Marc Effron - 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest)

I wish that, as a young man, someone had sat me down and said to me, Marc, Im going to tell you how to be highly successful at work. A few of the things I describe may come naturally to you, and others might require significant effort. You may believe that some of what I tell you will work well and that some wont. But I can promise that everything I tell you will help you to perform and, the more of it you do, the more successful you will be.

No one gave me that gift, and I doubt that many of you received it either. Thats unfortunate, because the lack of those insights makes our quest for high performance more challenging than it needs to be. Since we dont know what has been proven to work, we do our best to sort through the performance advice we get from books, bosses, friends, and the internet. That advice may be highly accurate or total folklore; its difficult to know which it is until we try it. Our quest for high performance is often guided by trial and error, as we do what we think is right and then hope for the best results.

Its even more unfortunate that these conversations dont occur because we know exactly what helps people to be high performers. Thats correct. There is clear, conclusive science that describes exactly how individuals can improve their performance at work. These arent platitudes like keep your head down and work hard, but specific actions, such as how to set goals, how to behave in order to drive results, and how to accelerate your development. So, if these facts are well known, why dont those conversations happen?

The challenge is that those powerful, performance-improving insights are hidden in dusty academic journals like individual pieces of a larger puzzle. The average Jill or Joe isnt a PhD research scientist, so would never sort through the original research to find those insights or know how to assemble the many pieces into a coherent picture.

Perhaps most challenging, these insights are rarely presented in a way that you can practically apply them at work. When the insights occasionally find their way into a book or article, its typically one written by a consultant or journalist who understands the topic but has never had to apply the concept in the real world. Their advice may be technically accurate, but it often ignores the practical realities of busy people, competing priorities, or unsupportive bosses.

If we could gather these great insights, sort through them to identify which matter most, and make them practical, applicable, and easy to understand, we could enable anyone to become a high performer. This knowledge would democratize high performance by making it available to everyone, rather than just a lucky, privileged few. Thats the purpose of 8 Steps to High Performance .

I wrote this book so that anyone can be a high performer. As a corporate executive and management consultant, I have seen too many smart people underperform because they didnt know or believe in the eight steps. These potential stars derailed their careers by relying on their one overwhelming strength for success (e.g., work harder; develop yourself even more) until they hit a performance wall by ignoring the other seven steps. Other leaders rejected great advice to build a network or change certain behaviors because they didnt believe it would improve their performance. All of these smart, highly capable people left performance on the table and lost out on the wonderful benefits that being a high performer brings.