The Five Magic Words I Value Most At Work

I’ve discovered the five words that are essential to unlocking all the qualities of high performing teams. A skeleton key, if you will. The words that lead to creativity, productivity, continuous improvement, pride in the work, and a sense of fulfillment.

You may be expecting me to drop some killer productivity hack or leadership technique I’ve developed that will supercharge your teams. Some mantra or chant that triggers a cohesive flow state among everyone you work with. The truth is this cheat code has actually nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with a magic phrase that I have been hearing more and more from my teammates.

Before I get to the magic words, let me set some context.

Over the last few years, I’ve talked with leaders and technologists in government, industry, and academia, particularly after I joined the General Services Administration to help stand up the Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (AI CoE). The mission of the AI CoE was pretty straightforward — partner with federal agencies and help them along their AI journey.

During that time, I observed tremendous opportunities to innovate in the name of delivering superior services to the American people. We tackled use cases in engineering, accounting, policy, acquisition, customer service, and a ton of others. We helped the Pentagon leverage machine learning to resolve millions of unmatched financial transactions in their accounting systems and implemented Robotic Process…