My Takeaways From Amp It Up (Surprisingly Not About Hustle)
The book's title – Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity – sounds like it promotes "hustle culture". But it's actually about real execution, not just relentless physical effort.
One, to focus first on execution (before strategy) for three reasons.
- Reason 1: Because a great strategy without great execution is useless.
- Reason 2: Great execution is hard and rare, and therefore a competitive advantage.
- Reason 3: Once you know how to execute, you will become a better strategist (he says because “more clarity will lead you to make better decisions, with less random guessing”, but I’m not clear how better execution leads to more clarity)
Two, execution is not relentless physical effort. He doesn't define the 'steps' to great execution, but talked about:
- sequential (not parallel) execution,
- prioritizing hard,
- clarity of purpose (key to avoiding distractions),
- clarity of thought & putting analysis before solutions (part of the problem is intellectual laziness, he's not a fan of just trying things and throwing ideas against the wall).
Highly recommended. Link to Amazon.