IN THIS SUMMARY Hundred Percenters aspire to achieve the extraordinary, and they give 100% in pursuit of greatness. In Hundred Percenters, Mark Murphy shows leaders how to take average people and unleash their potential. The ideal 100% Leader pushes his or her people to excel and builds a strong emotional connection with them, empowering them to maximize their capacities and experience deep fulfillment. The author’s firm, Leadership IQ, has distilled the critical success factors into a goal-setting methodology called HARD goals, which push people beyond their self-imposed restraints. HARD goals are Heartfelt (they exist to serve something bigger than ourselves), Animated (they are vividly described and presented), Required (they are critical to our continued existence), and Difficult (they will test every one of our limits). SUBSCRIBE TODAY http://www.bizsum.com/summaries/hundred-percenters

2. HUNDRED PERCENTERS Challenge Your Employees To Give It Their All And They’ll Give You Even More AUTHORS: Mark Murphy PUBLISHER: The McGraw-Hill Companies DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2008 213 pages

3. FEATURES OF THE BOOK The author’s firm, Leadership IQ, has conducted extensive research on what makes for greatness—what they call Hundred Percent performance . This book presents the principles they have discovered, practical strategies for implementing them, and examples of how to develop Hundred Percenters. Addressing leaders at all levels, Murphy begins with goal-setting and then discusses how to utilize constructive feedback and positive reinforcement.

4. THE BIG IDEA Hundred Percenters are those who aspire to achieve the extraordinary and push themselves to reach their full potential. Hundred Percent Leaders inspire greatness by challenging their people to excel and also connecting with them on an emotional level.

5. INTRODUCTION Most employees do a decent job at their work, but few are Hundred Percenters—those who give 100 percent in pursuit of greatness. Hundred Percenters aspire to achieve the extraordinary, and they push themselves to reach their potential and even surpass their limits. They are the ones who won World War II, created the polio vaccine, put a man on the moon, invented the iPod, X-Box, and Kindle, and accomplished the Human Genome Project.

6. SETTING HARD GOALS What leaders need is a plan that concentrates more on the content of the goals and less on the form. The author’s firm, Leadership IQ, has distilled the critical success factors into a goal-setting methodology called HARD goals, which push people beyond their self-imposed restraints. To be effective, HARD goals must be: Heartfelt : They exist to serve something bigger than the person. Animated : They are vividly described and presented. Required : They are critical to the person’s continued existence. Difficult : They will test every one of the person’s limits.

7. SETTING HARD GOALS Setting Heartfelt Goals While financial metrics have their place, people are more driven by a deep need to be doing something truly meaningful. Companies whose existential anchor is money (e.g., Enron) will never outperform a company whose existence is predicated on serving customers. For example, Google focuses on providing the best user experience possible. By concentrating on the customer, rather than immediate increases in shareholder value, Google has seen its value greatly increase over time.

8. SETTING HARD GOALS Setting Animated Goals For many reasons, people are not excited about their goals (for example, they are not challenging, meaningful, or vital to survival). One critical reason for goal apathy is that the goals sound sterile; they are not stimulating and invigorating. HARD goals are desire-filled, forcing people to push through their limitations and to focus on something bigger than themselves. They must also be inspirational, like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech.

9. SETTING HARD GOALS Setting Required Goals In order to get on board with the vision of a HARD goal and be willing to make the necessary sacrifices, people must be convinced of the benefits of going above and beyond. Leaders are ineffective when they use coercion to try to impose their agenda; they are far more effective if they can help employees feel dissatisfied with the status quo, see the necessity for change, and voluntarily buy in to the program. Employees need to know why they should sacrifice and strive.

10. SETTING HARD GOALS Setting Difficult Goals Studies have shown a positive, linear relationship between goal difficulty and performance; in other words, as the difficulty of a goal increased, performance also increased, provided that the goal was specific. Even being somewhat under-resourced can spur employees to acquire new aptitudes, find creative solutions to problems, and become more efficient in order to achieve their goals. Goals that are really impossible are demotivating.

