Great at Work Quotes

“small changes in behaviors can have a disproportionate effect on outcomes.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“Avoid colleagues who sap your energy.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“Variation—trying new ideas—is essential to learning.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“Whereas before she had asked, “Do you have any ideas?” she now posed that question differently: “What ideas do you have to improve patient food service?”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“Whenever they could, top performers carefully selected which priorities, tasks, collaborations, team meetings, committees, analyses, customers, new ideas, steps in a process, and interactions to undertake, and which to neglect or reject.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“To work smart means to maximize the value of your work by selecting a few activities and applying intense targeted effort.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More

“Many of us believe that we need to appeal to people’s rational minds to gain their support for our projects and goals. Just explain the merits of the case using logic and data, and others will rise up in support. And so we present rational arguments in lengthy emails and PowerPoint presentations in an effort to convince. And if we can’t snare people’s attention with one email, well, we just send another one, and another one. If they don’t “get it,” we hammer our argument even harder. We fall once again into the “do-more” paradigm of work, drowning people in an all-too-familiar avalanche of emails, slides, texts, reports, and data. Communicating more of the same when people aren’t listening or accepting our message doesn’t seem like a smart way to work.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“what a person should work on (job design); how the person should improve over time (learning); why a person should exert effort (motivation); and with whom a person should interact at work (relation).”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

“In 2011, I launched one of the most comprehensive research projects ever undertaken on individual performance at work.”
― Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers