Managerial Leverage

There is a big difference between manager's output and manager's activities.

What Is a Manager’s Output?

A manager’s output = The output of his organization + The output of the neighboring organizations under his influence

Any sort of work that can help increasing output is part of manager's work, the manager does not only order, direct and suggest to his direct supervision employees.

"Daddy, What Do You Really Do?"

There's no obvious patterns we can extract from a manager workflow, managers often have to shift his energy and attention between different concerns, keep many balls in the air at the same time. The goal is, as always, improving his output which includes the output of his organization and the output of the neighboring organizations under his influence.

Information Gathering

Many ways are used to gather information: reading standard reports, talk to people inside and outside the company, customer complaints.

Most useful information comes from casual verbal exchanges

Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information. Writing the report is important; reading it often is not.

Improve your Information Gathering

You need to understand how information comes to you, verbal sources are the most valuable but it's incomplete and inaccurate that's the first step on the hierarchy, just like reading a headline on a newspaper, then read the article to go deeper and finally you may read a book to confirm the information you got.

When you need information from an employee going to his workplace is much more efficient that inviting him to your office for social reasons.

Manager is also a Source of Information

Managers should transmit your preferences, priorities to the subordinates in order for them to know how to make decision that are most likely to be acceptable.

Decision making

Decision are either forward-looking or backward-looking* which involves respectively future or past staff.

Information-gathering is the base of decision-making and all manager's tasks.

"Nudging" is not decision-making, nudging are actions managers do to direct some actions to what they believe can increase his output.

A manger is a Role Model

The single most important resource is our own time because it's the only finite resource.

Meetings provide an occasion for managerial activities, mostly information-gathering and -giving, but also decision-making and nudging

Leverage of Managerial Activity

Leverage ?

Leverage is a measure of the output generated by any managerial activ Leverage is the measure of the output generated by any given managerial activity

Managerial Output = Output of organization
                  = L1 × A1 + L2 × A2 + ...

Managerial productivity—that is, the output of a manager per unit of time worked—can be increased in three ways: 1. Increasing the rate with which a manager performs his activities, speeding up his work. 2. Increasing the leverage associated with the various managerial activities. 3. Shifting the mix of a manager’s activities from those with lower to those with higher leverage.

High-leverage Activities

These can be achieved when many people are affected by one manager or when a person's activity over a long period of time is affected by a manager's brief, well-focused set of words or actions.