12/16/2020 Bring Your Brain to Work | Book Summary | Accel5

Book Summary
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Bring Your Brain to Work

Using Cognitive Science to Get a Job, Do It Well, and Advance Your Career

Source: Harvard Business School Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-63369-611-2

©2019 by Art Markman

Adapted by permission of
Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

Estimated reading time of book: 4–5 hours 

Key Concepts
Cognitive science offers important lessons that can help you succeed in every phase of your
career, including:

Getting a job. Look for roles that align with your values instead of your passions. Think
like a recruiter, and put in the work that it takes to apply, earn an interview, and receive
an offer that will set you on your path.
Succeeding at work. Advance your career by producing results and exceeding
expectations. Devote time to lling gaps in your knowledge, mastering your
communication skills, and leading others effectively to drive toward your desired
outcomes.
Managing your career. Commit to studying your career path and determining if you’re on
the right course. Assess your options for moving away from your organization, moving up
the corporate ladder, or moving on to a different role if you feel dissatis ed with your
progress.

Introduction

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In Bring Your Brain to Work, Art Markman demonstrates how cognitive science can play a
tremendous role in your growth, advancement, and success at work. Cognitive science concepts
can help you understand yourself and how the people around you think, motivate, and act. By
learning to tap into your motivational, social, and cognitive mental systems, you’ll gain insight
that will help you to have greater in uence at work, make better decisions, and deal with stress
more productively. Markman’s stories, ideas, and insights will help you put your brain to work
and make your career path more productive, meaningful, and enjoyable.

The Path to Success Runs through Cognitive Science

Through your formal education, you may have gained technical skills, critical thinking abilities,
and sound strategies for communication, but you probably didn’t learn how to excel in the
workplace. Few education programs teach the core competencies you need to thrive at work,
such as navigating through contentious work situations, overcoming missteps, and connecting
with your colleagues, managers, and clients.

Cognitive science, or the study of the mind and brain, can help you to master these concepts. It
makes linkages in concepts from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, computer science,
and philosophy to form new insights that can help you understand how you and the people who
surround you think, feel, and react to situations. You may use cognitive science to nd practical
implications for how you should live and work, especially as you strive to interact, motivate, avoid
missteps, and recover faster and more adeptly from mistakes. Mastery of these topics can help
you to propel your career forward, especially as you learn to apply the right kinds of effort to
optimize your motivational, social, and cognitive brains.

Part One: Getting a Job

Finding Opportunities You’ll Value
Your passions may direct you to meaningful work, but they can also keep you from considering
roles that will spark your interest and excitement. Instead of allowing your rst impressions of a
job or eld to disqualify your options, try looking for roles that align with your values and offer
opportunities to serve a larger mission.

Your values will develop over time as you take part in your cultural surroundings, examine your
beliefs, and assess what’s most important to you. Clarify them by taking inventory of various
values de nitions and observing how you react to your choices and those of others.

Applying and Interviewing

Once you’ve discovered opportunities worth pursuing, you’ll need to begin the application
process. Cognitive science can help you through this challenging phase. The key is to think like
recruiters and position yourself in ways that will impress them.

Start by tailoring your résumé to t the job to which you’re applying. First impressions are
important, so be sure to use modern, professional formatting styles and clear, concise language.
Tailor your verbiage to the language of the job posting, the organization’s purpose, and its
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overarching mission. Repeat the words that they use so that recruiters not only identify your
ability to meet the requirements of the position but also process the information that you share
in a style that’s uent to them. Be sure to make your strengths clear, substantiate your claims,
and use words that will help them understand the signi cance of your achievements.

Interviews require additional work, forethought, and preparation. Use the time allotted in your
interview to talk about your skills, reveal your core personality traits, and show what you’ll be like
to work with. These elements will help you demonstrate how you’ll be a good t for the
organization. It’s equally important that you make sure that the organization is a good t for you.
Research the company and role before your interview, bring along a list of questions, and make
notes during the meeting that will help you to evaluate how you feel afterward.

At the conclusion of the interview, be sure to thank the recruiters for their time. Send individual
emails expressing your excitement about the opportunity to keep the lines of communication
open.

From the Offer to the Decision

If you’re offered the job, you’ll need to engage your cognitive brain and prepare for negotiation.
Consider all of the elements of the compensation package that are important to you. For
instance, salary, vacation time, and bene t discussions may be critical, but you should also think
about the work schedule, the of ce space, and the career development options that will be
available to you in the role. Take time to research typical compensation packages for people in
similar roles. Talk to people in the industry who may provide valuable information that will
strengthen your position in negotiations.

Enter into negotiations with a determination to engage in joint problem solving instead of trying
to win. Disclose information that can help you to achieve your goals. You may nd that the
employer can’t give you exactly what you want, but if you’re both open in your communications
and honest about your intended outcome, then you may nd another solution that’s equally
favorable.

Part Two: Succeeding at Work

Learning
Once you’ve started your new role, you’ll need to focus on doing it as well as possible. Determine
who you need to connect with to attain the resources, information, and assistance that you’ll
need to do the work. Assess how you’ll accomplish your goals and the ways that things work in
your given domain.

