“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Andy Grove, founder and CEO of Intel and a legendary manager of his time, wrote that when it comes to evaluations, one should look at “the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved. Obviously, you measure a salesman by the orders he gets (output), not by the calls he makes (activity).”

Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.

The problem was, if nothing my report said could convince me to change my mind, it’s insincere to act as if she had had a say.

An inspiring vision is bold. It doesn’t hedge. You know instantly whether you’ve hit it or not because it’s measurable. And it’s easily repeated, from one person to the next to the next. It doesn’t describe the how—your team will figure that out—it simply describes what the outcome will be. I tell my team that I’ll know they did a good job describing their vision if I randomly ask five people who’ve heard it to repeat it to me and they all say the exact same thing.

The first is overestimating what you, the manager, are capable of. Yes, it may be within your power to solve a wide variety of issues, but as a single individual, you can’t solve that many of them. The best work comes from those who have the time to live and breathe a problem fully, who can dedicate themselves to finding the best solution. The second error is assuming that nobody wants to take on hard problems. In fact, the most talented employees aren’t looking for special treatment or “easy” projects. They want to be challenged. There is no greater sign of trust than handing your report an intricately tangled knot that you believe she can pull apart, even if you’re not sure how.