Great at Work Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Brief Summary

To be a top performer, individuals do not need to work harder, they need to work smarter. By incorporating these seven top-performance principles - including smart prioritization, improved workflow, constant practice, uniting passion and purpose, winning support, leading productive meetings, and effective collaboration - into their work, individuals can become top performers themselves.

About the Author

Morten T. Hansen is a management professor at University of California, Berkeley, and is on the faculty at Apple University. He is the author or co-author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck-Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. He has also written for the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review. He was the 2005 co-recipient of the Sloan Management Review/Pricewaterhouse Coopers Award.

Previously, Hansen worked at the Boston Consulting Group, and was a member of the founding team of BCG Nordics. He holds a Ph.D. in business administration from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is a former Fulbright Scholar.

Hansen lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife, Helene, and their two children

Topics

Management & Leadership

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Key Insights

What does “working smart” really mean? Business professor and author Morten T. Hansen wanted to find out what it really means to be a smart worker, so in 2011 he and his team launched a massive project studying the habits, tricks, and techniques of top performers.

Using interviews, surveys, and over 200 academic papers, Hansen and his team came up with the top seven habits that contributed to top performers’ success. From a survey of 5,000 people, they found that these seven factors accounted for 66 percent of their successful performance. Using these seven top-performance principles, workers were able to work smarter, be more effective, and excel without working longer hours.

Principle One: Do Less To Get More Done

Most people hold the common misconception that to do better, they need to do more work and put in longer hours than everyone else, but what they really need to do is work smarter, not harder. By stretching themselves too thin on a number of projects, they make it difficult to really excel at any one task. If people are constantly multitasking, they become overwhelmed, and the quality of their work suffers.

Hansen’s research shows that the most effective performers commit to less work, but focus their attention fully on a smaller collection of the most important priorities. By narrowing their attention, they are able to concentrate more fully on excelling at the most important tasks. According to his research, Hansen found that performers who used this principle and obsessed only on their priorities outperformed others by an average of 25 percent.

However, it is often difficult to determine what to prioritize, and what to let go. Hansen recommends three strategies to help pare down your task list to only the most essential items.

First, you should reassess how you measure success. Rather than just thinking of success as completing lots of tasks, you should see how many tasks you can eliminate because they do not contribute to your overall larger goal.

Second, you should eliminate all distractions. To fully focus your attention on your most important tasks, you should arrange your workspace so you do not have access to any distractions. You should cut off access to tempting internet and email distractions by designating a work-only laptop that does not have access to the web, and carve out space and time alone so you are not distracted by co-workers.

Lastly, if your boss is not clear about what his priorities are, it might be difficult for you to identify your own. It is important to speak with your boss to identify priorities and get a clear idea of what your overall goals should be.

For example, explorer Roald Amundsen utilized this technique to be the first to lead his team to reach the South Pole in 1911. While his rival, Robert Scott, prepared five different methods to get to the South Pole, Amundsen focused obsessively over just one: sled dogs. He focused his attention on how to make his sled dog team the most effective, learning all about...