§ How good work is actually judged · 3 min · no account
The Nine
In the mid-1980s researchers went into Bell Labs to find what made the best engineers better. They tested forty-five things everyone believed — intelligence, creativity, ambition, appetite for risk — and none of them separated the stars. What separated them was nine working habits, all of them learnable. Score yourself honestly on all nine.
Decides how you are rated
These three are what a manager is actually looking at when he decides who is excellent. Start here.
Initiative
In the last six months I started something nobody asked me to start, that helped other people, and I carried it to the finish.
Not working harder, and not a course you took for yourself. Outside your job description, unasked, useful to others, and seen through to the end.
Perspective
Before I start something, I size it — what it is worth, how likely it is, what it costs — and I have checked recently that it still matters to the people above me.
The hardest of the nine to learn. Working very hard on the wrong thing is the most common way a good man wastes a decade.
Following well
I can disagree hard with a leader in private and then pull with him in public, without sulking and without going quiet.
Most of your life is spent following, and no one is ever taught how. Too agreeable and you are furniture. Too sharp and you make friction instead of progress.
Where the results come from
The engine. Mostly invisible to everyone but you, and the reason the first three are even possible.
Network
When I hit a problem I cannot solve, I know a specific person I could ask today — and I have done it in the last month.
Not collecting contacts. A network you never use to unstick something is a list, not a network. The point is speed.
Self-management
I spend most of my week on work I chose because it matters, not on putting out fires, and I review each week and cut what did not pay.
Three things: working on what actually counts, using your hours well, and shaping the job around your strengths instead of enduring it.
Leading without the title
People who do not report to me follow my lead, because of what I know, how I handle people, or how I organise the work.
Authority is given. Mandate is earned through expertise, people skill or the ability to create momentum.
What people see
Your colleagues judge you on these. Do not start here — a man who starts here is called political.
Teamwork
I take responsibility for the whole group's result, including the parts that are not mine — but I do not say yes to every committee.
Joint ownership of the output, not being pleasant. Good enough is enough here; the third extra commitment costs you time and earns you nothing.
Reading the room
I know who really decides, I get objections privately before the meeting, and I do not correct powerful people in public.
Handling conflict and competing priorities. Any skill that buys speed counts. One public humiliation of a new boss can cost you three years.
Showing the work
I can stand in front of ten people and make them want the thing I am proposing.
You will never be called excellent for presenting well. But a reputation for putting a room to sleep follows a man for years.
50
The Nine, out of 100
Initiative
Weakest habit — start here
You are probably working hard and being rated average. That gap is not effort. It is aim.
One act this week
Name one problem your boss keeps complaining about and nobody owns. Take it, finish it, and tell no one until it works.
Keep this reading
A number you close the tab on changes nothing.
The nine strategies come from Robert Kelley's research at Bell Labs and 3M, published in How to Be a Star at Work (1998). The wording, scoring and the acts here are ours.
Next: The Load →A number is not a change. The change is what you do tomorrow morning.
The Compass scores all eight pillars in six minutes and hands you the one to start with. Then six hundred and seventy-two mornings, each with one reading and one act.