I blogged previously about Fortune magazine’s Secrets of Success article. Turns out, this was part of a series. Here is my notes for the Secrets of Greatness issue (the link doesnt work at time of posting, but will in a couple days — I think).

Oh, and they have all be collected as a book now.

  • How to Practice
    • Approach each critical task with the explicit goal of getting better
    • Focus on what is happening and why you are doing it the way you are doing it
    • Get feedback
    • Creal mental models of your business (pictures of how the elements fit together and influence one another; the more you work on the model, the larger — and tighter, it gets
    • Do it regularily
  • Always have a backup plan
  • Don’t over task
  • Learn to make critical decisions under pressure
  • Constantly critique yourself
  • Practice to internalize the hard parts of what you do so they become instinctual
  • Practice like it is real. In other words, I need to throw the lacross ball around with my helmet on so that when it is gametime I am not running around with giant blind spots
  • Get a coach
  • There are always going to be reasons not to do somehting. Learn when to ignore those
  • Public speaking is a conversation, not a performance
  • See how big a gulf you can create between you and your competitor
  • No victory is too small
  • Doing things differently is inherently threatening to people because it means everyone doing it the previous way were wrong
  • Five levels of Excellence
    1. Unconscious Incompetence – You’re bad and you don’t even know it. Good for you but no one else
    2. Conscious Incompetence – You’re still consistently terrible – but a highly motivated learner
    3. Conscious Competence – With enough mental effort you can achieve good results – some of the time
    4. Unconscious Excellence – Your performance is automatic, unthinking and consistently good
    5. Conscious Excellence – You can get into the “zone” when needed, yet also explain and modulate the inner process
    6. Overconscious Incompetence – You’re thinking gets in the way of doing (choking). Go back to Zero.

    Obviously you want to get to, but not surpass level 5.

And as a bonus, here are two takeaways from the August 21st issue.

  • At Cisco, during the month of your birthday, you get to make an appointment for 1h15m with the CEO (John Chambers) to discuss whatever you like
  • In crisies, great leaders must not only be in charge, but be seen as being in charge