
The annoying habits of highly effective people - ezhil
https://www.economist.com/node/21751671
======
DecayingOrganic
"The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western
cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not
exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills,
smartness, efforts, willfulness, hard work or risk taking. Sometimes, we are
willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in
achieving significant material success.

But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance
of external forces in individual successful stories. It is very well known
that intelligence (or, more in general, talent and personal qualities)
exhibits a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the
distribution of wealth - often considered a proxy of success - follows
typically a power law (Pareto law), with a large majority of poor people and a
very small number of billionaires. Such a discrepancy between a Normal
distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or
intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that
some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes."

I would highly recommend people here to take a look at:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068)

~~~
data_spy
I understand what you are saying to a degree, however I've had more success
than many colleagues due to me spending time every day to improve myself
(usually technically). What you are saying is like saying some people are thin
due to genetics, which can be true, but also many people are thin because they
workout.

~~~
uratool
1\. how do you know you are not a screaming asshole that other people
tolerate, with your inflated sense of self worth about your technical ability
being your motivator for demanding more - so you call it success.

Have you overcome any longstanding relationship issues with anyone in your
life? have you supported someone through a mental breakdown?

The very fact that you measure your success "over" your colleagues to me
highlights that at no point have you been working towards making a better
world.. I mean its cool that you are an aspie and all but ts actually of not
much use to the humanity.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

(Also, it's not ok to have a trollish username on HN, since that basically
trolls every thread the account posts to.)

------
phakding
Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read
a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not
meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am
every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or
CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that
way. I could be very wrong, but that's my experience.

~~~
manigandham
You're focused on the actions rather than the results. Common mistake.

People become leaders by creating and commanding change that positively
affects the company. Land a major deal or create a new product line that
doubles revenue? You're getting to the top.

Working harder than the others is part of this process, and sometimes that
means you come in at 5am, but it's not a requirement nor is it something that
anyone in that position actually focuses on as more than just a means to an
end.

~~~
CalRobert
I remember when I was early in my career and fixed an enormous flaw in ad
allocation for a large online publisher. It led to easily over a million extra
in revenue that year.

My boss was delighted to take credit for it while also ensuring I stayed on
message that it wasn't actually a result of him screwing up and being
generally incompetent. I eventually figured I had nothing to lose and talked
to his boss (politely of course) just saying how successful that had been and
that I had plenty of other ideas for improvement. It was not well received.

But I hear my old boss is doing quite well these days.

~~~
manigandham
Dishonest people will be a constant obstacle, but communication is also
important so others know what your contribution is. There can't be progress
without measurement.

Being accurate and quantifiable without becoming confrontational is an art
though, but ultimately necessary. Going over people can often lead to worse
results. Eventually the truth does come out but whether it's worth the time
and effort is up to you.

~~~
CalRobert
I had another offer lined up when I decided to chat with the boss' boss. It
went about how I expected, I took the offer, and learned a good deal about how
business works in the process.

Communication is important - very important - but it's also often what people
focus on when the reality is just a bigger pain in the ass ("so and so is a
selfish twit who takes credit for others' work" is much harder to say than "we
need to address communication issues between departments")

~~~
manigandham
I think that's an issue both in communications and in handling people.

For example, did you have to take credit for that particular situation? What
was the true downside of your boss taking credit? Why not cover for him and
gain the ally? Build the relationship and you'll often find that it pays back
in multiples.

Business is 99% about relationships. The only way you can get what you want is
by helping others get what they want.

~~~
justaguyhere
I don't get it - his boss took credit for his work, likely without his consent
or even knowledge (I'd guess he came to know _after_ his boss took credit).
And yet, you want him to cover for his boss? He also mentioned his boss was
incompetent. How can you trust such a person to watch out for you, even if you
let it go?

~~~
manigandham
Because relationships matter, and that's how you build that trust in the first
place.

Why not work with them, teach them, and make them better. Instead of being
upset, be on their side. Almost always, they'll help you in return. Being
confrontational and going around them though, will only guarantee more
negative outcomes. Remember that your boss's boss and other colleagues
probably don't want to deal with someone who is seemingly more interested in
getting credit rather than getting things done.

~~~
CalRobert
I'm glad your life has led you to have such faith in management. I hope it's
because you've been treated well. If you're early in your career and think
this is how it works most places, I worry you may be in for a rude awakening.

I had a colleague who once told me "the trick to making good ideas happen is
to make your boss think it was their idea". And they were completely right! It
didn't stop them from quitting in frustration years later having never been
promoted.

------
dkarl
At one time I thought highly successful people would be more like each other
than less successful people. I believed it even more when it was explained as
the Anna Karenina principle. But my experience hasn't borne it out. There are
many things you can point to as advantages or "best practices" but in the end
it all seems to dissolve into our penchant for telling stories. One guy is
successful because he was born into it, it's all he saw growing up, every
element was demonstrated for him and instilled in him as normal his whole
life. Another guy is successful because he was born with nothing and had to
fight for every little thing, and he kept fighting for the next thing until he
had a whole company. These are both coherent stories, but they don't explain
the difference between those two and all the other people who were born to
success but reverted to the mean or who were born into poverty and stayed
there.

