Output Thinking: Scale Faster, Manage Better, Transform Your Company

The root cause of the turnaround was the discovery and application of the principle that management must focus on improving systems, not in performing the work or in repeatedly snuffing out brushfires. In short, quality products or services, a stable staff, and profitability are the result of the quality systems that produce them, not the reverse.

Four Essentials of Good Management: Get the right people. Match them to the right jobs. Keep them motivated. Help their teams to jell and stay jelled. (All the rest is Administrivia.)

While the manager’s own work is clearly very important, that in itself does not create output.

The resulting process is called “lean” and is summed up in the following: “It transfers the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers actually adding value to the car on the line, and it has in place a system for discovering defects that quickly traces every problem, once discovered, to its ultimate cause.”15 Paying attention to