IMO this post has some good points but makes the executive sound like a passive referee, ultimately misunderstanding what High Output Management (also one of my favorite books!) is about. (Admittedly adding my own editorial here from my experience founding a startup and now running it as a ~3,000-person public company.)
The basic principle of HOM is that the fundamental job of an executive is to deliver results ("output"), and that the measure of an executive is the output of their organization. Importantly, there is no one right way to deliver results -- successful CEOs can have very different styles and techniques.
That said, for every effective way to deliver results there are vastly more that are ineffective. Complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty are not your friends. Time is not your friend. Everything is situationally dependent. There are many skills to develop and principles that can help but there's no formula.
This also partially explains why the median CEO or exec is perceived as ineffective, often because they are. It's a hard job, otherwise everyone would do it well and there would be a surplus of good (and cheap) execs.
Contrary to what the post suggests, HOM does not say not that the job of an executive is to wave some kind of magic culture or "values" wand and rubber-stamp whatever emergent strategy and behavior results from that. CEOs and executives absolutely do (and must) make important decisions of all kinds, break ties, and set general direction. Occasionally they need to give commands but more typically you work collaboratively with and (as the post correctly suggests) empower your team and avoid doing too much as an individual contributor.
If you're curious about what execs do and how to be a good one, HOM is an incredible book. The Effective Executive by Drucker is another favorite.
Thanks for refuting this blatant distortion of Andy Grove's thinking.
Unintentionally or willfully, the OP sought the credibility of a seminal book to support a soft-headed presupposition. The kind that engineer nurtures when real leadership is invisible (or undetectable) to their work in the weeds.
Thank you. When I read the OP article I though “this isn’t the book I read”. I remember it as you described - a managers output is the output of their organisation.
The basic principle of HOM is that the fundamental job of an executive is to deliver results ("output"), and that the measure of an executive is the output of their organization. Importantly, there is no one right way to deliver results -- successful CEOs can have very different styles and techniques.
That said, for every effective way to deliver results there are vastly more that are ineffective. Complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty are not your friends. Time is not your friend. Everything is situationally dependent. There are many skills to develop and principles that can help but there's no formula.
This also partially explains why the median CEO or exec is perceived as ineffective, often because they are. It's a hard job, otherwise everyone would do it well and there would be a surplus of good (and cheap) execs.
Contrary to what the post suggests, HOM does not say not that the job of an executive is to wave some kind of magic culture or "values" wand and rubber-stamp whatever emergent strategy and behavior results from that. CEOs and executives absolutely do (and must) make important decisions of all kinds, break ties, and set general direction. Occasionally they need to give commands but more typically you work collaboratively with and (as the post correctly suggests) empower your team and avoid doing too much as an individual contributor.
If you're curious about what execs do and how to be a good one, HOM is an incredible book. The Effective Executive by Drucker is another favorite.
https://hbr.org/2009/05/what-only-the-ceo-can-do is one of my favorite articles about the responsibilities of the CEO.
https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-leaders-calendar is a fascinating study of where CEOs spend their time and what they actually do day to day.