Sublime

The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing.

THE PROCESS

My biggest shift came after listening to a successful CEO talk about his philosophy for hiring people. When his company grew and he ran out of time to interview people himself, he had his employees rate new candidates on a 1–10 scale. The only stipulation was they couldn’t choose 7. It immediately dawned on me how many invitations I was receiving t

Tasks in the Zone of Incompetence are the things that other people probably do better than you (e.g., fix your car), and therefore you should outsource if they don’t give you joy. Tasks in the Zone of Competence are the things that you do just fine, but others are as good as you (e.g., clean your bathroom), and therefore you should outsource if the

His life’s work is devoted to helping experts build better businesses.

Delegation transforms an entrepreneur into a manager. Successful entrepreneurs have made this transition by learning to “trust but verify”—having daily team meetings to set daily priorities and a short team meeting each day to teach a key point.

you really want to improve the overall functioning of the system – whether that system is a manufacturing process, a procedure in your department, or some routine in your daily life – you need to identify the “slowest hiker.”

Another seemingly trivial piece of work—creating a tickler file—can improve daily work significantly for a long time. Setting up the simple mechanical aid is a one-time activity, yet it is likely to improve the productivity of the manager who uses it indefinitely. Thus the leverage here is very, very high.