137 - High Output Management - The Sports Analogy
Endowing work with the same esteem as pro sports
I’m writing about High Output Management, what I’ve learned about how to generate high output as a manager. Management is a team sport. The single most important job of a manager is to elicit peak performance from those that report into you. One of the most impactful concepts for me from Andy Grove’s phenomenal book is the idea of the sports analogy. What if we could endow work with the same esteem as pro sports; what if we respected someone who throws themself into work in the same way as someone who throws themself into a sport?
We can do that through endowing work with the characteristics of sports. Applying the idea of a scoreboard or race track to a person’s job. The manager must see the work as it is seen by the people who do that work every day and then create indicators so people can watch their race track take shape. This can be things like targets for sales. But it can also be things like the number of rounds of review that are required before a person’s work is “approved”. Indicators so that person can assess whether they are winning, against themselves.
The ideal manager, just like the ideal sports coach, is one who takes no personal credit for the success of their team, so the players trust in him/her. They are constructively tough on the team, as part of getting the best performance they can provide. They were likely a player themselves at one time, so they understand the role well enough to manage.