Performance principles: Four dimensions to increase the impact of our work

As I get ready to onboard another colleague remotely, I've written down my principles for work in a bid to help us get in sync and maximize our chances of success. I'm sharing them here as well with the hope that at least one other person will benefit from the exercise and to enable others to call me out if I don't walk my talk.

These principles are not exhaustive, I do not get them right each day, and none of them are my own. They have been gradually pieced together through experience and what I believe is one of the most untapped sources of competitive advantage in the world of work today: books.

Growing up, I didn't like to read. Something about being assigned a book by a teacher triggered an allergic reaction that my younger self failed to overcome. I would make it through (most) assigned readings and that was the extent of it.

Everything changed when I started a band with my teenage friends and I wanted to learn about how we could "make it". With no industry knowledge or contacts, and limited information available online in the early 2000s, I took the bus to a local bookstore and found The Indie Band Bible. Although we never did "make it", one of the many valuable experiences of those scrappy entrepreneurial music years was discovering the power of books.

Today, my home is littered with titles that have transformed my life for the better. What follows is the latest iteration of my principles for maximizing the effectiveness of my work, supported by some of the books that inspired them. I hope you find this helpful and/or decide to reflect on your own model for impact so that others may benefit in turn.

Four dimensions for increased impact

I. Learn to do world-class work (Master your craft).

• Care, deeply. So simple and yet not a given. Be present, deliberate, and ready to do what needs to be done. Take small but consistent steps to improve by seeking and acting on feedback, studying the best in the world, and anticipating where things are going next.
• Be playful, not cynical. With enough distance, most of us have the luxury of being in situations that can be seen with a certain degree of levity. Find ways to embrace a positive frame of mind and build on the ideas of others to unlock better outcomes.
• Do fewer things incredibly well. Sign up for fewer tasks and execute them at an exceptional level rather than doing a mediocre job at a long list of to-do's. It takes discipline to say "no". It is often uncomfortable. But when you appreciate that everything you say "yes" to dilutes what you have already said "yes" to, it becomes clearer why and when you need to turn things down.
• Practice top-down communication. Get familiar with the pyramid principle and embrace it when writing and speaking. By opening with the punchline, you give your audience the courtesy of deciding how deep they want to go, and in which areas. This is the fastest path I know of to increasing the effectiveness of your communication.
• Bring a perspective. Raising problems without proposed solutions is a road to nowhere interesting. Instead, think ahead and take a stance. If you keep an open mind and embrace the feedback you will get from your colleagues and the ensuing events, your learning will compound much faster.
• Learn to see around corners. Build a mental model of your team/business/industry/world such that you can get better at anticipating second- and third-order consequences. These models will need to be continuously revisited but doing this meshes powerfully with "Bring a perspective" in a reinforcing loop.
• Develop your ability to make and own decisions. Learn about the two types of decisions (one-way and two-way doors) and get comfortable with both. Even with frameworks and books, in my experience, this one requires diving into the deep end (and some bruises along the way).
• Understand the 80/20 principle and use it to prioritize effectively. I don't believe you can ever get too good at this. The most effective leaders I've had the privilege of working with make regular, scheduled time to step back and reprioritize their efforts for maximum impact.
• Value substance over form. Be sure the content in question will both benefit from and be worth presenting nicely before investing your time (or anyone else's) on aesthetics (i.e., anything that goes from "not distracting" to "icing on the cake"). An adjacent idea I like to remind myself of: "pay attention to what people do, not what they say".
• Work in quick, complete drafts and share them early and often. The classic novice consultant story: you invest a week of sleepless nights polishing content and pull a rabbit out of a hat for your client when she wanted something else entirely. Don't do this.

