Great at Work

How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More

Morten T. Hansen

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781476765839
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller
A Financial Times Business Book of the Month
Named by The Washington Post as One of the 11 Leadership Books to Read in 2018 From the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Great by Choice comes an authoritative, practical guide to individual performance—based on analysis from an exhaustive, groundbreaking study. Why do some people perform better at work than others? This deceptively simple question continues to confound professionals in all sectors of the workforce. Now, after a unique, five-year study of more than 5, 000 managers and employees, Morten Hansen reveals the answers in his "Seven Work Smarter Practices" that can be applied by anyone looking to maximize their time and performance.Each of Hansen's seven practices is highlighted by inspiring stories from individuals in his comprehensive study. You'll meet a high school principal who engineered a dramatic turnaround of his failing high school; a rural Indian farmer determined to establish a better way of life for women in his village; and a sushi chef, whose simple preparation has led to his restaurant (tucked away under a Tokyo subway station underpass) being awarded the maximum of three Michelin stars. Hansen also explains how the way Alfred Hitchcock filmed Psycho and the 1911 race to become the first explorer to reach the South Pole both illustrate the use of his seven practices (even before they were identified).Each chapter contains questions and key insights to allow you to assess your own performance and figure out your work strengths, as well as your weaknesses. Once you understand your individual style, there are mini-quizzes, questionnaires, and clear tips to assist you focus on a strategy to become a more productive worker. Extensive, accessible, and friendly, Great at Work will help you achieve more by working less, backed by unprecedented statistical analysis.

PART I

MASTERING YOUR OWN WORK

TWO

DO LESS, THEN OBSESS

Whatever you are, be out and out, not partial or in doubt.

—Henrik Ibsen¹

In October 1911, two teams were racing to be the first humans to reach the South Pole, the last major place on earth not yet discovered. Royal British Navy Commander Robert Falcon Scott led the first team. A veteran explorer, he had led a previous expedition to Antarctica. That earlier trip had failed to reach the South Pole, but the British public had hailed Scott as a hero. Upon his return, King Edward VII summoned Scott to Balmoral Castle and anointed him commander of the Royal Victorian Order.²

The leader of the second team, Norwegian Roald Amundsen, had been the first explorer to navigate the Northwest Passage, the waterborne route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic Archipelago in northern Canada. Driven to make history, he too had set his sights on the South Pole.

Months after arriving on the continent, having endured an Antarctic winter at their respective camps, Scott and Amundsen readied their teams for the grueling journey south. Each knew of the other’s presence, but not the location during the journey. There would be no maps, no communication, no rescue. Just before setting off, Amundsen jotted in his diary: “Not much visibility. Nasty breeze from S. -52°C. The dogs clearly affected by the cold. The men, stiff in their frozen clothes, more or less satisfied after a night in the frost . . . prospect of milder weather doubtful.”³ It would not be easy—or survivable.

The race began. Amundsen took the lead as both teams embarked on their 400-mile journey across the ice barrier, a 10,000-foot climb up a treacherous mountain to the polar plateau. Once there, they would face another 400-mile journey toward the pole, all the while enduring minus 60ºF chills, disorienting blizzards, and winds shrieking at 100 miles an hour.

Scaling the mountain, Amundsen and his team struggled across deep crevasses. They survived blizzards. They slaughtered dogs for food. After 52 days, they arrived within 55 miles of the pole. Seeing no sign of Scott, Amundsen pressed on. Two days later, Amundsen and his fellow explorers became the first in history to stand on the South Pole. They planted the Norwegian flag and then journeyed back to their base, reaching it after trudging 1,600 miles.

Scott and his men, exhausted and malnourished, limped to the pole thirty-four days later, only to find the Norwegian flag whipping in the wind. The team slogged homeward, racing against the approaching winter. Starving, frostbitten, exhausted, they pushed forward. Hope faded. A storm pinned them down in their tents. There they would die, only eleven miles from the next depot of food and shelter.

One leader and his team achieved the extraordinary, while the other team perished in the polar night. Why? What made the difference? Over the years, authors have offered several explanations. In our book Great by Choice, Jim Collins and I attributed Amundsen’s success to better pacing and self-control. Others have pointed to good planning or even luck to explain Amundsen’s success and Scott’s failure.

However, many accounts neglect one critical part of the dramatic South Pole race: the scope of the expeditions. One team fielded superior resources: a grander ship, 187 feet vs. 128 feet; a bigger budget, £40,000 vs. £20,000; and a larger crew, 65 vs. 19 men.⁴ How could one win against such a mighty foe? It was an unfair race. Except for one thing.

Amundsen’s team was the one with the narrow scope. Captain Scott commanded three times the men and twice the budget. He used five forms of transportation: dogs, motor sledges, Siberian ponies, skis, and man-hauling. If one failed, he had backups. Amundsen relied on only one form of transportation: dogs. Had they failed, his quest would have ended. But Amundsen’s dogs didn’t fail. They performed. Why?

It wasn’t just the choice to use dogs—Scott took dogs, too. Amundsen succeeded to a large degree because he concentrated only on dogs and eschewed backup options. During his three-year trip through the Northwest Passage, he had spent two winters apprenticing with Inuits who had mastered dog sledging. Running a span of dogs is hard. They are unruly animals and sometimes drop down in the snow and refuse to work. Amundsen learned from the natives how to urge dogs to run, how to drive sledges, and how to pace himself.

