Book Review: OUR BEST WORK by Nilofer Merchant
Abhijit Bhaduri
I share books I am reading. Or podcasts I have heard. My writing is free but you can buy me a coffee or lunch by being subscribing monthly or for 12 months. Want to reach me? Email me at abhijit...@live.com Book Review: OUR BEST WORK by Nilofer MerchantNilofer Merchant says that in the AI economy only distinctly human capabilities matter. But 84% of value creation is unmeasured.
Nilofer Merchant is founder of The Intangible Labs and has personally launched over 100 products generating $18 billion in sales for companies including Apple, Google, HP, and Yahoo. Our Best Work is her fourth book redefining how we measure and manage modern value creation. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. One of her most powerful ideas is ONLYness – the uniqueness that we bring. I resonated so deeply with this ideas as I write my new book (watch this space for more details). She explains Onlyness  Three ideas from Our Best Work by Nilofer MerchantIDEA 1: The 84% Measurement Gap Is Destroying Your Competitive AdvantageMerchant opens with a staggering revelation: only 16% of what drives a company’s market value appears in financial accounting systems—buildings, inventory, salaries, patents. The crucial 84% remains invisible: collaboration quality, idea velocity, innovation capacity, employee purpose, creative problem-solving. This isn’t just an accounting curiosity—it’s a strategic crisis. If you can’t measure what creates value, you optimize for what you can track: quarterly profits, efficiency metrics, productivity ratios. The result? Organizations hyperfocus on extraction while starving the intangibles that actually drive breakthrough performance. The AI economy makes this gap exponentially dangerous. AI excels at replicating routine work but cannot invent, dissent, care, or sense when decisions lack integrity. If we can’t articulate and measure distinctly human value—creativity, collaboration, ethical judgment—we’ll design systems that don’t utilize humans effectively, or at all. The practical implication: Stop asking “Did you hit your numbers?” Start asking “What new capability did your team build? How many experiments generated unexpected insights? How quickly did you adapt when assumptions proved wrong?” These leading indicators predict future value creation better than lagging financial metrics.
IDEA 2: Knowledge Doesn’t Liberate (But Collective Practice Does)The book’s most haunting insight comes from Oxford research studying 30 university students over four years. Even after these students intellectually understood the systemic barriers marginalizing them they still said: “It’s not so bad,” “I’ll be the exception,” “I just need to work harder.” Merchant’s alternative: practice the future collectively. Instead of planning change (elaborate rollout strategies, change management consultants, 6-month timelines), practice changing (small weekly experiments, continuous iteration, normalized adaptation). The distinction mirrors jazz versus classical music—classical musicians plan every note; jazz musicians build skills to navigate uncertainty in real-time.
The deepest insight: liberation isn’t individual—it’s systemic. When we change how we participate collectively, the system must change with us. She uses a brilliant metaphor: “If I stop dancing the tango with you, the dance stops. If we start a line dance, the tango may exist elsewhere, but it no longer holds our attention. Others can join our line dance. The system shifts.”
The deepest insight: liberation isn’t individual—it’s systemic. When we change how we participate collectively, the system must change with us. She uses a brilliant metaphor: “If I stop dancing the tango with you, the dance stops. If we start a line dance, the tango may exist elsewhere, but it no longer holds our attention. Others can join our line dance. The system shifts.” Thanks for reading and sharing it. IDEA 3: Precision in Naming Unlocks the Power to ActNilofer explains why she identifies exactly 24 norms, not a simpler list of 5 or 10. The answer reveals her deepest methodology: precision in naming creates navigation tools for change.
Many want to name workplace barriers as “power dynamics,” but Merchant argues this is uselessly vague. Power is everywhere and therefore nowhere. She compares it to saying “Earth” when you need navigation to a specific location. Precision means moving from Earth → Paris → your district→ specific bus stop. Each level of precision gives you actionable navigation tools. Instead of vague initiatives like “improve culture,” precisely name what limits you. Not “we need better collaboration”—instead “our norm of individual performance metrics creates internal competition that prevents knowledge sharing” (Rank and Yank, Chapter 9). Each of the 24 chapters follows identical architecture: Limiting Norm (the inherited practice constraining you) → Leading Indicator (the future-facing alternative) → Innovation Practice (concrete actions to shift). For example, Chapter 22 “A Hero Harms Us” names how celebrating visionary founders creates learned helplessness in teams, then provides practices for distributed leadership. Audit your organization for these 24 norms. Which 3-5 most constrain your team? Measure progress not by whether the old norm disappeared, but by whether the new practice is becoming habitual. I culled out three of the high impact and simplest to implement ideas here You’re currently a free subscriber to Abhijit's newsletter. If you like this post, buy me a coffee or lunch every month
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