A must read for any working individual, regardless of his/her designation.
This book is the result of a study conducted with more than 5000 managers and employees to understand why some people perform better at work than others. I am listing down a few lessons I learnt through this read.
Lesson One
Identifying the top three tasks of the day is a technique I took away from this book. Daily activities are fixed and unavoidable but picking a few (in my case three) priorities and taking them to completion helped increase my productivity.
One of the best ways to choose the 3 tasks is through delegation; identifying what jobs are to be done by me and what can be done better by another resource was crucial to the success of what I was trying to do. As mentioned in the book, lack of delegation often becomes a major reason why managers find themselves spread too thin.
But picking a few priorities is only half the equation. The other half is the requirement that you must obsess over your chosen area of focus/task.
A way to do this is to stop multitasking. We all have a finite supply of attention to devote, and each time we switch from one task to the next, our brain abandons the previous task in the process of acclimatizing itself to the new one.
Research shows that rapidly toggling between two items, reading emails and listening to a colleague’s presentation, for example—renders you less effective at both and can reduce your productivity by as much as 40 percent.
The key here is to do as few as you can and as many as you must. Which entails knowing your deliverables, identifying your priorities, saying “no” more often when something outside your priorities is offered to you & obsessing over your tasks.
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. Often the most complex presentations can be explained through a single slide.
Lesson Two
A good redesign can often remove a company from a rutt and create exponentially greater value for the same amount of work put in.
An effective way to redesign is to start asking some “stupid” why questions:
Why do we make presentations filled with slides?
Followed by a few “what if” questions.
What if slide presentations were banned in meetings and replaced by questions to be discussed?
The combination of asking a “stupid” question and crafting some “whatifs” can help you discover a nifty redesign and lift your performance.
Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us we find poems
Lesson Three
The Learning Loop
When we ask questions (“do”), gauge the outcome of an idea (“measure”), receive analysis and suggestions from well wishers to follow up (“feedback”), and alter our plan to ask a second question (“modify”), we complete a Learning Loop.
A combination of such Learning Loops make us better at our craft & take us closer to our goals.
An offspring of the Learning Loop in our everyday lives is Micro behaviors, effective learners break an overarching skill into micro-behaviors: these are small, concrete actions you take on a daily basis to improve a skill. The action shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to perform and review, and it should have a clear impact on skill development.
Lesson Four
A meeting at work can be a complete waste of time, but it doesn’t have to be.
Look to start with a debate on the topic to be discussed or even an argument! and let every person speak so that they’re invested in the final result.
Then, after opinions are discussed, look to unite the team to make a decision.
To do this properly 2 things are needed:
A diverse & innovative team.
A clear agenda giving participants all the information they would require to debate the topic.
A few ways to make a meeting better as a participant are:
Showing up to every meeting 100 percent prepared.
Crafting an opinion and delivering it with conviction (and data).
Staying open to others’ ideas, not just your own.
Letting the best argument win, even if it isn’t yours (and often it isn’t).
Feeling free to stand up and shout, but never make the argument personal.
Always listening—really listening—to minority views.
A few ways to improve team unity as a manager are:
Ensuring everyone has a voice (being heard creates buy-in)
Committing, especially when you utterly disagree
Confronting the prima donna
Not playing office politics and getting behind decisions
Getting an Alignment Score (1-5) at the end of every meeting assures you that every participant is aligned to the result.
Completely misaligned
Somewhat Misaligned
Unsure
Somewhat Aligned
Completely Aligned
By doing less and obsessing, you focus your efforts on a few key tasks—and thus save time. By fighting and uniting, you forgo follow-up meetings—and thus save time. By consistently incorporating feedback into your skills practice, you learn skills with fewer repetitions —and thus save time. By redesigning work, you work more effectively to achieve the same or better results—and thus, yet again, save time.
Kommentare