Autocratic: similar, but with all goals dictated by the CEO.

Bureaucratic: everything spelt out & thick layers of middle management.

Engineering: very technical, with few stars.

Star: elite hirings and lots of autonomy.

Company cultures fall into 5 categories:.

Creating mental models helps us predict what might happen and cope better – having a hypothesis about how things work reduces surprises.

Psychological safety – this is a shared belief that the group is a safe place for taking risks – the opposite of a blame culture.

Teams need to believe that their work is important to feel their work is personally meaningful clear goals and defined roles to know they can depend on each other and….

A little disturbance is the best way to get creative results – not too much, not too little.

People who take notes on laptops generate twice as many notes as those who write things down, but the hand writers score twice as well in subsequent tests because they absorb and remember more.

Always ask why you are doing something.Cognitive tunnelling causes people to become overly focused on whatever is directly in front of them, rather than what really matters.The most successful people have an internal locus of control – a belief they can influence their destiny through their choices.Follow the engineering design process: define the dilemma collect data brainstorm solutions debate approaches experiment.Inability to do so is called information blindness. This is best achieved by disfluency – engaging thoroughly with it, which is harder at first. Absorbing data: when encountering new information, force yourself to do something with it. Innovators are actually intellectual middlemen.)Ĩ. Innovation: recombine old and new ideas (90% of the most creative ideas include ideas previously mentioned somewhere else – from a database of 17.9m manuscripts. Decision-making: envision multiple futures to plan aheadħ. Managing others: push decision making to whoever is closest to problemsĦ. Goal setting: choose stretching ambitions and break down into sub goalsĥ. Focus: envision what will happen and plan for thatĤ. Motivation: make choices that put you in controlģ. There are eight main reasons why good companies and people get things done:ġ. This is all about the secrets of being productive.It is possible to work smarter, faster and better by improving motivation, goals, team dynamics, decision-making, and the assimilation of data.

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg