Review of 'GREAT AT WORK: HOW TOP PERFORMERS DO LESS, WORK BETTER, AND ACHIEVE MORE' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Hansen undertook a 5 year study to find out what makes top performance at work. He's also worked with Jim Collins on his follow up to Good to Great, so Hansen has credibility.
While he frames his 7 keys to performing better as a challenge to the conventional wisdom, the ideas have been around. But those ideas have not been wrapped up together and do not have the credibility of Hansen's study.
The first and most important key - work less, then obsess. Hansen gives the example of the 91 year old three star sushi chef who only makes 20 types of sushi in a restaurant with no bathroom underneath the stairs to the subway. The chef's singular focus on perfecting sushi earned him three Michelin stars not the decor. He also leads this chapter with the story of the team that first reached the south pole and survived, they …
Hansen undertook a 5 year study to find out what makes top performance at work. He's also worked with Jim Collins on his follow up to Good to Great, so Hansen has credibility.
While he frames his 7 keys to performing better as a challenge to the conventional wisdom, the ideas have been around. But those ideas have not been wrapped up together and do not have the credibility of Hansen's study.
The first and most important key - work less, then obsess. Hansen gives the example of the 91 year old three star sushi chef who only makes 20 types of sushi in a restaurant with no bathroom underneath the stairs to the subway. The chef's singular focus on perfecting sushi earned him three Michelin stars not the decor. He also leads this chapter with the story of the team that first reached the south pole and survived, they had less money and less modes of transportation than the better financed team. But since they had fewer resources they focused on getting the best dogs and only sled dogs. The other team was spread thin and had coordination issues - those are the problems with doing too much. Most people who read Hansen do too much.
Ryan Holiday in Perennial Best Seller encourages a draw-down period and a singular focus. Cal Newport does as well in Deep Work. These books lack Hansen' study and seem to rely on anecdotes. The authors seem armaturist compared to Hansen.
Second, the next step after doing less is to redesign your job to focus on providing value rather than goals. SMART goals have come under criticism for leading people to focus on the the wrong the things. The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Mueller also brings this up - people measuring the wrong things just because they can be measured.
Third is your learning loop. This could be my favorite chapter because I already took the idea of using a feedback loop from product management in agile development and applied it to work in my own LinkedIn post www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-job-product-management-can-take-carnegie-hall-dave-nash/
Fourth is passion and purpose. Hansen is right that following your passion is terrible advice. He advocates linking it with purpose - providing value. A lot this too is simply rethinking a job to see the greater good that it achieves. Every job helps someone - start with that and then make it bigger. You are helping a bigger goal that that person. What Hansen misses Cal Newport add in his So Good They Can't Ignore you book - you need to have already practiced the skills to go along with passion and purpose.
The next three keys focus on working together. I found these less helpful although there is a general idea that we work together too much in some cases.
Fifth is Forceful Champions. People inside and outside an organization do not make decisions rationally - see Scott Adams' Win Bigly or Robert Cialdini's Influence and Pre-suasion. Hansen encourages appealing to emotions because facts and reason don't work. Cialdini's work is more about selling outside the company, bringing the same tactics inside is tougher. I know that it can be done, but you risk everyone hating you. With customers it's different because you don't have to see them everyday and they know they are being sold. Long term these transactional tactics hurt relationships ,the people you have to work with are not going to like it. It is successful and they will like you less because of your success and tactics. Hansen doesn't acknowledge that as a cost of getting ahead.
Sixth is Fight and Unite, Hansen states we have too many meetings, true, because people are unprepared, true, or don't pay attention, true. People are afraid to differ, true, or if they do it becomes personal, all too true. Hansen gives some suggestions for encouraging vigorous debate and then uniting behind the final outcome. This is what successful companies do.
Seventh is the two sins of collaboration - under and over collaboration. Go back to focusing on value to find the Goldie locks.
Putting all seven ideas together, supporting them with data and anecdotes, and writing in an easy to read manner make this a five star book. I read it over the course of one day. Seven is the magic number, this a more practical and modern 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, which is just what the author was going for.
