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May 5 - May 21, 2024
One day, a young engineer named Igor Proestakis was on-site delivering drilling equipment when he bumped into the geologists overseeing the drilling. He told them about an idea he had to access the miners faster. It was a bold alternative to plan A: Instead of slowly drilling a new hole, what if they rapidly expanded one of the existing holes? Igor thought they might be able to do it with a tool called a cluster hammer—a special drill designed to smash right through rock. Igor didn’t expect his suggestion to go anywhere. He was one of the youngest, least experienced engineers at the site.
The rescue leaders hadn’t just established a climate—they had built an unconventional system for making sure that ideas were carefully considered rather than dismissed. And it’s a system that I’ve seen unlock collective intelligence in all kinds of settings.
Managers know that if they bet on a bad idea, it might be a career-limiting move, but if they pass on a good idea, it’s unlikely anyone will ever find out.
Even when organizational charts look like ladders, it’s possible to design ad hoc lattice systems to surface and propel fledgling ideas.
Weak leaders silence voice and shoot the messenger. Strong leaders welcome voice and thank the messenger. Great leaders build systems to amplify voice and elevate the messenger.
Our greatest potential isn’t always hidden inside us—sometimes it sparks between us, and sometimes it comes from outside our team altogether.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles . . . overcome while trying to succeed. —Booker T. Washington
It’s a mistake to judge people solely by the heights they’ve reached. By favoring applicants who have already excelled, selection systems underestimate and overlook candidates who are capable of greater things. When we confuse past performance with future potential, we miss out on people whose achievements have involved overcoming major obstacles. We need to consider how steep their slope was, how far they’ve climbed, and how they’ve grown along the way. The test of a diamond in the rough is not whether it shines from the start, but how it responds to heat or pressure.
The key question is not how long people have done a job. It’s how well they can learn to do a job.
In a study of over 38,000 salespeople, economists found that the most successful salespeople were more likely to be promoted to manager. But sales skills aren’t the same as managerial skills—the candidates who were better at closing deals were worse at managing people. It turned out that the managers who elevated a team’s performance weren’t the biggest rainmakers, but the most prosocial members—as indicated by how often they’d made collaborative sales with their colleagues. This is an example of a phenomenon known as the Peter Principle. It’s the idea that people at work tend to get promoted
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In this case, the best salespeople went on to become incompetent managers, and the best potential managers got stuck as mediocre salespeople.[*]
It’s often said that talent sets the floor, but character sets the ceiling.
With between 2,400 and 3,100 applications for only 11 to 35 spots, they had to quickly size up who had potential and who didn’t.
We all know that performance depends on more than ability—it’s also a function of degree of difficulty.
Yet when we judge potential, we often focus on execution and ignore degree of difficulty. We inadvertently favor candidates who aced easy tasks and dismiss those who passed taxing trials.
Ultimately, the key indicator of potential isn’t the severity of adversity people encounter—it’s how they react to it.
Displaying the difficulty of the task is only one way of contextualizing performance. We can also adjust for difficulty outside the classroom by comparing students to peers in similar circumstances. Some schools have taken the promising step of expanding transcripts to show students’ grades relative to their neighborhood. Experiments show that this can help admissions officers spot the potential in lower-income students without reducing their enthusiasm about students from families with greater means.
We need a way to assess the distance people have traveled to overcome the unique obstacles on their path.
They sorted students based on their average grades over four years, neglecting to consider whether they got better or worse.
It’s hard to overstate how ridiculous that is. Schools judge you as much for your performance three years ago as for three months ago—and they don’t even bother to look at the most recent and relevant data at all.
Along with GPA, I think they should be assessing GPT: grade point trajectory.
Trajectories are a valuable start, but they don’t paint a full picture of potential.
Instead of looking at past experience or past performance, we should find out what they’ve learned and how well they can learn. And to do that, we need to rethink how we interview people.
The fear of confirming negative stereotypes has been shown to disrupt focus and drain working memory, obscuring the abilities of women on math tests, immigrants on verbal tests, Black students on the SAT, older adults on cognitive tests, and students with physical and learning disabilities on a range of tests. They’re set up to fail.
A powerful alternative is to create real-time work samples: give everyone the same problem to solve in the present.
Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. —Langston Hughes
Only later did I learn that whenever I did something stupid, I would forever hear people say, “YOU went to Harvard?!”
I saw a pattern. Harvard seemed to attract two extremes of students: those who were sure they were a gift to the world, and those who feared they were the one mistake. I was in the latter camp.
Impostor syndrome says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s only a matter of time until everyone finds out.” Growth mindset says, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.”
Not long ago, it dawned on me that impostor syndrome is a paradox: Others believe in you You don’t believe in yourself Yet you believe yourself instead of them If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your low opinion of yourself? I now believe that impostor syndrome is a sign of hidden potential.
When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them.
But the gains that count the most are the hardest to count.
The most meaningful growth is not building our careers—it’s building our character. Success is more than reaching our goals—it’s living our values. There’s no higher value than aspiring to be better tomorrow than we are today. There’s no greater accomplishment than unleashing our hidden potential.
Here are my top forty practical takeaways for unlocking hidden potential and achieving greater things.
The people who grow the most aren’t the smartest people in the room. They’re the ones who strive to make themselves and others smarter. When opportunity doesn’t knock, look for ways to build a door—or climb through a window.
Put yourself in the ring before you feel ready. You don’t need to get comfortable before you can practice your skills—your comfort grows as you practice your skills.
Pursuing discomfort sets you on a faster path to growth. If you want to get it right, it has to first feel wrong.
To encourage trial and error, set a goal for the minimum number of mistakes you want to make per day or per week.
Seek out new knowledge, skills, and perspectives to fuel your growth—not feed your ego. Progress hinges on the quality of the information you take in, not on the quantity of information you seek out.
Feedback is backward-looking—it leads people to criticize you or cheer for you. Advice is forward-looking—it leads people to coach you.
Demonstrate that honesty is the highest expression of loyalty.
Strive for excellence, not perfection.
Practice wabi sabi, the art of honoring beauty in imperfection, by identifying some shortcomings that you can accept.
Did you make yourself better today? Did you make someone else better today?
ask a few people to independently rate your work on a scale of 0 to 10. Whatever score you receive, ask them how you can get closer to 10.
It’s better to disappoint others than to disappoint yourself.
Every challenge requires its own support. The support you need isn’t permanent—it’s a temporary structure that gives you a foothold or a lift so you can keep climbing on your own.
To maintain harmonious passion, design practice around deliberate play.
Measure your progress over time, not against an opponent.
It’s possible to avoid burnout and boreout by introducing novelty and variety into your practice.
