Michelle: Alright Mark, I have a book for you today. It's called Remarkable. What do you think it's about? Mark: Oh, I can guess. Let me see. Unleash your inner titan? Find your seven habits of hyper-effective sea-unicorns? Is there a chapter on the power of kale-infused vision boards? Michelle: (Laughs) You are so cynical. But you're not entirely wrong about the genre. However, what if I told you this book’s advice is the exact opposite? It argues you should rejoice in mediocrity, that you should never compete with your boss, and that most common wisdom is probably wrong. Mark: Okay, now I'm interested. That sounds less like a self-help book and more like a corporate survival manual written by a secret agent. What is this? Michelle: It's Remarkable: Proven Insights to Accelerate Your Career by David Kronfeld. And you're not far off with the secret agent vibe. Kronfeld is a legendary figure—a top management consultant at Booz Allen, a corporate exec, and the founder of a major venture capital firm. But what makes this book so potent is that it started as a collection of advice he was giving his own daughter as she began her career. It’s not abstract theory; it’s a father’s playbook for navigating the real, messy world of business. Mark: That's a great backstory. It grounds it. So it’s not just for CEOs, it's for people who actually have to work for a living. Michelle: Precisely. And his core idea, the one that ties everything together, is this concept of 'insightfulness.'

Mark: 'Insightfulness.' That's a word that can mean a lot of things. Is he talking about having a brilliant flash of genius in the shower? Michelle: Not at all. For Kronfeld, insight isn't some mystical gift. He defines it as a disciplined process of observing a situation, discerning its true nature, and challenging the 'common wisdom' that surrounds it. It's about seeing what's right in front of everyone but that they've stopped questioning. Mark: That sounds great in a book, but in reality, challenging common wisdom is often a fast track to being labeled 'difficult' or 'not a team player.' How does someone actually do that without getting ostracized? Michelle: That’s the perfect question, and he gives a fantastic, detailed example from his own life. It’s the story of how he basically invented the modern resume. Mark: The resume? I thought that was just a boring document you have to update every few years. Michelle: Well, back in the 1970s when Kronfeld was at Wharton Business School, resumes were a total mess. They were often two, three, even four pages long—dense blocks of text with no formatting. The career office gave students a strict set of rules: list your objective, your work history, your education, personal details. It was all considered settled fact, the 'common wisdom' of how to get a job. Mark: Sounds awful. Like reading a legal contract. Michelle: Exactly. But Kronfeld, being an outsider and an immigrant, started questioning the fundamental purpose. He went to the head of the placement office and asked, "What is the goal of a resume?" The director said, "To give the employer all the information about you." And Kronfeld replied with the insight that changed everything. He said, "No. The purpose of the resume is not to get you a job. The purpose of the resume is to get you an interview." Mark: Whoa. That’s a total reframe. It’s not a biography; it’s an advertisement. Michelle: Precisely. And once he had that new objective, all the old rules became obsolete. He realized the first step in the hiring process is elimination. Recruiters spend seconds, not minutes, on each resume. So, differentiation is everything. He threw out the multi-page format and created a single-page resume. He used different fonts, bolding, and bullet points to guide the reader's eye to his key strengths. He strategically minimized potential negatives, like short job tenures, by de-emphasizing the dates. Mark: He was basically designing a user interface for his career. He was thinking about the recruiter's experience. Michelle: He was. And the result? The placement office initially resisted, but he insisted. He ended up getting the most interviews of anyone on campus and a flood of job offers. His format was so successful that the one-page, bullet-pointed resume became the new standard at Wharton, and eventually, everywhere else. He didn't have a flash of genius; he just relentlessly questioned the 'why' behind the common wisdom. Mark: That's incredible. He didn't just play the game better; he redesigned the game board itself. It really shows that insight isn't about being smarter, but about thinking more clearly about the objective.

