Book SummaryDecoding Greatness, by Ron Friedman

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Decoding Greatness

What’s the secret to elite performance and creative innovation? According to performance expert Ron Friedman, it’s not about being talented or working hard—it’s about strategically learning from the greats in your field through the process of reverse engineering. In Decoding Greatness, Friedman argues that whether you’re an artist looking to hone your craft or an entrepreneur hunting for the next big business idea, the surest road to success is to find work you admire, take it apart to see how it’s made, and then create your own version of it. By doing so, he says, you’ll spark original ideas, improve your skills, and ultimately find creative success.

Friedman is a psychologist, consultant, speaker, and author who specializes in the psychology of workplace performance. His first book, The Best Place to Work, explores how leaders can boost innovation, productivity, and worker happiness. In Decoding Greatness, Friedman...

Decoding Greatness Summary Part 1: Steal From the Greats

Friedman argues that doing great work isn’t just about being talented or working hard—it’s about learning from the greats in your field by reverse engineering their creations. Reverse engineering is the process of analyzing and reproducing existing work in order to enhance your skills and expand your creativity. Friedman explains that while reverse engineering might feel derivative (since you’re borrowing from others), in the long term it actually makes you more creative because it builds your mental library of successful creative “recipes” and techniques.

(Shortform note: Though the individual ideas in your mental library might not be original (since you’ve acquired them by studying other people’s works), you may find that over time, you start combining these ideas in ways that are original. In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey argues that creativity is a matter of connecting disparate “chunks” of information stored in your brain. He suggests that the more high-quality information you learn, the better your chances of...

Decoding Greatness Summary Part 2: How to Get Good at What You Do

While reverse engineering can help you clear the initial hurdle of creativity—generating ideas—your next challenge will be building your skills enough to execute those ideas to their full potential. In this section, we’ll explore Friedman’s strategies for improving your implementation, including how to practice effectively, improve your performance by measuring it, and mitigate the risks you have to take to learn and grow.

Practice Effectively

If you want to get better at something, it makes sense that you’d need to practice. But Friedman argues that it’s easy to practice incorrectly or inefficiently—so to avoid wasting your time and effort, he offers several guidelines for effective practice.

Reflect on Your Practice

Friedman argues that the most important aspect of effective practice is self-reflection. Keep track of your goals, the practice routines and performance strategies you employ to reach those goals, and your actual performance. Regularly review each of these elements with an active, critical eye to determine which strategies or approaches worked well and which didn’t.

(Shortform note: In addition to helping you review your progress,...

Decoding Greatness Summary Part 3: Making the Most of Feedback and Expert Guidance

As you work to grow your skills and expand your creative output, it’s crucial to get feedback and guidance from others, but it’s not always easy to do so. Friedman cautions that much of the time, feedback from others isn’t that helpful, and similarly, even if you’re lucky enough to consult with an expert in your field, you’ll find that many experts make poor teachers and coaches.

In this section, we’ll explain Friedman’s reasoning for why that’s the case and share his strategies for getting everything you can from feedback and expert opinions.

How to Get Useful Feedback

Friedman argues that most feedback is unhelpful because it’s too vague, often taking the form of “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it,” and it can easily swing between extremes of supportiveness or criticism. Instead, Friedman argues that good feedback needs to be:

• Specific—reviewers should point to concrete strengths and weaknesses in the work.
• Actionable—the point of feedback is to help you improve, so it needs to point toward a plan for doing so.

To elicit helpful feedback, Friedman recommends that you **point your reviewer to specific aspects of the work that you’re concerned about or...

Shortform Exercise: Prepare to Practice Reverse Engineering

Friedman argues that reverse engineering and concerted practice can help you succeed in any field. In this exercise, consider how you could apply his techniques in your own life.

Name a field in which you’d like to improve your performance. This could be an aspect of your job or a creative or athletic pursuit. List some of the works or performances that you most admire in this field.