How to Be a Star at Work: 9 Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed

During the 1990s, Bell Labs teamed up with Robert Kelley, a Carnegie Mellon professor and organizational consultant to study what actually made their people productive. This book is the result of a 10-year long assessment.While the focus of the work was on productivity, they studied those who were deemed "stars" at work by peers and superiors. At the time, it was assumed that some pre-determined trait such as intelligence or personality would determine who the stars were. This turned out not to be true, and a good thing because, as Kelley identifies, since the traits of stars are identifiable behaviors (he calls them strategies) then anyone can adopt them and anyone can be a star!Here are the 9 strategies they identified, in order of importance:-Initiative: blazing trails in the organization's white spaces.-Networking: knowing who knows by plugging into the knowledge network-Self-management: managing your whole life at work.-Perspective: getting the big picture.-Followership: checking your ego at the door to lead in assists.-Leadership: doing small-l leadership in a Big-L world.-Teamwork: Getting Real about Teams-Organizational Savvy: Using street smarts in the corporate power zone.-Show-and-tell: Persuading the Right Audience with the right message.Kelley wants to distinguish between what most people perceive these strategies to be and the way that stars actually implement them. For example, with initiative he points out that while average performers think initiative means coming up with ideas to help them do their jobs better, stars view initiative as taking them into the white space beyond their job descriptions. (As a side note, I was struck that his number one characteristic of initiative seems very similar to Covey's first habit "Be Proactive.")Still, I'm having trouble with the easy jump from "most productive workers" to "star." Is the objective to be better than your co-workers so that you get promoted (and they don't) or is it to be more productive, as an individual and as an organization?I'm not sure that it logically follows that those selected as "stars" were necessarily the most productive workers of the enterprise. For example, one of the attributes of the stars was that they tapped into and exploited the expert networks but without the experts there wouldn't be much for the stars to do. One test for a strategy is to think "what if everyone did this" and here I'm not sure this particular trait holds up.At the same time, if these are the traits of the most productive workers then we should be able to increase overall productivity by getting everyone to follow these behaviors.Since the behaviors seem helpful, then what I'm interested in is how would we organize ourselves so that these behaviors are encouraged and naturally arise? Now that would be really interesting.This is David Marquet from Practicum, Inc. We help organizations move from leader-follower structures to leader-leader structures. Visit our blog at [...], follow us on twitter[...], email: [...] to sign up for our monthly newsletter.Comment on ourblog:[...]

You must be wondering why I use the title "A wonderful book to read" and not something else if I were to rate the book 5 stars. This is the first book that I have given full score.I am an avid reader on performance management and the list of criteria to increase productivity and recognition is not new. However, the similarity with other books stops there. Robert E. Kelley put new meaning into the 9 identified criteria to be a star performer. He gave a new meaning to the criteria "initiative", "organisation savvy" and many others. You need to read the book in order to appreciate the meaning in the context that he had deftly written them.I believe thoroughly based on what I read that anyone who could master the 9 criteria stated would become a star performer. However, there is a catch. Robert told the reader that you need to possess all 9 criteria and to practise them concurrently. That is a big challenge because any other management book will give you praises if you could manage to be proficient in one to two of the identified skills.I am not discouraged by the need for all 9 skills to be practised together and so you should not be either. I am going to put what I read into practice and since the average time to see results as Robert stated in the book is 2 years, I will update my review in 2 years time.Ease of reading: 5/5Interesting reading: 4.5/5Value for money (based on what was stated): 5/5Value for money in practice: Will update in 2 years timeProfound new knowledge: 3/5Profound new meaning: 5/5Ease of practice: Will update in 2 years time

This is an excellent book. The nine strategies make perfect sense. They are innovative, and will work for you. This is how to apply all your intelligences within the workplace and not just your IQ. You will recognize the ones who apply these strategies. They are the ones who may not have MBAs from Harvard, but yet are well liked and respected and go up the corporate ladder seemingly effortlessly.The author strategies are also quite original. He stresses how strong "followership" is just as important if not more as "leadership." This is a really important point that is rarely mentioned in management seminars.If you are a Harvard MBA, good for you. Nevertheless, this book will be invaluable to your success as it will give you the strategies and people skills you may need to truly leverage the superior business education you got.

Although a fast and easy read, this is not a quick-fix recipe book. You can't just read the book, put it down and then wait for the "star thing" to happen. The strategies espoused are based on common-sense and well-researched principles -- but practicing them requires... well... practice.The most uplifting message of this book -- and one that I stress with my employees -- is that *anyone* can be a star. It's not about how good you look, being a genius, or having great political or social skills -- it's about *how* you go about working. These aren't strategies you are born with -- these are strategies you can be *taught*.Nothing replaces old fashion perserverance -- this book is the inspiration and the rest is, as they say, perspiration. But if you consistently apply these principles you *will* succeed.

Required reading for masters course on leadership.