
Great at Work: How Top Performers Work Less and Achieve More
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From the New York Times best-selling author of Great by Choice comes an authoritative, practical guide to individual performance - based on analysis from an exhaustive, groundbreaking study.
Why do some people perform better at work than others? This deceptively simple question continues to confound professionals in all sectors of the workforce. Now, after a unique, five-year study of more than 5,000 managers and employees, Morten Hansen reveals the answers in his "Seven Work Smarter Practices" that can be applied by anyone looking to maximize their time and performance.
Each of Hansen's seven practices is highlighted by inspiring stories from individuals in his comprehensive study. You'll meet a high school principal who engineered a dramatic turnaround of his failing high school; a rural Indian farmer determined to establish a better way of life for women in his village; and a sushi chef whose simple preparation has led to his restaurant (tucked away under a Tokyo subway station underpass) being awarded the maximum of three Michelin stars. Hansen also explains how the way Alfred Hitchcock filmed Psycho and the 1911 race to become the first explorer to reach the South Pole both illustrate the use of his seven practices (even before they were identified).
Each chapter contains questions and key insights to allow you to assess your own performance and figure out your work strengths as well as your weaknesses. Once you understand your individual style, there are clear tips to assist your focus on a strategy to become a more productive worker. Extensive, accessible, and friendly, Great at Work will help you achieve more by working less, backed by unprecedented statistical analysis.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
- Listening Length7 hours and 33 minutes
- Audible release dateJan. 30 2018
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB078P5JQRX
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
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Product details
Listening Length | 7 hours and 33 minutes |
---|---|
Author | Morten Hansen |
Narrator | Robert Petkoff |
Audible.ca Release Date | January 30 2018 |
Publisher | Simon & Schuster Audio |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B078P5JQRX |
Best Sellers Rank | #2,666 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #32 in Stress Management (Audible Books & Originals) #71 in Career Guides (Books) #85 in Small Business & Entrepreneurship |
Customer reviews
Top reviews from Canada
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On a podcast, Greg mentioned this book recently and especially emphasized the "do less, then obsess" principle from 'Great at Work' which I also love.
In short, this book has been an equal, to me, in terms of potential for self-improvement. The way I see it, perhaps selfishly, is that I need to 'fix' myself before I can really improve all of my work practises. This books treatment - through a scientific and rigorous manner - of self-improvement is a refreshingly new take on many old paradigms that are misdirected or simply not true.
As a consultant myself, I'm certain that following these principles will get me that much farther.
To close, one of my favourite chapters deals with passion. I've generally lacked passion for anything for years and it has been a major stumbling block for me in my career. I was skeptical of this chapter, but as I progressed through everything there really holds true for me. Including the fact that I don't need to be passionate about a topic or a particular field in order to be passionate about what I do. For example I can be passionate about making other's lives easier and that's something you can do in any job.
I'd highly recommend this book to any working professional, but at the same time I want to keep it a secret otherwise I feel like the bar might go up and I'll be that much farther behind!
5 stars
The results were not what the Hansen team expected. "These seven practices upend conventional thinking about how you should work." He devotes a separate chapter to each work-smart practice, noting that -- together --they complement the seven habits that Stephen Covey has previously associated with peak performers.
"To test our framework of the seven work-smart practices, my team and I modified our survey and administered it to 5,000 managers and employees across a wide range of jobs and industries in corporate America...We ran our 5,000-person data set through a rigorous statistical method called regression analysis."
The specific work-smart practices are best revealed within this book's narrative, in context, and each is worthy of rigorous consideration because the global marketplace today is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I remember. Surely the need for top performers who do less, work better, and achieve more is greater now than at any prior time that anyone can recall.
Years ago, in Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, Peter Sims explains that his book's proposition is based on an experimental approach that involves a lot of little bets and certain creative methods to identify possibilities and build up to great outcomes eventually, after frequent failures. Actually, experimental innovation has no failures; rather, there are initiatives that have not as yet succeeded, each of which is a precious learning opportunity. "At the core of this experimental approach, little bets are concrete actions taken to discover, test, and develop ideas that are achievable and affordable."
I was reminded of those remarks when I came upon this passage in Morten Hansen's Epilogue: "Our discussion of small steps returns us to a major theme in this book: the potential we all have to become not just good at work, but great...That means that anyone can become a top performer -- you don't have to work crazy hours, be a genius, or be unusually lucky. You can become much better over time at working smart. Get started with small steps and keep at it, and some day you can win theIr gold medal in your line of work -- and have a great life, too."
These are among the passages of greatest interest to me:
o Five Ways to Create Value (Page 55)
o Basic Steps in a Learning Loop (70-73)
o What Hurdles at Work Prevent You from Looping? (85)
o The Purpose Pyramid (105-106)
o Make Others Upset...and Excited (123-124)
o Seek Diversity, Not Just Talent (149-150)
o Evaluating Collaboration Opportunities, Large and Small (176-178)
o How Do You Prevent Burning Out? (199-201)
Reminder: Be sure to check out the Research Appendix (215-247)
This book can be of incalculable value to supervisors as well as to direct reports entrusted to their care. I think it is also a "must read" for others who are engaged in collaborative initiatives, especially when the objective is to achieve breakthrough results. Finally, as Morten Hansen suggests, the material can help to accelerate personal growth as well as professional development.
In this brief commentary, I have indicated why I think so highly of Morten Hansen's latest book. Having read it and then re-read it twice, I believe it is his most valuable book thus far, one that will have wider and deeper impact than any of his previous works.
That said, if you share my high regard for Great at Work, I also strongly recommend an earlier work of his, Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results (2009), as well as Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck -- Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (2011), a "classic" he co-authored with Jim Collins.
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