Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More

make a better effort to listen (put away that smartphone); articulate your own dissenting views; invite a colleague to argue an opposite position; prompt quiet colleagues to speak up; and pose a good question instead of telling others what you think.

You can create tremendous value in your job if you spot and help colleagues, customers, and suppliers alleviate their most significant grievances.

You can unite a team by sharpening the team goal.

Wield the razor: Shave away unnecessary tasks, priorities, committees, steps, metrics, and procedures. Channel all your effort into excelling in the remaining activities.

strong association between intensity of effort and having both passion and purpose.

Make fights about ideas, not people.

value. A good redesign delivers more value for the same amount of work done.

Ask yourself: Which skill would, if improved, lift your performance the most? Choose that one to work on first, and devote fifteen minutes a day—yes,

their performance incentives didn’t align with the collaboration project.