy is to elicit top performance from his subordinates

Task-relevant maturity (TRM) of the subordinates is a combination of the degree of their achievement orientation and readiness to take responsibility, as well as their education, training, and experience. All this is very specific to the task at hand. It is entirely possible for a person or a group of people to have a TRM that is high in one job but low in another

The mannager should always monitor a subordinate's work closely enough to avoid surprises

If the parent imparted early on to the child the right way to do things, later the child would be likely to make decisions the way the parent would

The responsibbility for transmitting common values rests squarly with the superior

A manager's ability to operate in a style based on communication and mutual understanding depends on there being enough time for it. Though monitoring is on paper a manger's most productive approach, we have to work our way up to it in the real world

Giving reviews is the single most important form of task-relevant feedback we as supervisiors can provide

To improve the subordinate's performance, determine what skills are missing and find ways to remedy that lack. Intensify the subordinates motivation in order to get them on a higher performance curve for the same skill level

If performance matters in your operation, performance reviews are absolutely necessary

Be objective, not afraid of using judgment even though judgment by definition subjective

A supervisor should clarify in his own mind in advance what it is that he expects from a subordinate and then attempt to judge whether he performed to expectations

As managers, we are really called upon to judge performance, not just to see and record it when it's in plain sight

At all times you should force yourself to assess performance

The performance rating of a manager cannot be higher than the one we would accord to his organization

By elevating someone we are in effect creating role models for others in our organization

When delivering a review: level, listen, and leave yourself out

You must level with your subordinate—the credibility and integrity of the entire system depend on your being totally frank

Employ all of your sensory capabilities. Watch the person you are talking to. It is your responsibility to keep at it until you are satisfied that you have been heard and understood

Listening: employing your entire arsenal of sensory capabilities to make certain your points are being properly interpreted by your subordinates brain

Any outcome that includes a commitment to action is acceptable

Concentrating on the stars is a high leverage activity: if they get better, the impact on group output is very great indeed

Under no circumstances should you pretend that you are your subordinates equal during performance reviews

The applicant should do 80 percent of the talking during an interview, and what he talks about should be your main concern

The person should talk about himself, his experience, what he has done and why, what he would have done differently if he had to do it over

What are your weaknesses? How are you working to eliminate them?

Convince me why my company should hire you

What are some of the problems you are encountering in your current position? How are you going about solving them? What could you have done to prevent them from cropping up?

Why do you think you're ready for this new job?

The ultimate purpose of interviewing is to make a judgement about how the candidate would perform in your company's environment

When you're hiring, you must judge potential contribution

The candidate can tell you a great deal about his capabilities, skills, and values by asking you questions

An employee who is dedicated and loyal yet feels his work is not appreciated. If he feels his efforts have gone unrecognized, you have not done your job and have failed as his manager

Your initial reaction to his announcement to quit is absolutely crucial

The employee is quitting because he feels he is not important to you

You have to coney to him by what you do that he is important to you, and you have to find out what is really troubling him

If the absolute amount of a raise in salary is important, that person is motivated by physiological or safety needs. If the relative amount of a raise is the important issue, that person is likely to be motivated by self-actualization because money is a measure, not a necessity

Compensation should obviously be tied to performance

Training is one of the highest leverage activities a manager can perform

For training to be effective, it has to be closely tied to how things are actually done in your organization

Make a list of the things you feel your subordinates or the members of your department should be trained in. Don't limit the scope of your list

Your ultimate aim should be to satisfy yourself that you are accomplishinng what you set out to do