💪Pump up the Output⚡️

Lobo Library #4 - 1/7/20 - a 2 min 42 second read ahead...

🗞TL;DR: Happy New Year! It’s time to kick of 2020 right and improve your performance with some help from Andy Grove.

• 🥳🇲🇽¡Feliz Año! I just got back from a week-long trip down in (my other motherland) Mexico. I spent a week with some of my closest friends from when I used to live south of the border. We stayed about 45 minutes northwest of downtown Puerto Escondido, which is an amazing beach town in the state of Oaxaca (where all of that delicious mezcal is from). Puerto Escondido has a more authentic and less crowded feel than cities like Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum (which seems to be overrun with tourists and ‘influencers’ nowadays).

  

  With incredibly limited connectivity (our phones mainly functioned as flashlights and cameras) and occasional power/water outages, we rang in the new year with incredible sunrises, sunsets, and quality time. During the day we saw humpback whales, dolphins, and sea turtles. Each night, we saw a massive number of stars light up the dark sky and fell asleep to the crashing of the biggest waves I’ve ever seen (Puerto Escondido is well-known as a pro-surfer town).

  

  Sunrise 1/1/20 and Orion, both shot from a phone.

• 🔍While I’m still working on my annual and decennial goals, my word/theme for 2020 is: FOCUS

🤩I’m coming into this new year refreshed and eager to do great things. 🤩

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🤓What I'm consuming:

• 💼HIGH OUTPUT MANAGEMENT (1983): I finally finished and summarized this incredible book by Andy Grove [(1936-2016), employee #3 and later CEO and Chairman of Intel, “Father of the OKR Approach to Management"]. As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but think about all of the managers and employees I’ve had in the past. There have been a number of times that my managers intuited some of the teachings from this book, which proved to have great results; more often, however, are countless ineffective and frustrating manager-employee interactions I’ve experienced. I didn’t even get this sort of operating guide in business school at Wharton (it deserves to be a full class). I believe it should be mandatory reading for all managers.
  
  Summary - High Output Management provides operating advice for large companies, and more specifically, managers. Grove emphasizes that (middle) managers are critical in organizations. Managers are measured and rewarded on output (performance) of their team and the teams they influence. As a manager, you can improve output by increasing your managerial leverage, and you can improve your managerial leverage by reading this book.
  HIGHLY RECOMMEND 👍 Please let me know if you know any other great books like it!

  • Here are my detailed notes, written using Notion (aren’t the toggles cool?!).

  • “If we focus on everything we focus on nothing.”

  • "A decision to promote is often linked...to the performance review. We must recognize that no action communicates a manager's values to an organization more clearly and loudly than his choice of whom he promotes. By elevating someone, we are, in effect, creating role models for others in our organization."

🎰Random:

• 🐬I learned that some dolphins slap their tails against the water when they’re having fun.

• 🐶I spent the NYE week with “Dookie,” the cutest house dog from our Airbnb.
  

  

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Lobo

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