With the success of his new book, How to Be a Star at Work: Nine Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed, it seems that Robert Kelley is all over the place. He's been interviewed by everyone from the New York Times and the Washington Post to Good Morning America and People magazine.

An adjunct professor of organizational behavior and theory at Carnegie Mellon University, and armed with a PhD and two previous successful books, Kelley is no stranger to success. That's not to say that it came easily. Ironically, the very project that led him to write How to Be a Star at Work did not initially seem to be successful at all.

Kelley and a small group of researchers had been assigned the task of identifying the common characteristics of a company's "star" workers. Their goal was to work those attributes into a recipe for everyone in the company. In other words, learn from the best and pass it on to the rest to increase overall productivity.

After four years of research, he had to stand in front of the people who hired him at Bell Labs and confess that the results of his study were inconclusive. Kelley was surprised: the people in the meeting took the news fairly well.

"They did not give up," he recalls. "Because of the genuine interest in bettering the company, Bell Labs took my report and began asking questions that eventually enabled us to get on the correct path. You might say that from the ashes of that meeting arose the Phoenix of success."

The results of Kelley's second run at the problem were surprising -- and quite encouraging. "After six more years, in essence, what we discovered was that star workers are made, not born," Kelley says. "Contrary to popular belief, stars are not workaholics. It's not true that they work longer hours to get ahead. In fact, stars tend to work less than their co-workers."

Kelley has also come to the conclusion that exceptionally productive workers are no more intelligent than their peers. "On average, their co-workers were just as intelligent. We also found that there were no special personality traits for star workers -- some were shy, some outgoing, some neat, some messy."

Kelley found that all of the stars did share nine strategies which he defines as: initiative, networking, self-management, perspective, "followership," leadership, teamwork, organizational savvy, and show-and-tell. In the workplace, stars set themselves apart using all nine of the strategies, which enables them to work smarter and faster than others.

"Co-workers and bosses know there is 'white space' work that is not assigned. Stars take the initiative in the white spaces of unassigned work and excel at it, but by the same token they also tend to avoid make-work jobs. Stars spend less time on teams and all of them have a very good ability to keep their eye on the bottom line."

To the unconvinced, Kelley offers the following example: "Take, for instance, two reporters. The star reporter will have excellent sources and better connections that enable him to get the story right the first time. The other reporter might not have the same people to rely on in his network, so he spends more time checking his sources for accuracy. The result is that the star might get his story in by 10 a.m., whereas the other reporter might finish his story by 3 in the afternoon. The big savings comes in the form of time. The star reporter may cover two-and-a-half or three stories in a day, while the other may cover only one."

When asked to give an example of a historic figure that utilized the nine strategies, Kelley responds, "Leonardo da Vinci, Madame Curie, or perhaps Freud. Freud built a very good network; the level of his correspondence was phenomenal. He was interested in multiple perspectives and ranged widely in his reading and literature."

However, he warns, "There is a big difference between historical figures and today, because business is set up so differently." This raises the question, how can individuals manning the workforce today apply Kelley's research to their own career?

According to Kelley, the self-help tapes probably aren't as useful for motivating workers as some would argue. "Most training programs ask people to change themselves, to become a certain prototype. Well, no one wants to be a clone of someone else."

Instead, Kelley suggests that workers make the most of their own assets. "The key is to be mentored early on to a star you can identify with. For instance, if you are not a neat person and have never had a tidy desk a day in your life, pattern yourself after a top producer with a messy desk."

In short, don't fight nature. Kelley says, "If someone realizes that they are perhaps a bit shy, they should recognize that and say, 'Well, I'll do...[networking] by computer rather than on the phone.' Both are successful methods of networking and accomplish the same end."

Kelley has tried to provide a success strategy that takes reality and common sense into consideration. Far from elitist, Kelley proposes, "People come with unique talents. Some talents are very unique. However, it is just not true that certain people have an innate ability to do better. True, stars are born with a lot, but so is everybody else."

Kelley has concluded that there simply is no recipe to success. "It is like a buffet -- you have to have certain essentials. However, because people can pick and choose from something, everyone builds their own unique combination."

 

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