Highlights

  • Whether you are a teacher, a professor, a pilot or a top manager, you will be confronted by the same questions time and again: How do I make the right decision? How can I motivate myself or my team? How can I change things? How can I work more efficiently? (Location 94)
  • THE PROJECT PORTFOLIO MATRIX HOW TO MAINTAIN AN OVERVIEW Are you juggling several projects simultaneously? Then you are a “slasher” (/). The term was coined by the New York author Marci Alboher and describes people who cannot give a single answer to the question “And what do you do for a living?” Suppose you are a teacher/musician/web designer. The variety may be appealing, but how can you balance all these projects? And how do you ensure a regular income? To get an overview, you can classify your current projects, both work-related and private, with the help of the project portfolio matrix according to cost and time (see model on pp. 18–19). Think of costs not only in terms of money but also in terms of resources such as friends involved, energy and psychological stress. Cost and time are just two examples. You can use whatever parameters are relevant to your situation: for example, the x-axis (Location 162)
  • could be “How much my project is helping me achieve my overriding objective,” and the y-axis “How much I am learning from this project.” Now position your projects in the matrix in relation to the two axes “objectives achieved” and “amount learned.” HOW TO INTERPRET THE RESULTS • Reject projects if there is nothing you can learn from them and if they do not correspond to your overriding vision. • Projects that you can learn from but do not correspond to your vision are interesting but will not help you achieve your objective. Try to change the project so that it serves your vision. • If a project corresponds to your vision, but you are learning nothing new, look for somebody else to do it for you. • If you are learning something and achieving your vision, you have hit the jackpot! (Location 170)
  • Whenever you have an important decision to make, write down what you expect to happen. After a year, compare your expectation with the actual outcome. (Location 187)
  • Sounds easy? Calvinist ministers and Jesuit priests used this method as early as the mid-seventeenth century – and, according to some historians, the global impact of both religious orders is at least partially due to their use of feedback analysis, and using this technique to manage themselves. (Location 190)
  • If you set yourself goals, you should distinguish between final goals and performance goals. A final goal might be “I want to run a marathon”; a performance goal helps you achieve this aim, for example “I will go jogging for thirty minutes every morning.” (Location 196)
  • Copy out the rubber band model, and ask the person to ask themselves: What is holding me? What is pulling me? (Location 210)
  • In terms of what can be learned from feedback, it is better to ask yourself “What can I do with this criticism?” (Location 222)
  • In a supermarket she offered a variety of jams for shoppers to try: six different varieties on one day, twenty-four varieties on another. With the smaller selection, 40 percent tried the jams and 30 percent bought a jar. The bigger selection attracted 60 percent of the shoppers, but only 2 percent bought a jar of jam. The conclusion: choice is alluring but confusing. (Location 250)
  • For example, in a restaurant, pick the first dish on the menu that you like the look of, and then immediately close the menu. (Location 254)
  • THE GAP-IN-THE-MARKET MODEL (Location 259)
  • the SCAMPER checklist developed by Bob Eberle will also help you to reconfigure an existing idea or product. (Location 288)
  • Beware! We often defer decisions because we have doubts. But not making a decision is a decision in itself. If you delay a resolution it is often an unconscious decision, one that you do not communicate. This leads to uncertainty in a team. So if you want to make a decision later, be sure to communicate this clearly. (Location 333)
  • The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer suggests the following intriguingly simple trick: if you can’t decide between two options, toss a coin. While it is spinning in the air, you will probably sense which side you want to land face up. You then don’t even need to look at the actual result. (Location 347)
  • The idea is to switch off the rational side of your brain and get in touch directly with your innermost desires and experiences. (Location 350)
  • How do I know when I should revise a decision? Give yourself a Stop Rule. The Stop Rule is a hard-and-fast, almost universally applicable alternative to the often tortuous process of weighing up a situation. (Location 358)
  • Establish a research strategy. (Location 371)
  • And the more you know, the more secure you feel. But eventually you reach a tipping point; at some point you know too much. Theoret-ically (Location 373)
  • Here’s what to do: set yourself your own limits, e.g., three hours on Google, ask three friends, visit two car dealers. (Location 374)