Amundsen also obsessed over obtaining superior dogs. His research suggested that Greenlander dogs handled polar travel better than Siberian huskies. Greenland dogs were bigger and stronger, and with their longer legs they could better traverse the snowdrift across the ice barrier and the polar plateau.⁵ Amundsen traveled to Copenhagen to enlist the help of the Danish inspector of North Greenland. “As far as dogs are concerned, it is absolutely essential that I obtain the very best it is conceivable to obtain,” he wrote in a follow-up letter. “Naturally, I am fully aware that as a result, the price must be higher than that normally paid.”⁶ He sought out expert dog runners to join his team, several more skilled than he. When the star dog driver Sverre Hassel declined, Amundsen didn’t look for the next best but kept pursuing Hassel. According to historian Roland Huntford, “Amundsen now exerted all his charm and force of character to coax Hassel, after all, to sail with him. In the end, Hassel, worn down by his persistence, agreed.”⁷

Scott, on the other hand, was so busy arranging for five separate transportation methods that he couldn’t focus on any of them. Rather than venturing to Siberia to secure ponies, he sent his aide, Cecil Meares. But Meares didn’t know about ponies—he was a dog expert.⁸ So Scott’s team ended up with twenty ill-suited ponies, which slowed the team down in their journey to the pole.

Once moving on the ice, Scott struggled to coordinate his convoy. The motor sledges started first, as they were the slowest. The pony party set out seven days later. The dog sledges, which were the fastest, left last. Each group had to coordinate its departure and speed with the others. Scott got tangled in a complex operation—“a somewhat disorganized fleet,” as he noted in his diary.⁹ The convoy ended up moving as fast as the slowest method.

Amundsen, meanwhile, had fixated on a single transportation mode and was speeding across the barren landscape. During the first eight weeks, he and his small team of four other experts, with four sledges and 52 superior dogs, averaged 15 miles per day against Scott’s 11.¹⁰ Amundsen gained at least four miles on Scott every day on average. By the time Amundsen reached the pole, he was more than 300 miles ahead. Amundsen had chosen one method and mastered it. He had done less, then obsessed.

DO LESS, OBSESS, AND PERFORM

The story of the race to the South Pole challenges two common beliefs about work. The first is that we should increase the scope of our activities, pursuing multiple responsibilities and options, like taking five transportation methods to the South Pole. We believe that by taking on more tasks, we accomplish more and improve our performance. “Doing more,” as we shall see, is usually a flawed strategy.

The second misconception concerns the idea of focus. Writers like Daniel Goleman and Stephen Covey have argued that people can only perform at their best if they select a few items to work on and say no to others.¹¹ This view is incomplete. It overemphasizes choice, as if that’s the only requirement: If you are disciplined enough to choose a few priorities, you will succeed. Picking a few priorities is only half the equation. The other half is the harsh requirement that you must obsess over your chosen area of focus to excel.

The term “focus” consists of two activities: choosing a few priorities, and then dedicating your efforts toward excelling at them. Many people prioritize a few items at work, but they don’t obsess—they simply do less. That’s a mistake.

Amundsen didn’t win just because he picked dogs. He won because once he had chosen dogs, he applied huge amounts of effort to perfecting that single method of transporting the sledges. Had he shown up with just “good enough” dogs and drivers, he wouldn’t have traveled so fast each day, and he might have lost the race.

In our quantitative study of 5,000 people, we found that employees who chose a few key priorities and channeled tremendous effort into doing exceptional work in those areas greatly outperformed those who pursued a wider range of priorities. We asked people to gauge how much they prioritized and how much effort they put into their chosen priorities. We then formed a “do less, then obsess” score for each employee and analyzed the impact on performance. The predicted effect turned out to be substantial. People who were average at other practices but mastered “do less, then obsess” would likely place 25 percentage points higher in the performance ranking than those who didn’t embrace this practice.¹²

Think about that difference. Say you start out as a middling performer—at the 50th percentile of all employees—and then move your “do less, then obsess” score from low (a “do-more” strategy) to high. Your performance now will be at the 75th percentile, meaning that you perform better than 74 percent of employees. That’s pretty amazing. “Do less, then obsess” affects performance more than any other practice in this book.

Consider the contrast between two people in our study (their names and settings have been altered).¹³ One boss gave a low “do less, then obsess” score to Maria, a mortgage specialist in her fifties at a Milwaukee bank. “She gets overwhelmed,” the boss said. “When there’s too much work, she just tries to do it herself, as opposed to delegating it.” Maria landed in the bottom 41 percent on the “do less, then obsess” principle.

It was a different story with Cathy, a fifty-six-year-old quality engineer at a company that manufactures car parts. She could narrow her attention to focus on the most important tasks at hand, and could stick to the priorities she had set. Once, when Cathy had prioritized the product launches of four customers based on start dates, one customer pressured her to do them all at the same time. As she explained, “I had to say no, I’m not going to do this right now. I’ve got other customers that take priority.” Cathy’s boss scored her in the top 10 percent on the “do less, then obsess” practice. Cathy placed 15 points higher in the performance ranking than Maria, the difference between excellent and merely good.

Many people we studied struggled to attain this kind of focus at work. Only 16 percent of the 5,000 people in our dataset scored very high on one of our question items, “He/she is extremely good at focusing on key priorities, no matter how much work and how many things he/she has to do.” A full 26 percent scored very low.

I had expected that bosses would be better at focusing than low- or mid-level employees. After all, they ought to have more freedom to determine how many tasks, projects, or responsibilities to take on. Yet we found that roughly equal percentages of junior- and senior-level employees excelled at focusing (15 percent and 17 percent, respectively). And only a slightly greater percentage of junior employees were poor at focusing than their senior-level colleagues (28 percent versus 23 percent).

Far more people than we might imagine have at least some latitude in their job to focus their work activities. Of course, some jo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• One: The Secrets to Great Performance
• Part I: Mastering Your Own Work
• Part II: Mastering Working with Others
• Part III: Mastering Your Work-Life
• Epilogue: Small Changes, Big Results
• Research Appendix
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright