Deliver.: The untaught lessons to growth hack your career by Wen-Szu Lin

Deliver. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it means “to produce the promised, desired, or expected result.” In business, there is no better honor than to be relied upon to consistently deliver. The ability to deliver matters for all levels, from a new graduate to a seasoned executive. The core competencies required to deliver build on top of each other, rooted in the foundational skills to be a great individual contributor. Surprisingly, most skills are not directly taught in formal education or at the workplace.

This book introduces and teaches proven, easy-to-follow techniques for a person to deliver as an individual contributor, a collaborator, and a leader. Techniques that I picked up over a 20+ year career filled with epic failures and heart-pumping successes. After losing millions of dollars in my own venture in China, I was forced to reset my career with no tangible assets (e.g., I was near broke), with no job leads (e.g., I moved to a new country to be with my family), and with no proven corporate record (e.g., I only had entry level roles to that point).

Yet, what I did have were untaught lessons on how to deliver. Lessons that were never articulated to me in school or the self-help books that I read so much of. When an entry level opportunity at Uber came along, these simple techniques allowed me to “growth hack” my career at a mind boggling pace. I went from sitting in a tiny rented office to managing thousands of people in less than a few years.

Deliver. is a structured set of learnings told through engaging stories from my experiences and from the voices of others. The lessons follow the concept of inside-out. The focus is on how to develop the self into a great individual contributor at work, through lessons on how to think in a structured manner, how to communicate, and how to manage one’s emotions. The lessons then expand outwards to teach a person how to build and manage relationships, both as a stakeholder and as a manager. It ends with insights on how to become a great leader.

Using relatable topics such as Marie Kondo’s methods of tidying-up to business lessons from an entrepreneur selling contact lenses for chickens to leadership lessons from the Navy SEALS, Deliver. draws examples from various disciplines to weave together a practical, memorable lesson plan. While the theory is important, the aim is to offer practical techniques to learn the underlying business and leadership principles. There is even a new term I coined for a technique that has been used for years at Uber.

My dream for this book is to impart actionable advice for millions that can help growth hack a person’s career, regardless if they are new to the corporate world or if they are well seasoned.