Raise your standards, pick up the pace, sharpen your focus, and align your people. You don't need to bring in reams of consultants to examine everything that is going on. What you need on day one is to ratchet up expectations, energy, urgency, and intensity. (Location 365)
So let's start with an overview of the five key steps in the Amp It Up process: raise your standards, align your people, sharpen your focus, pick up the pace, and transform your strategy. (Location 400)
People lower their standards in an effort to move things along and get things off their desks. Don't do it. Fight that impulse every step of the way. It doesn't take much more mental energy to raise standards. Don't let malaise set in. Bust it up. Raising the bar is energizing by itself. (Location 405)
Instead of telling people what I think of a proposal, a product, a feature, whatever, I ask them instead what they think. Were they thrilled with it? Absolutely love it? Most of the time I would hear, “It's okay,” or “It's not bad.” They would surmise from my facial expression that this wasn't the answer I was looking for. Come back when you are bursting with excitement about whatever you are proposing to the rest of us. (Location 408)
Another source of misalignment is management by objectives (MBO), which I have eliminated at every company I've joined in the last 20 years. MBO causes employees to act as if they are running their own show. Because they get compensated on their personal metrics, it's next to impossible to pull them off projects. They will start negotiating with you for relief. That's not alignment, that's every man for himself. If you need MBO to get people to do their job, you may have the wrong people, the wrong managers, or both. (Location 428)
First, think about execution more sequentially than in parallel. Work on fewer things at the same time, and prioritize hard. Even if you're not sure about ranking priorities, do it anyway. The process alone will be enlightening. Figure out what matters most, what matters less, and what matters not at all. Otherwise your people will disagree about what's important. The questions you should ask constantly: What are we not going to do? What are the consequences of not doing something? Get in the habit of constantly prioritizing and reprioritizing. (Location 438)
“Priority” should ideally only be used as a singular word. The moment you have many priorities, you actually have none. (Location 447)
If priorities are not clearly understood at the top, how distorted will they be down the line? (Location 460)
Leaders set the pace. People sometimes ask to get back to me in a week, and I ask, why not tomorrow or the next day? Start compressing cycle times. We can move so much quicker if we just change the mindset. Once the cadence changes, everybody moves quicker, and new energy and urgency will be everywhere. Good performers crave a culture of energy. (Location 466)
Apply pressure. Be impatient. Patience may be a virtue, but in business it can signal a lack of leadership. Nobody wants to swim in glue or struggle to get things done. Some organizations slow things down by design. Change that—ASAP. (Location 470)
Doing everything we can to the best of our abilities. It's like marathons or triathlons, which are 99% training and 1% racing. (Location 522)
We coped in ways I have used ever since: hire people ahead of their own curve. Hire more for aptitude than experience and give people the career opportunity of a lifetime. They will be motivated and driven, with a cannot‐fail attitude. The good ones would grab the opportunity to accelerate their careers with us. (Location 597)
Once you have your mission in place, how do you get everyone to embrace it and make it real? The four keys are applying focus, urgency, execution, and strategy. (Location 918)
Everyone needs to feel confident that our strategy is in line with the goals of our mission. (Location 938)
Don't listen to what leaders say—watch what they do. (Location 951)
Rather than seeking incremental progress from the current state, try thinking about the future state you want to reach and then work backward to the present. (Location 1020)
Tags: pink
Theodore Roosevelt's famous speech, “The Man in the Arena”: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. (Location 1032)
If you want to win big, imagine a radically different future that is not tethered to the past. (Location 1043)
“No strategy is better than its execution.” (Location 1095)
Strategy can't really be mastered until you know how to execute well. (Location 1100)
Your entry‐level job isn't just a job; it's the first step on a clearly defined career trajectory. (Location 1125)
One of my favorite observations is that “good judgment comes from bad judgment.” Experience may be overrated by some, but it's hard to find a substitute for it. (Location 1133)
Without strong execution, there is literally no way to know whether a strategy is failing. Eliminate execution as a potential factor first, and then move on to evaluating the strategy. Great execution cannot save a failing strategy, but it will help you decide more quickly whether it's time to change your strategy. (Location 1186)