Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers

Trust is a key issue in collaboration. We can define trust as people’s confidence that colleagues will deliver the high-quality work expected of them, on time, every time.

President Lyndon B. Johnson is supposed to have quipped about an opponent: “it’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.”30 Whenever you can, work smart and invite the opposition into your tent.

“Sometimes I’ll talk to folks in advance of a meeting, saying ‘Hey we’re going to have this meeting, I know you have a particular viewpoint, I think it’s very important that it gets heard, I’d like to make sure you share it with the group.’ ”

Make clear to your boss that you’re not trying to slack off. You’re prioritizing because you want to dedicate all your effort to excelling in a few key areas. Ask if your boss would like you to reprioritize. Put the decision back on your boss’s shoulders.

This finding led us to reformulate the “work scope” practice and call it “do less, then obsess.”

Without realizing it, the team at Skyline Hospital applied a dictum invented 700 years ago by William of Ockham, a European friar, philosopher, and theologian. Ockham is known for a principle called Occam’s razor,27 which stipulates that people should pursue the simplest explanation possible in science and other areas. Applied to the workplace, we

“Do less, then obsess” affects performance more than any other practice in this book.

As economics Nobel-laureate Herbert Simon quipped, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Show up to every meeting 100 percent prepared. • Craft an opinion and deliver it with conviction (and data). • Stay open to others’ ideas, not just your own. • Let the best argument win, even if it isn’t yours (and often it isn’t). • Feel free to stand up and shout, but never make the argument personal. • Always listen—really listen—to minority vie