“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 do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.”

“Our society respects someone’s throwing himself into sports, but anybody who works very long hours is regarded as sick, a workaholic. So the prejudices of the majority say that sports are good and fun, but work is drudgery, a necessary evil, and in no way a source of pleasure.”

“A real time-saver is using a “hold” file where both the supervisor and subordinate accumulate important but not altogether urgent issues for discussion at the next meeting.”

“How you handle your own time is, in my view, the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader.”

“I’d like to suggest some mechanical hints for effective one-on-one meetings. First, both the supervisor and subordinate should have a copy of the outline and both should take notes on it, which serves a number of purposes”

“How is this done? By applying Grove’s Principle of Didactic Management, “Ask one more question!” When the supervisor thinks the subordinate has said all he wants to about a subject, he should ask another question.”

“because of the ease with which Japanese office workers communicate, they have, in fact, been slow to embrace electronic mail.”

“What is the role of the supervisor in a one-on-one? He should facilitate the subordinate’s expression of what’s going on and what’s bothering him. The supervisor is there to learn and to coach.”

“if your organization uses e-mail, a lot more people know what’s going on in your business than did before, and they know it a lot faster than they used to.”

“Because the art and science of forecasting is so complex, you might be tempted to give all forecasting responsibility to a single manager who can be made accountable for it. But this usually does not work very well. What works better is to ask both the manufacturing and the sales departments to prepare a forecast, so that people are responsible for performing against their own predictions.”

“e-mail is also the first manifestation of a revolution in how information flows and how it is managed.”

“Suitably thought through, intelligent inspection schemes can actually increase the efficiency and productivity of any manufacturing or administrative process”

“When products and services become largely indistinguishable from each other, all there is by the way of competitive advantage is time.”

“A team will perform well only if peak performance is elicited from the individuals in it.”

“the key definition here is that the output of a manager is a result achieved by a group either under her supervision or under her influence. While the manager’s own work is clearly very important, that in itself does not create output. Her organization does.”

“the definition of “manager” should be broadened: individual contributors who gather and disseminate know-how and information should also be seen as middle managers, because they exert great power within the organization.”

“To implement the actual simplification, you must question why each step is performed. Typically, you will find that many steps exist in your work flow for no good reason. Often they are there by tradition or because formal procedure ordains it, and nothing practical requires their inclusion.”

“Also, if you use the production principle of batching—that is, handling a group of similar chores at one time—many interruptions that come from your subordinates can be accumulated and handled not randomly, but at staff and at one-on-one meetings, the subject of the next chapter. If such meetings are held regularly, people can’t protest too much if they’re asked to batch questions and problems for scheduled times, instead of interrupting you whenever they want.”

“Manufacturers turn out standard products. By analogy, if you can pin down what kind of interruptions you’re getting, you can prepare standard responses for those that pop up most often.”

“a very important way to increase productivity is to arrange the work flow inside our black box so that it will be characterized by high output per activity, which is to say high-leverage activities.”

“But because you must coordinate your work with that of other managers, you can only move toward regularity if others do too. In other words, the same blocks of time must be used for like activities. For example, at Intel Monday mornings have been set aside throughout the corporation as the time when planning groups meet.”

“we should try to make our managerial work take on the characteristics of a factory, not a job shop. Accordingly, we should do everything we can to prevent little stops and starts in our day as well as interruptions brought on by big emergencies.”

“The most important role of managers is to create an environment in which people are passionately dedicated to winning in the marketplace. Fear plays a major role in creating and maintaining such passion. Fear of competition, fear of bankruptcy, fear of being wrong and fear of losing can all be powerful motivators.”

“When people in the company start asking questions like @But how can we say "X" when we do "Y"? more than anything else this is a tip-off that a strategic inflection point may very well be in the making”