I've seen people succeed with vastly different, contradictory strategies. I've
seen engineers promoted to management earn respect by getting in the weeds and
doing unwanted grunt work, and I've seen engineers promoted to management stay
so hands-off from technical stuff that new employees assumed they were MBAs
who didn't understand the work they were managing. I've seen people with
humble origins flaunt them at every opportunity and others all but deny them.
I've seen people who immersed themselves in detail to see the whole picture
and people who carefully rationed the information they consumed to avoid being
overwhelmed, systematically delegating the responsibility for details.

Conclusion: that's the wrong way to try to understand the difference between
luck and skill. Suppose you ran a huge experiment where you had 1000 chess
grandmasters, 1000 masters, 1000 good amateurs, and so on down to 1000 chronic
duffers, and they each inherited a thousand games starting at move eight
(crediting the first seven moves to luck, circumstances, and childhood.) You
wouldn't learn much by asking whether the winners attacked or defended, opened
the middle or jammed it up, preferred their knights or their bishops. Those
aren't the right questions. A grandmaster doesn't move a knight just because
she likes knights, or because moving knights is the baller thing that all the
grandmasters do. It's because it accomplishes something in their situation. If
life was a game you could play over and over again, with executive control
gradually fading in starting in the teenage years, a brilliant player might
play each lifetime very differently. It's an interesting thought experiment to
ask what skills you would develop as you "played" dozens or hundreds of
lifetimes! Certainly not rigid rules like "wake up at 5am" or "wear the same
thing every day."

~~~
dtujmer
Wow. This is honestly the best analogy I've ever seen. I still think that some
particular behaviors are generally good and should be emulated (like e.g.
exercise) - but even there you'll find exceptions. But taking CEO quirks and
designing lives so that they include them... That's just guessing the
teacher's password
([https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-t...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-
the-teacher-s-password)).

~~~
galfarragem
The analogy of inheriting a position in a game played by somebody else is
great. Winning or loosing depends on how you finish it. What I can't agree is
using chess itself: in chess there's no luck, if you play better than your
opponent you will certainly win. In life, even after you inheriting the
position, luck is a relevant factor, and the better player can loose.

Paraphrasing Nassin Taleb, a good player is somebody that optimises the
chances of _black swans_ to happen in life. But even this might no grant you a
win.

------
motohagiography
Given this issue a lot of thought, mostly after reading Jeffery Pfeffer's
views about how most CEO biographies are designed to kick the ladder away
behind them.

Given the exponential / power law distribution of returns, if you are anywhere
on the left hand side of that curve, you are doing phenomenally well, even if
your actual place on it is random. This curve is the mechanism behind the
Matthew Effect as well. To get there, you just need to survive long enough to
end up on it somewhat randomly. The competitive environments in offices are
really about getting exposure to opportunity - not reaping the rewards of
work. This is why some seemingly dumb people do well. They have the
relationships that get them exposure to the opportunities to end up somewhere
randomly on that exponential curve.

You'll notice that people who fail or stagnate in offices are the ones who
have been isolated from peers, customers, sales people, and other sources of
exposure to randomness, and that is not an accident. Highly successful people
ensure they are at the front of the queue for those random opportunities, and
whether they do that through merit or mendacity is ultimately immaterial.
Being smart is not about problem solving or abstraction, it's an instinct for
always getting the option on opportunity.

Absolutely recommend Pfeffer on this.

------
siruncledrew
I think another thing that influences annoying habits of "effective" people is
that no executive/manager is going to hold a CEO accountable for being
late/strolling into work, whereas if a CEO didn't like it that person would be
be immediately told to stop and change their behavior.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _no executive /manager is going to hold a CEO accountable for being
> late/strolling into work_

I did this. I had just been promoted to the lowest manager position at a
global bank. Our global head had a habit of starting meetings late.

After one, I asked to speak privately. I said I had been working hard with my
team on improving their timeliness. They responded, and our mornings became
more productive as a result. But once a quarter they came to these meetings
and saw the top guys in our division stroll in late. It undid work I fought
hard for, and which I continued to believe in.

He thanked me for my perspective and was never late again. (Another example:
CEO assigned our intern class a book assignment. I proceeded to reject the
author’s thesis.)

Organisations that don’t permit upwards feedback are, in my opinion,
unhealthy.

(In the interest of balance, I have also given upward feedback that was
rejected. The reasons for their rejection changed how I worked going forward,
every time productively.)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Were you ever terminated or had your contract not renewed for providing
upwards feedback that was rejected?

~~~
maerF0x0
on this thread. There is defensible feedback and there is just being
contrarian. If you have a reasonable position, you may just be missing the
CEO's context and they should be smart enough to see the gap and fill it in
for you. Without requiring a pink slip.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Defensible feedback can still get you fired.

