You hear the criticism all the time around the business world about meetings being useless, a waste of time, and filling up schedules unnecessarily.

A different point of view on this topic comes from Andy Grove in his book High Output Management. It’s 35 years old, but much of it is just as relevant today as back then, with timeless principles on work.

Grove is adamant that for the manager, the “meeting” is an essential piece in the managerial leverage toolkit. From page 53:

Meetings provide an occasion for...

I’ve nearly finished reading Andy Grove’s High Output Management. Grove was the one of the founders and CEO of Intel, especially famous for his leadership of the company’s shift from design and fabrication of memory to microprocessors in the 80s.

The book is mostly well known for documenting Grove’s management style, which was later formalized into the OKR framework now widely used by Google and others.

But one of my favorite bits from the book (and there are several) is his concept of “modes of control.”

The fundamental...