Morten T. Hansen

"The Berkeley professor whose 5-year study of 5,000 workers found that top performers work smarter on a handful of things, not harder on everything."

Morten T. Hansen is a management professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and previously taught at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford Business School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, and began his career as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. Great at Work grew out of a five-year study of more than 5,000 managers and employees, designed to isolate which specific work practices actually separate top performers from everyone else, rather than relying on anecdote or intuition. Hansen previously co-authored Great by Choice with Jim Collins and wrote Collaboration, and was ranked among Thinkers50's top management thinkers for several consecutive years.

1 book featured·Management professor, UC Berkeley·Co-author, Great by Choice (with Jim Collins)
Great at Work Summary & Review: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers — Read SummaryBrowse All Books ↓

Books by Morten T. Hansen

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Key Ideas & Recurring Themes

Do less, then obsess

Top performers narrow their priorities to a tiny set and pour disproportionate effort into making just those excellent.

Redesign your work around value

Chasing more goals or busier schedules matters less than reshaping your role to create real value for others.

Match passion with purpose (P-Squared)

The best performers love what they do and see clearly how it helps others — either trait alone is not enough.

Notable Quotes

"The smart way to work is to first do less, then obsess."
— Great at Work
"The goal of collaboration isn't collaboration. It's better performance."
— Great at Work

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Book Author Morten T. Hansen