~~~
maerF0x0
In the world of at will employment, everything, anything and even "nothing"
can get you fired.

------
weberc2
What a strange, disappointing article. I was expecting trends in annoying
behavior, but this was just some low-grade complaining about rich people. And
I'm not complaining about people complaining about rich people, I'm
complaining about the poor quality of the complaints:

\- Richard Branson once said that he didn't like when people were late, but
Virgin's trains aren't very timely

\- Tim Cook would probably be just as successful if he got up three hours
later (opines the writer)

\- General fear mongering about the dangers of executives like Jobs and
Zuckerberg wearing the same attire every day

~~~
FabHK
It's the _Bartebly_ column, an entertaining look at work, not a scientific
paper or even news.

------
mamon
I always laugh at this obsession with early rising. Many factory line workers
wake up at 4:30 am every day, because their shift starts at 6:00 am, and
somehow that does not make them billionaires.

~~~
matwood
Getting up early is a sign of discipline, but it's only a start. It's a
mentality of going after every day with a sense of urgency.

Obviously not everyone can become billionaires, but most people can better
themselves by adding more discipline to their lives.

~~~
randomsearch
Getting up early - before you’ve had a full sleep window - is a sign of
idiocy, not discipline. Those people are damaging their health and will
underperform at work, even if they don’t realise it.

Read “why we sleep”.

~~~
matwood
Where did I say not to get enough sleep?

------
randomsearch
Anyone who thinks cutting down on sleep is a good idea should read “why we
sleep”.

Don’t do it. You’ll be less effective at work and you’ll seriously damage your
health. Fact.

------
wffurr
[http://archive.is/TtLIn](http://archive.is/TtLIn) non-paywall link

------
harry8
It's not an exact analogy but if you start with the idea of "Characteristics
of lottery winners." As the base and make it entirely up to the author to show
with evidence that their content is actually better than that when they
discuss CEOs, you'll avoid a bunch of total BS.

------
amai
Related to the topic I can recommend the book Hansen: Great at Work
([https://www.amazon.com/Great-Work-Performers-Less-
Achieve/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Work-Performers-Less-
Achieve/dp/1501179519)). It is probably the first statistical analysis on what
makes people really successful at work.

~~~
FabHK
I'd recommend _Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.
(2016)_ by economist Robert H. Frank. He details how much of success is luck.

Pertinent xkcd, _Survivorship Bias:_

[https://xkcd.com/1827/](https://xkcd.com/1827/)

------
lbriner
Rsing at 4:00am is more likely to either be the symptom of someone addicted to
their work above all else but it also probably shows the fragility of life at
the top! If you were Tim Cook, what would you do next in a company with
billions of spare cash to keep the investors away from your door and without
losing focus?

I don't think I would sleep if that was me!

~~~
sgillen
Could also just be a circadian rythm thing. I’m sure there are many otherwise
normal people who’s biological clock would prefer to sleep early and wake up
at 4.

------
rconti
So the article starts out by saying that you won't be successful just by
emulating Tim Cook (rises early) or Jeff Bezos (putters in the morning).

Shouldn't the author have just ended it there by concluding that neither one
of these habits is necessary in order to be successful, rather than going on
complaining?

~~~
skrebbel
Yes, but the Economist probably pays them for a certain minimum length.

------
scottmcleod
Uhh this article is useless click bait.

------
exabrial
I wouldn't call Tim Cook an effective manager though. He centralizes decisions
on himself and had been turning Apple's reputation and Halo-effect into cash
rather than innovation.

~~~
briandear
Have you ever worked for Apple? What you see and reality aren’t always the
same.

As far as innovation, have you used Apple Watch? Have you used CoreML? ARkit?
Has any other company shipped a 7nm chip? Do you know the products in the
pipeline?

It’s pretty easy to snipe when news reports are your only source. It isn’t
like Tim Cook publishes meeting minutes or Craig F or Eddy Cue are sitting
around discussing Tim’s management style.

iPhone or iPad wouldn’t have been possible without Tim because he created
systems to actually produce and ship the thing. Look at the efficiency of
Apple’s supply chain — nobody else can come close. That success is the very
definition of “effective manager.”

If we want to talk of inept managers, we would have plenty from which to
choose, but Cook isn’t one of them.

~~~
waivek
Are there any resources that speak about Apple's supply chain? I'd love to
learn more.

------
keyle
Are articles like these even worth writing still? We're many years out of this
type of self/help gluttony now, aren't we?

~~~
toofy
I thought we were as well, but here we are :/

------
shay_ker
CEO biographies are interesting just like any other biography, I suppose. But
never once have I heard/read, "I read this other CEO's biography and decided
to copy their habits, and that was my secret."

~~~
dkarl
You do read, "My success happened because of an inspirational encounter with
this other revered CEO (whose own book was a best-seller, hint hint)" but
that's such compelling marketing that I wouldn't bet on there being any
reality behind it.

