Narrator: In the small town of Newcomb, New York, a community was facing a slow, silent death. Its local school, once the town's vibrant heart, was withering away. Enrollment had dwindled from 350 students to just 57, and the school board was considering the unthinkable: closing its doors for good. This decline was seen as an inevitable reality for many rural towns. But the new superintendent, Skip Hults, refused to accept it. He paused and asked a different kind of question, one that led him to an unconventional idea: what if he could save the school by bringing the world to Newcomb? He launched an international student program, and over the next five years, the school welcomed students from 25 different nations, reversing a forty-year decline and revitalizing the entire community.

This story of turning an accepted problem into a celebrated solution lies at the core of David Sturt's book, Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love. Based on a massive study of 1.7 million cases of award-winning work, the book reveals that making an extraordinary impact is not the domain of geniuses or executives alone. Instead, it is the result of a specific mindset and a set of five learnable skills that anyone can apply to make a difference that truly matters.

Narrator: The foundation of great work begins with a crucial mental shift. It’s the move from seeing a job as a list of tasks to be completed to viewing it as a platform for making a meaningful impact. This concept, which researchers call "job crafting," is about expanding the boundaries of a role to serve others in a beneficial way.

A powerful illustration of this is the story of Moses, a janitor in a Philadelphia hospital. To most, his job was simple: clean rooms and empty trash. But Moses saw his role differently. He worked on a floor with critically ill children, including a young boy named McKay who was recovering from a difficult heart surgery. McKay’s parents, Mindi and Matt, were exhausted and on edge, especially after other custodians had startled their son with loud, abrupt cleaning. One morning, Moses appeared at the door. Instead of just doing his tasks, he stood at the foot of McKay’s bed and introduced himself, speaking softly about sunshine and making things better. He reframed his role from a cleaner to a member of the healing team. His twice-daily visits became a source of comfort and hope for the family, a small but profound difference that they would never forget. Moses understood that his work wasn't just about sanitation; it was about creating an environment of care.

Narrator: A common belief is that good is the enemy of great, and that true innovation requires a blank slate. The research in Great Work argues the opposite: good is the foundation of great, and constraints are often the catalysts for true creativity. Rather than being obstacles, limitations force people to think differently and find ingenious solutions.

This principle is famously demonstrated by the author Dr. Seuss. In the 1950s, his publisher challenged him to write a children's book using a restrictive list of only 225 words that every six-year-old should know. The goal was to create something more engaging than the dull "Dick and Jane" readers of the era. Dr. Seuss spent over a year wrestling with this severe limitation, a constraint that could have easily stifled creativity. Instead, it forced him to innovate. The result was The Cat in the Hat, a book that revolutionized children's literature. He later took on an even more extreme challenge from his publisher: write a book using only 50 unique words. That constraint gave birth to another classic, Green Eggs and Ham. Dr. Seuss didn't succeed in spite of his constraints; he succeeded because of them.

Narrator: The first skill of a difference-maker is to pause before acting and ask the right question. Instead of simply asking "How do I complete this task?", they ask, "What would people love?" This shift in focus from mere execution to creating genuine value is what elevates work from good to great.

This was the question that led to the invention of the cell phone. In the early 1970s, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper was tasked with developing the next-generation car phone. The accepted wisdom was that people wanted to be reachable in their cars. But Cooper paused and asked a more fundamental question. He realized people don't want to talk to a place—a house, an office, or a car. They want to talk to a person. This led him to ask, "Why is it that when I want to call a person, I have to call a place?" That question reframed the entire problem. Instead of improving the car phone, he and his team developed the world's first handheld cellular telephone, an invention that completely removed the car from the equation and transformed how the world communicates.

Narrator: Great ideas rarely come from sitting in a conference room. The second skill of a difference-maker is to go out and see for themselves. By directly observing how people interact with products, services, and processes, they can uncover hidden needs and opportunities that others miss.

The design firm IDEO is a master of this practice. When they were hired to redesign a baby stroller, they didn't start with brainstorming sessions. Instead, the design team went to parks and malls to watch parents in the real world. They observed them struggling to fold strollers with one hand while holding a baby in the other. They saw parents frustrated by a lack of storage and wheels that got stuck. By seeing these problems firsthand, they were able to design a new stroller with one-handed folding, bigger wheels, and more storage. These weren't features parents had explicitly asked for; they were solutions to problems IDEO’s team saw with their own eyes.

Narrator: People naturally rely on a small inner circle of trusted colleagues and friends. While valuable, this inner circle often shares the same assumptions. The third skill of a difference-maker is to intentionally talk to their "outer circle"—people with different backgrounds, expertise, and perspectives. These conversations provide objectivity and spark novel connections.

The creation of Kiva.org, the world's first micro-lending website, is a testament to this principle. When founders Jessica and Matt had the initial idea to connect lenders with entrepreneurs in developing countries, they embarked on a journey of conversations. They talked to Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate who pioneered microcredit. They spoke with a skeptical CEO who pointed out scalability problems. They even called an agent at the SEC to navigate legal hurdles. Each conversation, especially with those in their outer circle, provided a crucial piece of the puzzle, helping them refine their model, overcome obstacles, and build a platform that has since facilitated billions of dollars in loans.

Narrator: The fourth skill of a difference-maker is to experiment with ideas like a chef in a kitchen, a process the book calls "improving the mix." This involves adding new elements, removing what doesn't work, and constantly checking to see how the pieces fit together to create a better whole.

One of the most famous examples of this is James Dyson's invention of the bagless vacuum cleaner. Frustrated with his vacuum losing suction as the bag filled with dust, he had a simple but radical idea: what if he removed the bag entirely? Inspired by the industrial cyclones he saw at a local sawmill, he spent years creating over 5,000 prototypes. His innovation wasn't about adding a new feature; it was about removing a fundamental component that everyone else in the industry took for granted. By removing the bag, he solved the core problem of lost suction and created a product that revolutionized a century-old industry.

Narrator: The final skill is about follow-through. Great work isn't finished when a project is launched; it's finished when it has made a positive impact. This requires a "growth mindset"—the ability to learn from feedback, adapt to failures, and pivot when necessary.

The story of Instagram is a perfect example. Its founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, originally created a complex location-sharing app called Burbn. But when they released it, they noticed users ignored most of its features. However, people were unexpectedly drawn to one small part of the app: its photo-sharing and filters. Instead of stubbornly sticking to their original vision for Burbn, they listened to what their users loved. They scrapped the old app and focused entirely on building a simple, elegant photo-sharing experience. That pivot resulted in Instagram, an app that was acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars just a short time later. They succeeded because they were willing to adapt their work until it was something people truly loved.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Great Work is that making an extraordinary difference is a choice, not a trait. It is an accessible and repeatable process available to anyone willing to move beyond simply completing tasks. The journey is not about waiting for a stroke of genius but about deliberately applying a set of skills: asking what people would love, seeing the world with fresh eyes, talking to those outside your bubble, experimenting with the mix of ideas, and adapting until you've delivered a difference.

The book concludes with the story of climber Todd Skinner, who, when faced with the impossible ascent of Trango Tower, said that the improvement needed to reach the summit can only be gained on the way to the summit. This serves as a powerful final thought. You can't prepare for every challenge in advance; you learn by doing. The ultimate challenge, then, is to stop waiting until every question is answered and to "get on the wall"—to start your own project, big or small, and begin the journey of making a difference people love.