I recently listened to an interview with Morten Hansen, author of Great at Work: How top performers do less, work better and achieve more. Hansen conducted a 5-year study of 5000 managers across many industries looking for the how top performers differed from others. It was a great interview with some very interesting and provocative ideas.

Hansen purports that their top performers follow 7 principles that make them outstanding. Although all insightful there were 3 that particularly struck me. They were:

1.       Knowing the difference between being busy and being successful

We live in a culture where lots of kudos are given to you if you are working crazy hours at work and have a gazillion emails and back-to-back meetings. None of these busy metrics are a proxy for success. In fact, the metrics may demonstrate that you are not attending to the things that bring success. See #2 below.

2.       Knowing the difference between working towards a goal and bringing value

This is really the difference between focusing on what is mission critical and what other work you spend your time doing. You could be accomplishing all the goals you set for yourself but if those goals are not bringing value to your organization than really you are just staying busy. See #1 above.

3.       Reframing resiliency as “smart grit”

Resiliency is the “capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”. This is a very valuable quality to have. You can amp up resiliency into “smart grit” by utilizing and learning from people and situations that are in opposition to your idea or position. This skillful learning will allow you to gain understanding to either persuade someone to change their mind or will allow you to formulate a solid plan to forge a path around that opposition.

I will definitely be adding this book to the summer reading list.