From the latest issue of Res Extensa: thoughts on Andy Grove’s idea of “modes of control”, from High Output Management:

Thinking about this in the context of my own work, I can map past hardships and bad business decisions to mismatches in environment and mode. As managers, what we most often don’t respect enough is the nature of the CUA factor with a given job, project, or task. This mental framework for thinking about relationships is helpful for selecting the appropriate communication or management mode.

This simple 2x2 is one of the more interesting idea from the book.