Do Nothing! [Book]
Book Overview: According to J. Keith Murnighan, Great leaders don’t do anything—except think, make key decisions, help people do their jobs better, and add a touch of organizational control to make sure the final recipes come out okay. In sharp contrast, most leaders are too busy actually working to do these things—and their teams suffer as a result. Do Nothing!’s practical strategies and true stories will show you how to set high expectations for your team and watch it rise to the challenge. It will help you establish a healthier culture by trusting people more than they expect to be trusted. And it will help you overcome your natural tendencies toward micromanagement so you can let people do their jobs—even when you know you could do their jobs better.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct. It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly. Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.” ~ David McCullough
“The value of life can be measured by how many times your soul has been deeply stirred.”
Soichiro Honda (via Do Nothing!)
“You shouldn’t focus on outcomes so much. Focus instead on doing things right, on the best possible process, and on paying attention to what you can do rather than to what you can’t control.”
J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!
How Little Actions Can Change Lives — A Short Story About Bullying
Excerpt: This story is about Kyle—a high school valedictorian who gave a speech about a bullying incident and how one small action changed his life.
Read More »How Little Actions Can Change Lives — A Short Story About Bullying
“‘People don’t know how much you know until they know how much you care about them.’ You could be the world’s greatest expert on something but if the people you work with don’t know that you care about them, they won’t listen to you much.”
J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!
“It is up to you as the leader to make sure that your team members feel safe. You must bend over backwards to make this happen, because team members know that their leaders are always evaluating them and they have perfectly natural fears about the outcome of those evaluations. You must work doubly hard to help them feel safe: you must treat your team members’ questions and observations as if you love hearing each and every one of them and you must entertain their ideas and even invite them to disagree with you. You must make it eminently clear that you want them to participate, to question, to comment, and to disagree – and you need to reinforce them when they do.”
J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!
“Stated succinctly, partial trust sucks. When we know we have been trusted only partially, we naturally wonder, ‘Why didn’t he trust me more?’ This natural question reduces our motivation to reciprocate and leads to less long-term commitment to a leader, to a team, and to an organization. Partial trust sucks in many ways: it is the reverse of flattery and respect and it stimulates lousy outcomes, for everyone.”
J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!
“Leaders need to keep a singular focus, each and every day, on their ultimate goals; they need to keep them at the front of their minds as they choose their actions and strategies. This seems so obvious but, at the same time, incredibly busy days when people are constantly asking for your attention make it easy to lose a central, goal-oriented focus. Thus, even something as simple as putting a Post-it note that describes your ultimate goals on the corner of your computer screen can help you keep focused and slow you down so that you can facilitate and orchestrate your team’s actions directly toward your ultimate goal.”
J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!
“Not only do we often find what we are looking for in people, we sometimes create what we are looking for in people.”
J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!