The Secret of the 10,000-Hour Rule
Steps to Extraordinary Performance

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Ok, ok, I guess it's really not that big a secret anymore. Having been mentioned extensively in the best-selling books Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin and in the new hit TV comedy series, Modern Family, it really is no longer a secret that extensive studies have shown it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated effort to become an expert performer in any field.

At the head of all this research is Dr. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University. There are books and then there are books. By far the single best book I've ever read on how to develop expert performers in any field is Development of Professional Expertise, edited by Anders Ericsson. Before you rush off to buy it, let me warn you. This book requires concentrated reading over an extended period of time. It is 491 pages and it is filled with detailed stories of how to develop expert performance in the military, education, medicine, fine arts, athletics, business, and several other areas of performance. If you are willing to put in the effort, this book can be an absolute game-changer in your career.

Sustain Thought-Filled Practice

Based on these three books as well as my own consulting work over the past 12 years, I have found that the absolute key to great performance can be summarized in three words: sustain thought-filled practice. Anders Ericsson calls this "deliberate practice," but I prefer "thought-filled practice" because it involves doing a simulation of the actual performance while surrounding that action with thinking.

The Six Steps of Thought-Filled Practice

1. Select the role you have passion and strengths for doing.
2. Clarify the five critical aspects of that role.
3. Create simulations of the actual performance that allow you to focus on improving one or more of the role's critical aspects.
4. Gain relevant feedback from a skilled observer on the simulated performance in a timely manner.
5. Consider the feedback and make adjustments.
6. Repeat steps three to five for 10,000 hours.

Each step is critically important. If you want to be an extraordinary performer, or you want to develop extraordinary performers, these are THE SIX CRITICAL STEPS TO EXPERT PERFORMANCE. These steps apply for every role regardless of the industry or size of the organization. Study them one at a time, and then apply them. What follows is a more in-depth explanation of each step.

Select the Role You Have Passion and Strengths for Doing

You don't very often get to choose the job you want. If you want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you don't get to walk in and just take over. However, you do get to choose the roles you turn down. As you move through your career be careful to select roles that you have passion for doing and strengths for doing well. If there is a certain role you ultimately want to be in, work to enhance your skills, knowledge, and experience in order to increase your chances of getting it.

Clarify the Five Critical Aspects of that Role

...and now the hard work begins.

You are in a role that you have passion and strengths for doing over the long term. You've already got the job so you don't have to worry about having what it takes to get the job. You already have it. It's decision time. Do you want to become an expert performer or something far below that level?

If extraordinary performance is your goal, then let's move forward.

Think about your role and gather input from other people who have been in this role with a particular focus on identifying the five most important aspects of the role. The work in identifying these five critical aspects will have a tremendous payoff down the road. Don't assume that you know what they are right away, and definitely don't assume that every person inside an organization has the same five critical aspects for his or her role.

The Score Takes Care of Itself is a marvelous new book by the late Bill Walsh, who was the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. He explained how he or one of his direct reports worked with every assistant coach, player, administrative assistant, and staff member to identify the critical aspects of the person's role. He wrote, "Here's one small example: After careful analysis, the assistant coaches identified thirty specific and separate physical skills - actions - that every offensive lineman needed to master in order to do his job at the highest level, everything from tackling to evasion, footwork to arm movement. Our coaches then created multiple drills for each one of those individual skills, which were then practiced relentlessly until their execution at the highest level was automatic - routine 'perfection.'"

Since the purpose of my professional life is to work with managers so they achieve great performances, I'm going to offer my thoughts on how sustaining thought-filled practice applies to them. However, this process also applies equally as well to every role imaginable.

I define a "business manager" as "a person who is responsible for the results on a P&L Statement." In this way the word "manager" applies to business owners, CEOs, executives, and managers. For the sake of an example, I've identified the five critical aspects of a business manager's role as:

1. Talent Management - attracting, hiring, developing and retaining the people necessary to make the organization successful.
2. Leadership - influencing how other people think in ways that improve sustainable results both for the organization and the people in it.
3. Establishing a strategy - clarifying the direction his or her organization is going in.
4. Defining and communicating a plan of action - defining who is responsible for getting certain things done.
5. Execution - ensuring that the planned items are executed with both focus and flexibility.

If you are a manager and feel there are other more critical aspects to your role than what I have listed, then go with yours. The key is to maintain discipline on which key aspects you are working to improve. Five is a very good limit to keep in mind. Within those five, there will be a wide variety of details that need to be focused on.

Reread the Bill Walsh example above. The assistant coaches found 30 specific actions that fit under the five or so critical aspects of being an offensive lineman. However, these offensive linemen didn't work on every aspect of football. They didn't work on passing the ball or running the ball. They focused on the details within the critical aspects of their position such as evading, footwork, arm movement, and tackling.

Create Simulations of the Actual performance that Allow You to Focus on Improving One or More of the Role's Critical Aspects

...and now the work intensifies.

If you want to improve your own performance, or the performance of other people, you need to create simulations of the actual performance that you, or the people you are developing, can do over and over again.

In many ways, this is the common-sense step. If you want to be a great pianist, obviously you need to practice an actual performance over and over again. Same is true in sports. I live in St. Louis which means I've seen Albert Pujols's entire nine-year major-league baseball career. He has the most perfect baseball swing I've ever seen. Guess what Albert Pujols does throughout both the off-season and the regular season. He works on his swing over and over and over again.

However, this is not so intuitively obvious for business managers. Business managers simply perform, don't they? They don't have time for simulations in order to figure out how to improve their performance, do they? They just have to jump into the fire of an important business moment and do their best, right? They don't have room in their busy schedules to break down their role into critical aspects and then work to improve the details of each critical aspect, correct?

If you want to master the five critical aspects of being a manager, then you need to practice talent management, leading, setting strategy, planning, and executing over and over and over again in a simulated environment. But how do you simulate real-world business activities? First, realize that an actual performance surrounded by thoughtful reflection can be a simulation for a future actual performance. Second, you can create "practice business situations" which allow you to improve your delivery of a real business situation.

Say you want to improve the effectiveness with which you influence other people. Here are a variety of ways you might attempt to influence these people: send an e-mail, leave a voicemail, create a podcast, give a speech to a large audience, provide face-to-face conversations, text message your thoughts, write a daily blog, and write a handwritten letter. Each of these can be a simulation of a leadership performance. Before you leave the voicemail, ask yourself what your objective is for the voicemail. Write down what you intend to achieve, why you want to achieve it, and how you will attempt to achieve it through the voicemail. After you leave the voicemail reflect on what happened. Did the voicemail elicit the response you hoped for? In what way was the voicemail effective, in what way was it not effective, and in what way could it have been more effective? Rather than just leaving the voicemail and moving on with your day, turn the act of leaving the voicemail into a simulation of an act of leadership. You do this by surrounding the act with thinking and reflection. In doing so, you can improve on the subtle aspects of leaving a voicemail. You can use this same approach with all of the other ways of influencing people.

Of course, you can practice writing and saying the voicemail without sending it to anyone. This is like the pianist practicing a song on the piano before giving it in an actual concert. You can record the voicemail and then listen to it to see if you believe it can impact the desired outcomes. Steve Jobs is famous for practicing his presentations over and over and over again in order to refine them to the point that they generate exactly what he hoped for. Gain Relevant Feedback from a Skilled Observer on the Simulated Performance in a Timely Manner

The problem with practicing on your own is you don't know what you don't know. You don't realize how fast you talk or how you fold your arms in a menacing way while you're trying to listen empathetically. You need someone outside of yourself who can give you honest feedback in a timely manner.

In the military this is called the "after-activity review." AARs are extremely important to improving performance among soldiers. The key is that people are willing to step up and be honest about what they saw and heard during the simulated military conflict. Without this intensely honest sharing of opinions, commanders and front-line fighting forces may simply not realize the mistakes they are making.

Search for people who will be honest with you and can do so in a skillful way that increases your chances of improving your performance. People who listen to your voicemails, read your e-mails, observe your body language, and give honest feedback are valuable. Carefully select people to gather insights from on even the minutest details of your performance as a leader.

Consider the Feedback and Make Adjustments

...and now it's time to let go of your ego.

