At risk of further succumbing to accusations of self-Flanderization, I'm compelled to draw comparisons between High Output Management and Final Fantasy VII: both works that are in some ways dated (not just by the technology of their time but by the extent to which they influenced the genre they propelled into the zeigeist) and yet stand up well in their own right, not just as part of the canon but as a useful and rewarding work in its own right.

I think many modern references to Grove evoke acidic, dusty feelings of OKRs and the distinct yesteryearishness of Intel; this is an unfair aspersion. Grove is down-to-earth and pragmatic here: much of the challenges he describes have been solved by the past decades of technology (and indeed it is hard not to come away from the book with a certain sense that our industrial organization system is too stymied by best practices that made sense in the 1980s more than they do today), but many things are evergreen: the importance of leverage, the necessity of judging a manager solely their team's performance, the criticality of information flow.

Most books about management do not actually improve the reader's ability as a manager; this is an exception.

★★★★