You’ll likely nd gaps in your knowledge that you’ll need to ll in order to succeed. Be strategic
about your learning by:

Using the Internet, podcasts, and audiobooks to learn about tasks and concepts.
Talking to colleagues to learn how things work in the organization
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Asking your manager for suggestions on how to build the knowledge that’s necessary to
succeed.
Finding mentors with the skills and knowledge you’d like to have who can coach, teach,
and guide you and connect you with others.
Looking for formal training opportunities both within and outside of the organization.

Communicating
Succeed at work by mastering the art of communication. In your role, you’ll likely be sharing
information verbally and through mediums like email and instant messaging. It’s important that
you know how to navigate each modality so you can boost the effectiveness of your
conversations and minimize potential problems. The following tips can help you engage with
others:

Be mindful of the potential for misunderstanding or misinterpretation of your written

messages. Keep emails and text messages clear and simple, and opt for in-person
conversations when you need to gauge your audience’s understanding or provide
clari cation.
Opt for phone conversations or video conferencing when communicating with people in
other locations. These mediums will help you to hear the content of important messages
as well as others’ tone of voice, which can provide useful clues about their uncertainty,
interest, sarcasm, or boredom in the conversation.
Excel at leading or participating in meetings by making sure that your contributions add
value, move the conversation forward, and are on topic.
Don’t avoid dif cult conversations. State necessary news directly and be as constructive
as possible.

Producing
Strive to exceed expectations. Go beyond the potential that your employers see in you and make
continual progress toward your goals.

Exceeding expectations can be dif cult, especially when you feel overworked or overloaded by
endless meetings, emails, phone calls, and reports. Be vigilant about ensuring that your tasks
add up to a meaningful contribution to your business. Take time each year to assess your work in
relation to the contributions that you’d hoped to make. Flag the contributions that you fail to
make, and decide whether they’re still a priority for you. If they are, try reworking your daily
routine to allow more time for achieving them.

One of the ways that you can make time for meaningful work is by maximizing your daily
productivity. Find ways to work around the barriers that limit your success by:

Taking care of your brain and body.

Making smart to-do lists that include time estimates to complete the work.
EnglishCommitting to taking time away from work to recharge.

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Insulating yourself from colleagues with negative tendencies.

Building a supportive team that can help you accomplish your goals.

Leading
As your career progresses, you may nd opportunities to manage and lead others. Succeed in
this realm by learning to create a vision, motivating people to engage in shared goals, and
putting plans in place to help your team realize the vision. Master the following skills so you can
lead others effectively:

Delegate tasks. Build trust in your team members by helping them to grow their abilities.
Assign meaningful tasks to them as they demonstrate competency.
Think critically and decisively. Strive to make clear, informed decisions. Provide
supporting rationale to your team members so that they understand the kinds of
requests that you’ll support.
Take responsibility. Use your elevated position to broadcast your team’s
accomplishments. Garner your team’s loyalty and show your managers that you have
what it takes to lead and develop new talent.
Communicate effectively. Learn to motivate your team and help them through times of
uncertainty. These two skill sets will help you to boost their productivity, minimize their
stress, and build their trust in you.
Foster collaboration. Make your team feel like a family instead of a collection of
strangers. Familial groups are more trusting of one another and more eager to make
broad contributions to the mission.
Be ethical. Be mindful that the procedures you set to reach your ideals may lead to
suboptimal outcomes. Think critically about those dilemmas to drive better outcomes.

Part Three: Managing Your Career

Move Away, Move On, or Move Up
Every year, you should evaluate your professional life and how it aligns with the aspirations
you’ve set. Try to determine whether you’re in the right place or are ready to move to a new path,
whether you’re satis ed with your organization or are ready to move on, and whether you’re
comfortable in your current role or are ready to move up. Important considerations include:

Your lifestyle. Consider your level of satisfaction in how your work ties into the rest of
your life and whether you’re getting the right work-life balance.
Your contribution. Think about whether your current role is allowing you to make
progress toward the work you had hoped to accomplish.
Your process. Assess your resiliency to the grind of your work tasks and whether you’ll be
able to endure those tasks for a longer period of time.

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Your time. Determine if you’re willing to devote more time to work, which may be a
requirement of any promotion or advancement that you consider.
Your knowledge of other roles in your rm. Consider whether there are other positions in
your organization that you’d like to grow into.

Your Career
You’ve probably set an ideal for your career that includes a sequence of promotions, salary goals,
opportunities for in uence, and autonomy, and it’s likely that you’re judging the goodness of
your path by how well it aligns with that ideal. Your career won’t necessarily match your ideal, but
it should still be excellent for you. Strive to maximize your satisfaction with it by minimizing
social- and self-comparisons, staying exible, navigating through setbacks, and building good
relationships with the people around you.

About the Author

Art Markman
is the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University
of Texas at Austin, where he’s also the executive director of the IC2 Institute. He’s the author of
several acclaimed books, including Smart Thinking: Three Essential Keys to Solve Problems,
Innovate, and Get Things Done, and is co-host of the popular radio show and podcast Two Guys
on Your Head (@2GoYH) on KUT radio in Austin.

Click Here to Purchase the Book

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