Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys To Transforming the Way We Work and LiveThis book was previously titled, Be Excellent at Anything. The Way We're Working Isn't Working is one of those rare books with the power to profoundly transform the way we work and live. Demand is exceeding our capacity. The ethic of "more, bigger, faster" exacts a series of silent but pernicious costs at work, undermining our energy, focus, creativity, and passion. Nearly 75 percent of employees around the world feel disengaged at work every day. The Way We're Working Isn't Working offers a groundbreaking approach to reenergizing our lives so we’re both more satisfied and more productive—on the job and off. By integrating multidisciplinary findings from the science of high performance, Tony Schwartz, coauthor of the #1 bestselling The Power of Full Engagement, makes a persuasive case that we’re neglecting the four core needs that energize great performance: sustainability (physical); security (emotional); self-expression (mental); and significance (spiritual). Rather than running like computers at high speeds for long periods, we’re at our best when we pulse rhythmically between expending and regularly renewing energy across each of our four needs. Organizations undermine sustainable high performance by forever seeking to get more out of their people. Instead they should seek systematically to meet their four core needs so they’re freed, fueled, and inspired to bring the best of themselves to work every day. Drawing on extensive work with an extra-ordinary range of organizations, among them Google, Ford, Sony, Ernst & Young, Shell, IBM, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Cleveland Clinic, Schwartz creates a road map for a new way of working. At the individual level, he explains how we can build specific rituals into our daily schedules to balance intense effort with regular renewal; offset emotionally draining experiences with practices that fuel resilience; move between a narrow focus on urgent demands and more strategic, creative thinking; and balance a short-term focus on immediate results with a values-driven commitment to serving the greater good. At the organizational level, he outlines new policies, practices, and cultural messages that Schwartz’s client companies have adopted. The Way We're Working Isn't Working offers individuals, leaders, and organizations a highly practical, proven set of strategies to better manage the relentlessly rising demands we all face in an increasingly complex world. |
Contents
ChaPter | 3 |
ChaPter | 23 |
ChaPter three | 33 |
ChaPter Four | 49 |
ChaPter FIve | 57 |
ChaPter | 67 |
ChaPter seven | 79 |
ChaPter eIght | 91 |
ChaPter Fourteen | 177 |
One Thing at a Time | 189 |
Cultivating the Whole Brain | 205 |
Autonomy for Accountability | 221 |
ChaPter eIghteen | 237 |
ChaPter nIneteen | 249 |
Purpose for Passion | 261 |
The Big Ideas | 277 |
ChaPter nIne | 107 |
The War Between the States | 123 |
ChaPter eleven | 133 |
ChaPter twelve | 147 |
ChaPter thIrteen | 161 |
Notes | 297 |
313 | |
323 | |
About The Energy Project | 335 |
Common terms and phrases
aCtIon stePs activity Alan Alan Mulally Amy Pascal Anders Ericsson attention Author interview average Baumeister behavior better brain build capacity challenge ChaPter clients cortisol create creative culture Daniel Goleman deeply distractions e-mail effectively emotions employees Energy Project Ericsson Ernst & Young exercise experience feel focus focused fuel going heart rate Ian McCallum ibid inspiring intentionally leaders left hemisphere less lives managing meditation meetings Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mind Mulally negative night number of hours organizations ourselves people’s percent performance person physical practice prefrontal cortex productive prompts psychologist quadrant renewal researchers response right hemisphere ritual Roy Baumeister Roy White sense someone Sony Europe Sony Pictures Sony Pictures Entertainment spend spiritual story Survival Zone sustainable task there’s they’re thing tion triggered typically we’re we’ve week what’s writes York you’re Zappos