15. REFUSING TO DEMOTIVATE AND STARTING TO MOTIVATE One of the reasons Hundred Percent Leaders are successful at getting employees to meet hard challenges is because they establish connections that inspire their people to aspire to greatness . They create an environment that is conducive to excelling, and they present solid evidence that being a Hundred Percenter is worth the extra effort, which motivates people to go above and beyond.

16. REACHING HUNDRED PERCENT PERFORMANCE WITHOUT AN ATTITUDE Knowing the importance of attitude should make leaders rethink the focus of their hiring practices. Without the right attitudes, a person is not Hundred Percenter material. However, it is possible to turn Talented Terrors around, although it can be very challenging. And leaders should do so, because Talented Terrors negatively impact the team, destroy leadership effectiveness, and even cause leaders to be fired. The author’s research found that while good attitudes are contagious, bad attitudes are even more so, making it imperative to deal with toxic attitudes before they become widespread.

17. APPLYING KEY INSIGHTS TO GET STARTED The work that Leadership IQ does with its clients to help them develop a Hundred Percenter culture varies according to the unique nature and needs of each organization, but businesses can adapt some basic principles for any situation. The author has distilled ten quick lessons that will reinforce some of the key insights from the book and provide basic steps for getting started: Lesson #1 : Leaders should make every goal HARD—From the CEO on down, everybody’s goals should be HARD; they should be reviewed and rewriten throughout the year.

18. APPLYING KEY INSIGHTS TO GET STARTED Lesson #2 : Leaders should integrate HARD goals into performance management by evaluating, rewarding, and coaching people using HARD goals. Lesson #3 : Businesses must measure whether they have a Hundred Percenter culture. A well-designed survey can communicate Hundred Percenter desires as well as providing useful data. Lesson #4 : Businesses should measure whether they have Hundred Percent Leaders.

19. APPLYING KEY INSIGHTS TO GET STARTED Lesson #5 : Leaders should be trained to be Hundred Percenters. Excellence in leadership does not just happen; it requires training. Lesson #6 : Leaders must understand everyone’s shoves and tugs by identifying the motivational drivers for each person, eliminating the demotivators, and increasing the forces that stimulate. Lesson #7 : Business leaders should reach for higher stages of accountability by giving plenty of real-time feedback to help employees move beyond denial, blame, excuses, and anxiety to accountability.

20. APPLYING KEY INSIGHTS TO GET STARTED Lesson #8 : Businesses can turn their Hundred Percenters into heroes by keeping the Hundred Percenters energized and using them as models for teaching others. Lesson #9 : Leaders should improve or remove their Talented Terrors; there is no such thing as a high performer with a bad attitude. Lesson #10 : Business can start wherever they can by doing something now, picking an area of critical importance, and getting started.

21. AVOIDING PROBLEMS WITH EMPLOYEE SURVEYS Employee surveys are powerful tools for understanding where an organization is on its 100-percent journey, but if they are designed or implemented incorrectly, their power can turn destructive. The author offers some of the best-practice discoveries he and his research team have made concerning employee surveys: Discovery #1 : Five-point scales do not work—In a company, the results are likely to be skewed or at best not very useful; a seven-point scale more accurately captures the full range of responses.

22. AVOIDING PROBLEMS WITH EMPLOYEE SURVEYS Discovery #2 : Every survey question implies a promise that something positive will be done about the answer; leaders should not set themselves up for failure by asking questions on a survey about problems that cannot be fixed. Discovery #3 : Managers should be trained about how to take action and given the tools needed to correct the issues identified in a survey.

23. AVOIDING PROBLEMS WITH EMPLOYEE SURVEYS Discovery #4 : Ten questions are not enough. Different employees are driven by radically different issues; it takes 25 to 30 questions to figure out what motivates them. Discovery #5 : Leaders should not aim for mediocrity. Instead, they should push people beyond their self-imposed limitations, helping them achieve great results and deep fulfillment. Discovery #6 : Leaders should respond to a survey within 28 days. If employees do not hear the results in a reasonable time, the leaders’ credibility will suffer. Leaders should let employees know that they value their responses and intend to act on them.

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