Trust and Accountability

High Output Management

Andrew Grove, High Output Management, 1983 (reissued 2015 with a foreword by Ben Horowitz). Amazon

A manager's output is the output of their organization plus the organizations they influence, so the highest-leverage activities are the ones that affect many people's work for a long time: training, direction, and 1-1s, which Grove treats as the manager's main tool for catching problems while they're small. See also can't versus won't.

Used in Trust, agency, and latency, Give negative feedback, Communicate bad news early.

The Speed of Trust

Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything, 2006. Amazon

Trust is an economic variable. Low trust taxes every interaction (verification, redundancy, politics, slow decisions); high trust pays a dividend in speed. Most of the velocity difference between teams is a trust difference.

Used in Trust, agency, and latency.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, 2014. Amazon

"Take care of the people, the products, and the profits, in that order." The people being taken care of when you act on an underperformer are the rest of the team, who pay for every week of delay.

Used in Handle a performance problem, Most performance problems are design problems.

The keeper test

Reed Hastings, "Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility," 2009. SlideShare

Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer, No Rules Rules, 2020. Amazon

For each person on the team: if they told you they were leaving for a similar role elsewhere, would you fight to keep them? If not, act now instead of waiting. Also the right question to ask references and trial-period teammates.

Used in Hire, Handle a performance problem, Run a one-month paid trial.