You've asked people for their honest opinions of your performance. In some cases your boss gave you feedback without being asked for it. Your first reaction might be to ignore the input or to fight it and try to prove that it's wrong. If that's the case, then your second reaction had better be to consider the input. Considering input does not equal doing exactly what you're told to do. Considering input means exactly that. Consider what you've heard and decide what you will do with it. Will you implement exactly what you were told, will you tweak the advice a bit and apply the variation of the advice, or will you decide that this is something you have considered and have chosen not to do it that way?

My 10-year-old daughter, Sarah, and my eight-year-old son, Ben, take lessons from a wonderful piano teacher named Miss Kendria. She patiently listens to each of them play their practice piece, she offers suggestions on how they can each improve, and then each child has to decide how to incorporate her advice into playing the song the next time.

As a manager, I encourage you to do the same. You've created an environment for receiving insights from other people on the various activities you are doing to improve performance within the five critical aspects of your role. But if you don't consider the input then you have merely wasted a lot of time and energy.

After you make an adjustment, put this new approach through the process of thought-filled practice. Keep searching for what is working well and why it is working well, what is not working well and why it is not working well, and what might be even more effective.

Repeat Steps Three to Five for 10,000 Hours.

...and now for the step that separates the world-class performer from the mediocre.

So far nothing is too surprising. Identifying the smallest details of a performance and working to improve them by receiving honest input from a skilled observer is a process we've all used since we were children. It's how we learned to read and write and tie our shoes. We did something, someone watched and gave us feedback, we made adjustments, and we got better. It's not complicated.

The separation in performance level happens over time. A great deal of time as a matter of fact. As you repeat steps three through five over and over and over you slowly but surely begin to improve your performance as a manager in subtle ways. You may find a critical aspect of your role that is even more important than the five you started with. If that happens, focus on that aspect and let go of the least important aspect of the five you started with. Keep your list to the five most critical aspects of your role, keep stepping into simulations of the actual performance, keep seeking meaningful input in your after-activity reviews, keep considering the input you receive, keep deciding what you will do the same and what you will do differently going forward, and keep testing every adjustment you make to see if it makes you more effective.

The process is not sexy. It's actually fairly bland considering the enormous impact it can have on your career and your organization's results over the long term. Don't be fooled by its simplicity. The greatest challenge in becoming an expert performer is in applying the process of thought-filled practice over and over and over for 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours of thought-filled practice takes roughly ten to fourteen years. If you're maniacal, you might get there in six to nine years. No matter what the "sustain" part requires a long-term effort.

A Real-Life Example of Sustaining Thought-Filled Practice

Recently I had the opportunity to take Ben with me to watch the Missouri State Class 3 Boys Soccer Championship. This was the day after I finished the first draft of this article. I wanted him to see high school soccer played at a very, very high level. CBC High School won the championship, but more than that they put on the single greatest display of soccer I have ever seen at any level, including collegiate and professional soccer. The passing, receiving, dribbling, tackling, aggressiveness, intensity, movement without the ball, finishing, defending, attacking, and total team effort was at a level so high that it was literally like watching a world-class jazz ensemble performing for 80 minutes. The other team, which was an excellent team, never got a shot on goal, rarely made two passes in a row, and spent most of the game chasing the ball all over the field.

I sent a note to Terry Michler, the head soccer coach at CBC, congratulating him on the victory and on his extraordinary career. He wrote me back and said he enjoys what he does and that he still has a passion for learning how to be an even more effective coach. Then it dawned on me what this was really all about. Terry Michler personifies everything I'm trying to get across in this article. He has won six state championships, he has coached for 38 years, and he is the all-time winningest coach in the history of high school soccer in the United States with over 800 victories. And yet after all of that he said to me that he still has a passion for learning how to be more effective.

38 years, more wins than anyone else ever, and he still has a passion to improve as a coach! If you want to be an expert performer in any activity, the process is not complicated. It requires a life-time commitment to improving your expertise within the role you have the ability to do well and the passion to continually improve at. Terry Michler has proven what it takes to be an expert performer.

Ok, so it's not really a secret anymore, but I hope you have discovered the power of sustaining thought-filled practice.

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

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