Michelle: Exactly. And that ability to see the real game being played is the foundation for his next big idea, which is probably the most shocking one in the book. He says that the prevalence of mediocrity in the business world is not a problem to be lamented, but an opportunity to be celebrated. Mark: Okay, hold on. 'Rejoice in mediocrity'? That sounds deeply cynical. Is he just telling everyone to give up and accept that their coworkers are incompetent? Michelle: It sounds that way at first, but his logic is fascinating. He's not saying you should be mediocre. He's saying you should be a realist. Most organizations are not the perfectly oiled machines we imagine. They are full of smart, well-intentioned people who are, for various reasons, not performing at their peak. Mark: What reasons? Michelle: He points to a few systemic forces. First, the Peter Principle—the idea that people in a hierarchy get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. Your brilliant engineer becomes a clumsy manager. Second, he points to the 80-20 rule, where 20% of the people are doing 80% of the truly impactful work. And finally, many people just aren't that motivated; a job is just a job. Mark: So the workplace is basically a giant, slow-moving system with a lot of friction. Michelle: A perfect way to put it. And Kronfeld's early reaction to this was anger. He’d see flawed logic and want to correct everyone. But he learned a powerful lesson when he was an executive at Ameritech. He tells this story about his boss, the president, pulling him aside for lunch. Mark: I feel like any story that starts with 'my boss pulled me aside for lunch' is not going to end well. Michelle: (Laughs) Usually, yes. But this boss was wise. He told Kronfeld, "David, you're like a thoroughbred racehorse in a stable full of regular workhorses. You're faster, you're more powerful, and you're making all the other horses very, very nervous." He then shared a company saying: "Don't spoil someone else's soup; it is the quickest way to lose your job." Mark: Wow. So his competence was actually a political liability. Michelle: It was. And that's when Kronfeld had his epiphany. He realized he shouldn't be angry at the mediocrity around him; he should be thankful for it. If everyone were as smart, driven, and insightful as he was, it would be nearly impossible to stand out. The mediocrity of the system is what creates the space for remarkable people to accelerate. Mark: Huh. That’s a powerful reframe. It’s not about cynicism; it’s about pragmatism. If you're the only one who sees the whole chessboard, getting angry at the pawns for not being queens is a waste of your energy. You just use your advantage to win the game. Michelle: You've got it. You stop trying to fix the system and instead learn to navigate it with insight.

Mark: That makes sense. But if you can't just go around correcting people or 'spoiling their soup,' how do you actually get anything done? How do you lead or make change happen? Michelle: This brings us to what Kronfeld considers the master-level skill. He says the goal is to stop focusing on influencing people and start focusing on influencing outcomes. Mark: Okay, that sounds a little like a corporate buzzword. What does that actually mean in practice? Can you give me a concrete example? Michelle: Absolutely. He uses his time at the consulting firm Booz Allen to explain it. They were a top-tier firm, just like their competitors. They all hired the smartest people and produced brilliant analytical reports for their clients. But Booz Allen noticed a problem: a lot of the time, these brilliant reports would just sit on a shelf. The client would say "thank you, great work," and then nothing would change. Mark: I can see that happening. A big, scary report recommends a lot of hard changes, and the organization just doesn't have the will to do it. Michelle: Exactly. So Booz Allen did an analysis on their own process. They realized their job wasn't just to deliver a correct answer. Their job was to ensure the client implemented the answer. They shifted their philosophy. From then on, they dedicated about one-third of every project's time and budget specifically to influence. Mark: What did that look like? Were they just doing more PowerPoint presentations? Michelle: No, it was much deeper. It was about engineering the process for buy-in. For example, they stopped just interviewing a few senior executives. They made it a rule to involve managers from all relevant departments in the data collection and analysis. That way, by the time the final recommendation was made, everyone already felt like they were part of the solution. They weren't being handed a verdict from on high; they were seeing the conclusion of a process they'd participated in. Mark: They were co-creating the outcome with the client. Michelle: Yes! And they changed how they wrote reports. The rule was that a report had to be written in such clear, simple language that a manager who missed the presentation could read it and reach the exact same understanding. They were building a logical, undeniable case from the ground up. This wasn't about charming the CEO. It was about systematically removing every possible roadblock to implementation. They were influencing the outcome—a successful project—not just the people in the final meeting. Mark: That's a huge mental shift. It comes back to that idea of radical ownership. If the client doesn't implement your recommendation, it's not because they're resistant or foolish. It's because you failed in your process to influence the final outcome. You didn't do the work of building buy-in.

Michelle: And that's the thread that ties all of Kronfeld's ideas together. Whether you're designing a resume, navigating a team, or running a multi-million dollar project, the goal isn't just to be 'right' or 'smart.' It's to be insightful enough to see the real game being played, and then to strategically influence the final score. Mark: It really is a playbook for being the smartest person in the room without making everyone hate you for it. It's about pragmatism over idealism. You accept the world as it is—full of flawed systems and imperfect people—and you use your insight to work within it, not against it. Michelle: That's a perfect summary. Ultimately, Kronfeld argues that being 'remarkable' isn't about some innate, un-teachable genius. It's a learnable skill of seeing systems—whether it's a hiring process, a corporate hierarchy, or a negotiation—and then subtly, intelligently, bending them toward a better outcome. It's about playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. Mark: It makes you think. So the question for all of us listening is: what piece of 'common wisdom' in our own work are we following blindly, and what would happen if we started questioning its real purpose? Michelle: A question worth pondering. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.