Extreme Productivity - Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours

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FOCUS ON THE FINAL PRODUCT

I recently asked a researcher at Harvard Business School to evaluate the strategy of a Chinese insurance company that had purchased a Chinese bank. She thoroughly scoured several books and methodically searched hundreds of Internet pages to compile every detail about the company she could find. After a week, she presented me with a lengthy report on the history of the company, its management team, and its financial performance. But what did all that data mean in terms of the company’s strategy? She couldn’t answer—she was lost in a flood of information.

So I suggested that she stop researching and instead formulate a tentative set of conclusions about the Chinese company’s strategy. After taking some time to think, ...