GHCL Digest OCTOBER 2018

Book Review
Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg
The book covers several core topics which are tied to productivity: motivation, teams, focus, goals,
managing others, decision making, innovation, and absorbing data. Duhigg devotes one of these per
chapter, and then he has an appendix which pulls the pieces together with examples from his life (and a
few others).
The writer Duhigg discusses each topic with relevant examples in each chapter. It is clear that his
experience as a journalist with the New York Times gives him superior skills to investigate and describe
extremely relevant and compelling examples for each topics.
Highlights
1. The chapter on motivation brought up some great insights that explain some of the success around
self-organizing teams and motivation:
“The trick, researchers say, is realizing that a prerequisite to motivation is believing we have authority
over our actions and surroundings. To motivate ourselves, we must feel like we are in control.”
2.Concept of group norms and psychological safety are fascinating topics in chapter 2. As Duhigg
unpacks information from Google about team structure and success, he revealed how the individuals
and structure of the team mattered less than how the team grew comfortable functioning on a daily
basis. “It was the norms, not the people, that made teams so smart. The right norms could raise the
collective intelligence of mediocre thinkers. The wrong norms could hobble a group made up of people
who, on their own, were all exceptionally bright.”
3.The chapter on managing others had an amazing story of the development of Sentinel, a data
connections tool used by the FBI, with agile and lean development techniques at a time when those
October 18