CHOOSE THE PERSON WHO PROMOTES OTHERS
Tom Peters shares the story of an executive who was trying to decide which of two managers to promote.

He said that his method was simple: Look at the careers of all the people who used to work for each of the two managers. And then look at the careers of the people who used to work for those people …

PEOPLE WANT SAFETY FIRST
Safety is first. It’s impossible to grow, to connect, or to lead if we are under threat or feel the ground shifting beneath us.

Next come affiliation and status, an alternating dance of vaguely related emotions. Affiliation is being part of something, fitting in, being connected. And status is simply who eats lunch first. Our place in the order of things.

But the real desire is significance. To do something that matters. To be missed if we’re gone. The universal desire to achieve dignity and be seen.

We can establish a foundation of safety and then build a culture of affiliation and status, where forward motion is a benefit in itself—even more than the pay that’s on offer.

BECOMING SIGNIFICANT MEANS MAKING A CHANGE HAPPEN DESPITE THE RISKS
Becoming significant means making a change happen: impacting people or the world around us so they’re different than if we had never been here.

But to create change involves risk, the risk of living in possibility, and of the threat of failure (or success).

Instead of threats and scarcity, and instead of compliance and control, we have the opportunity to help people become significant.

Significant work involves tension, change, and the transitions of starting and finishing. What we’ve done will change what we do. What we do will change who we are. And the cycle continues.

When we’re seeking change, when we’re inventing the future, we don’t have something easy to measure, so we naturally seek reassurance.

It’s not comfortable to swim across a channel in Greenland, it’s not comfortable to care for a beehive, and it’s sure not comfortable to feed and clothe a toddler. But humans do these things all the time, without pay and without a boss, because they can. Because it’s significant.

Significance isn’t what we get …. It’s what we do for others.

LEADERSHIP REQUIRES IDENTIFYING TALENT AND GIVING UP CONTROL
The leader doesn’t have to be able to do every element of the project; they simply need to figure out how to assemble a team that does.

Jansen succeeds where others have failed by connecting her team, protecting them from politics, demanding rigorous, high-quality data, and establishing commitments and enrollment. Every vaccine she has worked on has faced cancellation when the results didn’t seem promising. Many of them ultimately failed. “When you’re really convinced about something and you have the intuition that you may be on the right track,” she wrote, “I think it’s really important to stick to your guns.”

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND GIVE AWAY CREDIT
Özlem Türeci and Ugur Sahin are mRNA pioneers, working at a company that wasn’t part of Pfizer. They knew when they reached out to Jansen that credit wasn’t going to be an issue, that collaboration was possible.

Taking responsibility is much more difficult than taking credit, but that’s the way forward.

IT'S TEAMWORK THAT CHANGES THE WORLD
We give too much credit to the solo genius inventor when what actually changes the world are groups of people connected around significant projects.

Agency always comes with responsibility.

TENSION IS NOT THE SAME AS STRESS
A kitchen run by a control freak might burn brighter for a bit, but it will inevitably burn out. Either the committed and skilled staff will find a kitchen that respects them, or they will succumb to micromanagement and eventually stop caring.

Tension is a countdown, a deadline, or a budget. Tension is the process of finding an answer to a riddle or the question that opens up a possibility.

But tension always accompanies change, and change is the hallmark of significance.

ALLOW OTHERS TO SHINE
When people feel seen and are given the chance to make a difference, they often do.

When we offer others a chance to shine, they’re more likely to connect, to enroll in the journey, and to join in the next chance they have to do so.

YOU CAN'T GET BETTER WITHOUT FEEDBACK
The feedback that actually matters is in the marketplace. If we make something that works for our customers, we get the chance to do it again.

Feedback—from the marketplace and from our coworkers—is the only way to get better.

Significance requires that leaders and the entire community create the conditions for better, and better comes from feedback.

SHOW THE CONFIDENCE TO FIND JOY EVEN IF YOUR TEAM MEMBERS LEAVE
We can say to our team, “Join us if it works for you, leave us when it doesn’t. And if you leave with more knowledge than when you came, it’s a symptom that we did well together.”

CHOOSE VALUES OVER PASSION
Passion is a fickle magnet: it pulls you toward your current interests. Values are a steady compass: they point you toward a future purpose.

CREATE A READING AND WRITING INSTEAD OF A MEETING CULTURE

If you were one of the many people who completed that week without meetings with a schedule you controlled and output you were proud of, would that be something you’d want to repeat?Would you want to be part of that culture of trust and connection?

The truth is simple: The meeting culture was designed to exert control and to simulate a shortcut on the difficult path to actual connection.

TO GO FAR GO TOGETHER
A significant organization is aligned in culture and in goals, and the result is that all of us end up getting further and faster than any of us could on our own.

No one built Nike or General Electric or Google from a singular plan. No one builds a great organization alone.

OPEN SOURCE IS MORE RESILIENT THAN CLOSED SOURCE
The open API lets us create a federation, an intentional system of mutual benefit that is far more resilient than a centrally controlled authority ever can be.

ALL THE BEST COMPANIES PIVOT
If we’re seeking to make change happen, then our job is to get from here to there. To find a path. To identify the next best thing to work on, describe an opportunity, and then make it real.

CULTURE IS...
Culture can be captured in a simple sentence: “People like us do things like this.” It’s the way things are around here.

It’s easy and practical to build a culture of management and compliance. It’s far more difficult to build one based on connection and affiliation.

FOUR STEPS OF WORKING TOGETHER
Simplify - Start with a problem, and make it as simple as possible.

Clarify - Then clarify the goal. This work you’re doing, the change you seek to make—who is it for and what is it for?

Triage - Triage is the work of figuring out what to work on next. As the essential gets done, the rest follows naturally.

Decide - Decide to move on. Decide to focus on the critical parts. Decide to ship the work.

LEADERS KEEP PROMISES
If you want to lead, you’ll need to be trusted. One way to do that is to make promises openly and consistently—and then keep them.

HIRE PEOPLE BASED ON THEIR WORK, NOT THEIR INTERVIEW
Instead of hiring based on the performance of interview skills, perhaps we can pay people to do a project with us. The best way to see how someone works is to work with them.

REAL SKILLS ARE HARD TO MEASURE BUT MATTER MOST
SELF-CONTROL—Once you’ve decided that something is important, are you able to persist in doing it, without letting distractions or bad habits get in the way? Doing things for the long run that you might not feel like doing in the short run.

PRODUCTIVITY—Are you skilled with your instrument? Are you able to use your insights and your commitment to actually move things forward? Getting nonvocational tasks done.

WISDOM—Have you learned things that are difficult to glean from a textbook or a manual? Experience is how we become adults.

PERCEPTION—Do you have the experience and the practice to see the world clearly? Seeing things before others have to point them out.

INFLUENCE—Have you developed the skills needed to persuade others to take action? Charisma is only one form of this skill.