Strategic Thinking

A top employee has responsibility for both the craft of their work and the results of their work. People who want responsibility for the results are special and invaluable.

Habits

• Set priorities. This is a duplicate habit from an earlier goal, but it’s the right hook to ask for and prepare for conversations.

Common Questions and Prompts

• What’s the most important thing you’re working on today? Why?
• How can you measure the impact of that?
• Is that enough impact? Does it need to be revised?
• Is there any work on your plate that shouldn’t be done at all?

Mastery Characteristics

• Knows what moves the company forward. Can trace every work task back to the bottom line success of the company.
• Prioritizes time toward work that produces the biggest impact on the company.
• Scopes priorities into concrete chunks. Concrete means: usable. Chunk means: within a day.

Completes work that has been prioritized.

• Measures the impact of their work.
• Retries or cancels things that don’t work (most things).
• Learns and avoids work tasks that have no impact.
• Knows that scope and impact are not tightly correlated.
• Proves impact of large projects early. Is capable of dropping a large project if it’s not going to succeed.