II. Aspire to be a slightly better version of yourself each day (and be kind to yourself when you aren't).

• Develop a growth mindset. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this idea. Regardless of where you sit on the nature vs. nurture spectrum, it is hard to see a path to positive evolution if you don't at least give the nurture side a try! 
• Learn the principles of Level 5 leadership and work toward them. Jim Collins speaks of a paradoxical mix of exceptional will and humility as the pinnacle of leadership. Finding ways - however small - of bringing bold aspiration and a mindset of servitude can only make things better for those around you, even if you don't get it right every day.
• Cultivate resilience through reflection and physical activity. Nothing in life is a straight path. Not every facet of our lives is going to be in sync at any given point in time either. As a result, it is critical to find whatever ways work for you to recharge and gain perspective. As far as I can gather, this is universally important for peak performance, regardless of the form your personal recharging takes.
• Build empathy and self-awareness by learning to see things from a higher level. In a given situation, practice looking at what is happening as if you were watching yourself and those around you in the present moment (the Dancefloor) from a distance (the Balcony). The inner monologue might sound something like: How is everyone's energy? What is their body language saying? Are we in sync and moving toward or further away from a better outcome? Why? How might I adjust to have a more positive impact here?
• Stay humble: remember you are only renting a chair. Every time I have seen someone lose touch with this principle, the results have been poor (or worse) for them and their teams. Just as things are rarely ever as good or as bad as they may seem in the moment, the same is often true of us.

III. Practice the science and the art of leading teams to do distinctive things.

• Clear paths and be a cheerleader. Hire the very best talent you can find, get in sync on what matters and corresponding timelines, then get out of the way. If you are nodding yet find yourself micromanaging someone, shift gears and assess if there is a problem with the individual or the role (or both).
• Learn to see most things as a machine. From our bodies to our organizations and beyond, there are few things which cannot be distilled into a machine-like model. If you understand the inputs, components, and outputs of a given machine, you can much more easily see where, how, and why it performs well or breaks down (and what needs to be done next).
• Foster courage: deep down, you usually know what’s right. Whether it's a difficult human resources, product, or other decision, when you reflect regularly and have honed your craft, your gut will often steer you on the right path if you have the courage to listen and act.
• Exercise extreme ownership of failure (mirror) and profound humility for wins (window). As the saying goes, success has many parents but failure is an orphan. Growth happens when we flip this script. Run toward problems, own them, and make adjustments to avoid recurrence. On the other end of the spectrum, the more deferential we are with wins, the more galvanized our team will be to achieve bigger and better things.
• Don’t underestimate the power of EWBEWBEW (exactly what, by exactly who, by exactly when). There is nothing fancy here but it is amazing how overlooked this can go in many organizations. Well executed, basic project management has an inordinate impact on the results of teams.
• Recognize that work expands to fill the available time. Find ways to challenge convention and stave off entropy. Continuously remind yourself of Roger Bannister's 4-minute mile. Once thought to be physically impossible by the world's leading experts, after Bannister achieved the feat in 1954, several others bested his time within the following year.

IV. Foster and maintain great relationships.

• Be candid. Speak simply and directly. Say what you think and what needs to be said. When you speak candidly, you encourage others to do so as well. When done respectfully, few things will build trust more quickly. Practice responding warmly to candor which may be critical of you, even when your ego wants to get defensive.
• Communicate like crazy. Leading teams is synonymous with leading change. Yet even when we understand this, we regularly fall victim to the curse of knowledge. I have not once heard someone say "I wish we would stop being reminded of why we're doing this/what it means for us, our clients, colleagues, and community". The most admired leaders I've worked with joke about repeating themselves all the time.
• Ask for and give feedback regularly. None of us is above reproach. Find whatever ways you can to gather feedback from managers, peers, and subordinates alike. It can help to start with anonymous surveys to build trust in the process. Share the feedback you have received with your team and be transparent about your personal development objectives.
• Invest in your colleagues. Few things are as rewarding as coaching others to higher levels of performance. Cultivate a mindset of abundance and work to make yourself irrelevant, ideally passing the torch to a person that can push performance up another few notches. New opportunities are always around the corner!

In closing, Charlie Munger probably said it best:

There is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: (1) Take a simple, basic idea and (2) Take it very seriously.

Onward and upward

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Note: Icons from The Noun Project