  • Lower your expectations. (Location 376)
  • Here’s what to do: put your five most important criteria for the car in order of priority. Delete the last two. (Location 378)
  • Don’t worry. (Location 379)
  • What consequences will my decision have in 10 days? What consequences will it have in 10 months? And in 10 years? (Location 382)
  • HOW TO UNDERSTAND YOURSELF BETTER (Location 390)
  • Happiness, or “flow,” occurs when we are: • intensely focused on an activity • of our own choosing, that is • neither underchallenging (boreout) nor overchallenging (burnout), that has • a clear objective, and that receives • immediate feedback. (Location 397)
  • HOW TO RECOGNIzE WHETHER YOU SHOULD CHANGE YOUR JOB (Location 510)
  • Have to. To what extent are my current tasks being imposed on me or demanded of me? • Able to. To what extent do my tasks match my abilities? • Want to. To what extent does my current task correspond to what I really want? (Location 514)
  • However, we tend to forget that every future has a past, and that our past is the foundation on which our future is built. That’s why the important question is not “How do I imagine my future?” but “How do I create a connection, a bridge, between the past (e.g. of a project) and the future?” (Location 532)
  • Technically speaking, every decision has two parameters: How comparable are the two options, and how great is the consequence of the decision? (Location 567)
  • Easy to compare, no consequence: One alternative is better than the other but it does not play a (big) role if we make the wrong decision. 2. Difficult to compare, slight consequence: Shall we go to the party or get an early night? The one option is better in one sense, the other in another, but they aren’t really comparable. This makes the decision difficult, even if it isn’t actually that important. 3. Easy to compare, big consequence: When we discover that there is only one operation that could save our life, we face a big decision – but it is easy to make, because there is no real alternative. 4. Difficult to compare, big consequence: Starting a family, changing job – with these hard choices there is no obviously right decision. According to the philosopher Ruth Chang, whatever decision you make in the end, it is important to support it with subjective arguments. Rational weighing up will not help you in this situation. (Location 570)
  • Don’t trust your first impressions. Assume that you are wrong. (Location 593)
  • HOW TO UNDERSTAND OTHERS BETTER (Location 637)
  • People often reveal their character in their approach to discussions. Depending on how they react to suggestions, they fall into one of the following four categories: • The fault-finder: “The idea is good, but…” • The dictator: “No!” • The schoolteacher: “No, the idea isn’t good because…” • The AI thinker: “Yes, and we could also…” (Location 757)
  • The internet is the world’s largest library. It’s just that all the books are on the floor. John Allen Paulos (Location 792)
  • IS YOUR TEAM UP TO THE JOB? (Location 894)
  • This team model will help you to judge your team. Begin by defining the skills, expertise and resources that you think are important for carrying out the project. Note the skills that are absolutely necessary for the job. Distinguish between soft skills (e.g., loyalty, motivation, reliability) and hard skills (e.g., computer, business and knowledge of foreign languages). For each skill, define where your critical boundary lies on a scale of zero to ten. For example, an acceptable level of fluency in French might be five. Now judge your “players” according to these criteria. Connect the points with a line. What are the team’s weaknesses, and what are their strengths? Even more revealing than the model itself is the subsequent self-evaluation by the team members. A good team is one that can correctly judge its own capabilities. (Location 897)
  • Real strength lies in differences, not in similarities. (Location 904)
  • HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY MANAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES (Location 910)
  • Lead your employees in such a way that you yourself become superfluous. And lead your employees to be successful, so that one day they will be in a leadership position themselves. (Location 926)
  • Nothing is less productive than doing what should not be done at all. Peter F. Drucker (Location 1012)
  • HOW TO TURN A GROUP INTO A TEAM (Location 1016)
  • An open conflict is better than one that simmers unresolved through several stages and forces you to address issues during the final stages that should have been dealt with much earlier on. (Location 1033)
  • WHY YOU SHOULD DRAW WHILE YOU TALK (Location 1094)
  • Pictures say more than a thousand words. Draw an iceberg to draw attention to a growing problem, a temple if you want to illustrate pillars of success, a bridge to show connections, rough outlines of countries to establish a geographical context, a conveyor belt for procedures and processes, a funnel if you want to consolidate ideas, a pyramid for a hierarchy. (Location 1097)