Some months ago I read the classic management book High Output Management and made a note of quotes that rang particularly true to me. I normally dislike this genre (management books), and disagree with some popular ones (I sympathize with this review of Scaling People, for example), but found High Output Management pretty reasonable. It's also interesting to see the extent to which its recommendations continue to be followed in successful organizations to this date (the book was published in 1983, but is still popular and recommend amongst tech managers). This post is a list of my copied quotes (headings mine).

Delegate activities that are familiar to you

Given a choice, should you delegate activities that are familiar to you or those that aren’t? Before answering, consider the following principle: delegation without follow-through is abdication. You can never wash your hands of a task. 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 not meddling, but means checking to make sure an activity is proceeding in line with expectations. 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.

Should you have personal relationships with your colleagues?

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.

Use random spot-checks

To use quality assurance principles effectively, the manager should only go into details randomly, just enough to try to ensure that the subordinate is moving ahead satisfactorily. To check into all the details of a delegated task would be like quality assurance testing 100 percent of what manufacturing turned out.

On performance reviews

I asked the same group to think back to some of the performance reviews they had received and asked what, if anything, was wrong with them. Their answers were quick and many:
•  review comments too general
•  mixed messages (inconsistent with rating or dollar raise)
•  no indication of how to improve
•  negatives avoided
•  supervisor didn’t know my work
•  only recent performance considered
•  surprises

But what is its [performance reviews] fundamental purpose? Though all of the responses given to my questions are correct, there is one that is more important than any of the others: it is to improve the subordinate’s performance. The review is usually dedicated to two things: first, the skill level of the subordinate, to determine what skills are missing and to find ways to remedy that lack; and second, to intensify the subordinate’s motivation in order to get him on a higher performance curve for the same skill level

Assess substance, not potential

One big pitfall to be avoided is the “potential trap.” At all times you should force yourself to assess performance, not potential. By “potential” I mean form rather than substance. I was once asked to approve the performance review of a general manager whose supervisor rated him highly for the year. The manager was responsible for a business unit that lost money, missed its revenue forecast month after month, slipped engineering schedules, and in general showed poor output and internal measures over the year. Accordingly, I could not approve the review. Whereupon his supervisor said, “But he is an outstanding general manager. He is knowledgeable and handles himself well. It’s his organization that did not do well, not the manager himself!” This cut no ice with me because the performance rating of a manager cannot be higher than the one we would accord to his organization! It is very important to assess actual performance, not appearances; real output, not good form. Had the manager been given a high rating, Intel would have signaled to all at the company that to do well, you must “act” like a good manager, talk like one, and emulate one—but you don’t need to perform like one.

Surprises

Let’s talk about surprises. If you have discharged your supervisory responsibilities adequately throughout the year, holding regular one-on-one meetings and providing guidance when needed, there should never be any surprises at a performance review, right? Wrong. When you are using the worksheet, sometimes you come up with a message that will startle you. So what do you do? You’re faced with either delivering the message or not, but if the purpose of the review is to improve your subordinate’s performance, you must deliver it. Preferably, a review should not contain any surprises, but if you uncover one, swallow hard and bring it up.

Criticize high achievers

This group consisted of achievers, and their ratings were mostly very high. The reviews were exceptionally well written, much better than the average at Intel. However, for content, they tended to be retrospective assessments, analyses of what the subordinate had done in the course of the prior year. Even though their key purpose was to improve the subordinate’s future performance, a majority of the reviews made little or no attempt to define what the subordinate needed to do to improve his performance or even to maintain his current level. It seems that for an achiever the supervisor’s effort goes into determining and justifying the judgment of the superior performance, while giving little attention to how he could do even better. But for a poor performer, the supervisor tends to concentrate heavily on ways he can improve performance, providing detailed and elaborate “corrective action programs,” step-by-step affairs meant to ensure that the marginal employee can pull himself up to meet minimum requirements

Shouldn’t we spend more time trying to improve the performance of our stars? After all, these people account for a disproportionately large share of the work in any organization. Put another way, concentrating on the stars is a high-leverage activity: if they get better, the impact on group output is very great indeed.

On interviewing

The purpose of the interview is to:
•  select a good performer
•  educate him as to who you and the company are
•  determine if a mutual match exists
•  sell him on the job

An interview produces the most insight if you steer the discussion toward subjects familiar to both you and the candidate. The person should talk about himself, his experience, what he has done and why, what he would have done differently if he had it to do over, and so forth, but this should be done in terms familiar to you, so that you can evaluate its significance. In short, make sure the words used mean the same thing to both of you.

Measuring problem-solving ability

Asking a candidate to handle a hypothetical situation can also enlighten you. I once interviewed someone for the position of cost accountant at Intel. He had a Harvard MBA and came from the food service industry. He knew nothing about the semiconductor business and I knew nothing about finance, so we really couldn’t talk in much detail about his technical ability to do the job. I decided to take him through the semiconductor manufacturing process step by step. After saying I would answer any specific questions he had, I asked him what the finished cost of a wafer would be. He asked some questions and pondered matters for a while. He then started to think his way through the basic semiconductor cost accounting principles, discovering some of them as he went along, and ultimately came up with the correct answer. He was hired, because this exercise demonstrated (as it turns out, correctly) that his problem-solving capacity was first-rate.

Tricks bad

What about “tricks”? The best ones I’ve heard about come to me from somebody who had tried to get into the Navy’s nuclear submarine program. Admiral Rickover apparently personally interviewed each candidate and employed techniques like having the candidate sit on a three-legged chair. When it tipped over, the poor man would be left sprawling on the floor. Rickover evidently thought the trick tested strength of character in the face of embarrassment. But I think the interview should be completely straightforward. Remember, a candidate is a potential employee. He will go away from having talked to you with a strong set of first impressions. If those are wrong and you hire the person, it will take a long time before they change. So show yourself and your environment as they really are.