Name: Great at Work
Rating: 4.3 (40 reviews)
Author: Morten T. Hansen

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Take a statistical look at how the best performers work.

The author, Morten T. Hansen, wanted to know how top performers worked. What were their habits and techniques? So, in 2011, Hansen and a team of researchers set off to find out. They analyzed over 200 academic papers and interviewed and surveyed hundreds of professionals including both employees and their bosses.

Based on this information, the team was able to extract seven “work smart” practices that seemed to explain the top performers’ methods and mind-sets. To test their hypothesis, they surveyed 5,000 people and found that the seven factors accounted for a whopping 66 percent of their performance. They also found that the more factors an individual adhered to, the better their performance ranking.

To be more precise, the scoring went like this: Depending on how each of the 5,000 participants responded to the survey questions, they received a score that reflected how much of the seven factors they practiced. This score could then be turned into an overall performance ranking. So, if someone only used 20 percent of the principles within the seven factors, they’d get an overall 20 percent on their performance ranking, and so on. Sounds complicated? Don’t worry, we’ll explain all in the coming blinks.

In the following blinks, you’ll also learn

who won the race to the South Pole and why;
how you can start using the learning loop today; and
why fighting during a meeting is encouraged.

Key idea 1 of 7

Avoid multitasking and give individual tasks your obsessive attention.

It is still a commonly held belief that if we want to get more work done, we should put in more effort and work harder for longer hours. But the real trick isn’t about working harder; it’s about working smarter.

The first step to working smarter is to do less – which means: stop juggling multiple tasks and instead prioritize your work so that you’re dealing with one task at a time.

If you multitask and try to tackle a bunch of responsibilities at work, you’re bound to spread yourself too thin and waste both your time and effort. Since none of the tasks get your full attention, none of them will get optimal results.

HR specialist Susan Bishop learned this the hard way. She opened her own search consultancy in New York City, aimed at finding and recruiting the perfect candidates for media jobs. But in an effort to beat the competition, Bishop went outside her area of expertise to bring in all sorts of clients from many different industries. Bishop’s efforts were unfocused, and as a result, performance and profits suffered.

Even judges are not immune to the inefficiencies of multitasking.

According to a 2015 study of judges in Milan, those who multitasked and tried to handle a variety of cases at once were ultimately slower in processing those cases. The fastest judge spent 178 days on a case, while the slowest multitasking judge spent 398 days!

Now, instead of multitasking, you need to go further and obsess about the task that has your undivided attention.

Roald Amundsen knew a thing or two about the benefits of an obsessive focus. Back in 1911, the Norwegian explorer was in a race to be the first man at the South Pole. His competitor was the veteran explorer and Royal Navy Commander, Robert Falcon Scott.

Scott made the mistake of dividing his attention among a variety of transportation methods, including dogs, ponies, skis and motor sleds – all of which move at different paces. Scott also made the mistake of sending a dog expert to pick out his ponies, which resulted in a collection of 20 small horses that were all unfit for Antarctic conditions.

So Amundsen won the race, and he did it by focusing on one means of transportation: dogs. Not only that, he was thoroughly obsessed with finding out which dogs were best suited to the climate and terrain of Antarctica. So he immersed himself in research and reached out to the top experts.

In the author’s survey of 5,000 people, those who limited their focus but were still obsessed with their priorities performed better by an average of 25 percent.

Key idea 2 of 7

Redesign work to focus on value, quality and efficiency.

Let’s say you have a peer who is always outperforming you. You might decide to double down on your current work regimen. Instead of rethinking how you work, you’ll work harder.

However, rethinking or redesigning the way you work is exactly what you should be doing if you want to improve your output.

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Key idea 3 of 7

Use the learning loop and ask inviting questions to implement changes and improve performance.

Just because you’re working, doesn’t mean you have to stop learning. This is the basic idea behind the learning loop, a technique for getting smarter while you’re on the job. The principle is to get constant feedback and check on your results so you can regularly make little tweaks to your process and improve those results.

In other words, learning loops are a great way to improve performance.

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Key idea 4 of 7

To generate energy, you need both purpose and passion, which you can boost by changing your job.

If you’ve spent time trying to figure out the best career choice, you’ve probably been told, “Do whatever it is you’re passionate about.”

But in reality, passion is only part of the solution, since you need to direct that passion with purpose.

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Key idea 5 of 7

To win people over, play to their emotions and see their perspective to anticipate their concerns.

Few of us truly work alone. We have co-workers, bosses or clients, and we depend on the expertise, information or money of others. Oftentimes, our work relies on the approval or support of others. Therefore, securing that support is a valuable skill.

To get people on board, it helps to have an idea with a strong purpose, but it’s even better when that idea inspires and evokes the emotions of others.

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Key idea 6 of 7

Make sure your meetings are productive by encouraging debate before reuniting your diverse team.

If you’ve ever worked as part of a team, you’re likely familiar with how much of that work takes place in group meetings – it’s where the big decisions are taken to determine how projects move forward. So it stands to reason that knowing how to hold effective meetings is a crucial skill.

If there’s one way to simplify the best approach to meetings, it would be: Fight – then unite!

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Key idea 7 of 7

Avoid the pitfalls of collaboration by identifying the potential value.

There’s no doubt about it; great things can happen when people collaborate. However, there are good ways and bad ways to facilitate collaboration.

The author points to overcollaboration and undercollaboration as two common mistakes companies can make that end up hurting overall performance.

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Great at Work summary