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July 24, 2022 - October 14, 2023
People mistake the number of meetings, task forces, committees, customer calls, customer visits, business trips, and miles flown for accomplishments, even if in reality all these activities may not add value. Being busy is not an accomplishment.
Here’s a traditional productivity equation:10 A person’s work productivity = output of work / hours of input
Now consider an equation that emphasizes value: The value of a person’s work = Benefits to others × quality × efficiency
Putting it all together, we get a more precise view of value: to produce great value at work is to create output that benefits others tremendously and that is done efficiently and with high quality.
If you want to perform at your best, you need to home in on a few key tasks and channel your efforts to perfect them—the “do less, then obsess” principle.
redesign work so as to focus on activities that maximize value, as defined in the above value equation.
one activity that he thought could create the greatest benefit as stated in the value equation:
That’s choosing the right thing.
Then he determined how he and his team could redesign that one activity and do it bet...
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That’s doing the th...
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When people redesign, the key is not the degree of change they’re undertaking. Instead, it’s the magnitude of the value they can create.
You can create tremendous value in your job if you spot and help colleagues, customers, and suppliers alleviate their most significant grievances.
Sometimes we fail to imagine great new redesigns because we’re trapped inside webs of convention.
“functional fixedness”—our inability to solve problems due to our fixation on how work has always been done.
asking some “stupid” why questions:
ask some “what if” questions.
You can’t just jump from one big redesign to another. Once you’ve made a major change, you have to stick with it and refine it little by little over time.
how can you continuously learn and improve while also concentrating on performing your job?
Upend the status quo and craft new tasks, goals, and metrics that maximize the value of your work.
To produce great value at work is to create output that benefits others tremendously and that is done efficiently and with high quality.
Less fluff:
More right stuff:
More “Gee,...
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Five star ...
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Faster, c...
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Where to start redesigning your work? You can hunt for and cure pain points, and you can dare to ask stupid questions.
How did he pull it off? Well, he assembled a team of people to support him, including a pro golf instructor, a strength trainer, a personal coach, and a chiropractor.
deliberate practice.
It was this quality of learning, and not the quantity of repetitions, that helped Dan achieve that 2.6 handicap in four short years.
Deliberate practice requires that a manager or employee receives helpful feedback every day, yet most people only receive it during their annual review.
most employees struggle to set aside their regular work to rehearse skills—they’re too busy.
how do you measure skills like prioritizing tasks, making a sales pitch, handling a customer complaint, writing an effective email, and listening in meetings?
the learning loop.
They discard isolated practice in favor of learning as they work,
They also spend just a few minutes each day learning, eschewing the three-to-four-hour practice sessions common among musicians and athletes. They also rely on informal, rapid feedback from peers, direct reports, and bosses, and not just coaches.
people embracing the learning loop follow six highly effective tactics geared specifically to the workplace.
they worked smart by focusing on the quality of each of the loops when learning at work.
“What ideas do you have to improve patient food service?”
Change to asking for specific ideas and suggestion to a narrow problem. People speak up.
Okay, that was a measurably better outcome: An idea!
Small test. Real time feedback.
She tried a new approach to asking questions (“do”), gauged the outcome of soliciting an idea (“measure”), received analysis and suggestions from Steve to follow up (“feedback”), and altered her plan to ask a second question (“modify”).
She broke down the abstract skill she sought into a specific behavior (asking a good question). She measured her behavior by zooming in on two metrics (number of ideas proposed and implemented).
many people can benefit from becoming better at learning from their failures.
Process for learning from failure might be: (1) note the outcome vs the expectation, (2) note what you tried and what you could control, (3) model how what you did might have influenced the deviated outcome, (4) propose a new input based on the updated model
we find that it’s the quality of each of these loops that helped her improve and not their sheer number.
Learning on the job is not about practicing for 10,000 hours; it’s about making sure you perform each loop with high quality.
it takes about 15 minutes of work time every day to improve a skill using the learning loop.
It is that constant yet brief effort that counts.
Can you really hammer out significant progress by devoting just fifteen minutes a day?
Yes, so long as you stick to the Power of One: Pick one and only one skil...
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Ask yourself: Which skill would, if improved, lift your performance the most? Choose that one to work on first, and devote fifteen minutes a day—yes, just fifteen.
A micro-behavior is a small, concrete action you take on a daily basis to improve a skill.
