book covers great at work

A 5 Minute Overview Of

Great at Work

How Top Performers Work Less and Achieve More

About the Author


Morten Hansen is a management professor at University of California, Berkeley and is also on the faculty at Apple University. He was formerly a professor at Harvard Business School and at INSEAD (France). He is the coauthor (along with Jim Collins) of Great By Choice and the author of Collaboration. Morten Hansen previously worked as a manager at the Boston Consulting Group where he advised clients worldwide. He is a graduate of Stanford Business School, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the University of Oslo.

The Main Idea


Why exactly are some people so much more productive when at work than others?

The cliche response has usually been: "They have learned to work smarter, not harder." That's okay but it stands to reason others are not deliberately trying to "work dumber".

To try and figure out why some people are so much more productive, an analysis was made of 200 academic papers on the subject. 120 experts in the field of human productivity were interviewed and a pilot study was carried out with 300 participants followed by further testing with another 5,000 people from various industries and backgrounds.

This evidence-based analysis identified 7 specific behaviors which cumulatively make up 66% of the difference in how people perform in the workplace. Those 7 behaviors are:

You can incorporate these ideas into your daily work and make them a habit, just like you would other routines, like grabbing that morning coffee, checking your mail, and exercising. You can start small and build up these routines bit by bit, until you master them. Being great at work means performing in your job, infusing your work with passion and a strong sense of purpose, and living well, too. How great is that?
Morten Hansen

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