Which book has made the biggest impact on you? 📖

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Dear Readers,

I recently joined Carousell’s Unboxing challenge, where participants give away several items that they don’t really use anymore but still hold so much meaning. In my case, I picked three books so they don’t end up collecting dust in my house, and someone else can enjoy them. (To clarify, this isn’t an ad for Carousell. 🙅‍♂️)

When I was choosing what to give away, though, I found myself being reluctant to part with Andrew Grove’s High Output Management. The book explains management in a relatively simple but humane way, and it helped me become a better manager. Here are some of my own interpretations and takeaways:

1. Understanding the output formula is key.
The manager’s output can be represented via this equation. Basically, it’s the summation of your team members’ output.

Manager’s output = ___ Member A + ___ Member B + ___ Member C + …

2. Process and system are important.
The blanks (____) are high-leverage stuff that managers can do to improve their team members’ output. They’re typically the processes and tools you put into place, such as your product development, sales, human resources, performance review, etc.

3. Find the bottleneck.
Resources will always be a constraint, and you can’t go about doing everything simultaneously. Always tackle the bottleneck within the output formula.

4. Coaching people is critical, and coaching them on how to coach others is even more so.
It’s one of the highest leverage activities to improve output. And teaching your team members how to coach others is the way to scale, but it’s hard to achieve.

For a chapter-by-chapter summary, you can read more in this blog post written by a fellow Y Combinator founder, Ian Tien.

Last year, we also wrote this guide for new startup founders and managers, offering a more in-depth look into how Tech in Asia has operated in the last seven years. You’ll find our perspectives on important and hard-to-tackle issues such as management, hiring and firing, communications, product development, and more. The guide also includes links to some samples of our processes and documentation. It’s not perfect, but it’s possibly useful.

So which book has made the biggest impact on you? If you have a few minutes to spare, please let me know what it is and why it has been so meaningful.

You can find last week’s commentary in this link – “Honestbee co-founder has been called “weak.” I disagree.”. If you’re a TIA subscriber, you can read all our commentaries here.

See ya next week!

– Willis, Tech in Asia