Double Your Productivity and Focus on What Matters with Marc Effron

In this episode we discuss how to become a high performer at work. We look at one simple question you can use to double your productivity, we talk about how to decipher scientific evidence and determine what’s really important to focus on for maximum performance, we examine how to get quality feedback on your work, share strategies for creating high performance habits and behaviors, and uncover what it takes to quickly improve your performance with our guest Marc Effron.
Marc Effron is the founder and president of the Talent Strategy Group and publisher of the Talent Quarterly Magazine. He is a Harvard Business Press best-selling author and just released his latest book 8 Steps To High Performance. He has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Influencers in H.R. and he has worked and consulted with some of the largest companies in the country.We have so much science that tell us many of the right things to do - and yet its often so hard to discern signal from noise People like writing about individual topics - but often don’t combine them all into one cohesive view of reality as a whole“The Three Tiers of Proof” Bottom tier “Research" - a consulting firm does a study and comes out with a report - not peer reviewed, not validated, not controlled - but still may have some valueNext step up - "Science" - someone has published an article in a peer reviewed journal The best - "Conclusive Science" - 100 people do the experiment and all come to the exact same conclusion If you want to get better you’re much better off asking others for feedback than just looking at yourselfWhat’s your disciplined approach for gathering feedback from others about what makes you so successful?How do we gather quality feedback?Source of opinions and quality of opinion are not equal. Find your high performing peersFind your high performing people at your bosses level that you would like feedback fromIf you’re a solo entrepreneur your customers or investors are probably the best people to askCan we set goals that are too big and too ambitious? How do we strike that balance?Ask yourself - is your big goal too disengaging? Could it be harmful to the organization?Given where my company is - what needs to happen for me to be the most high performance I can be? What are the few behaviors that matter the most for performance right now?Three “buckets” of behaviors that cause us to derail:“Moving away” behaviors - behaviors that cause you to put distance between you and other people. Passive aggression, shyness, etc. “Moving against” behaviors - putting you into other people’s space and make them want to spend less time with you“Moving towards” behaviors - suck up behavior, managing up and the people below you don’t like itThere are many fixed traits of your life, background, abilities etc that you can’t change - focus on what you can change It’s the experience we have that grow us fastest - the most big, challenging, scary, risky experiences you have the faster you’re going to learn. It’s easy to get comfortable, but comfort is the enemy of growthWe often exaggerate the downside and underestimate the upsideHomework: Action begins with an assessment of where we are today - how do you compare against the 8 step framework - then determine what your ONE key priority going forward should be Homework: Ask your boss: I want to deliver 2x next year - what’s the ONE thing I could do differently to deliver more on that goal?

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