Why do some people make it to the top, in terms of their performance and careers, and others don't? This is the question Professor Robert Kelley set out to answer in a two-year study of telecommunications giant Bell Labs. Bell Labs had found that only a minority of their employees delivered extraordinary results, while the rest, equally brilliant, had put in merely average results. Research into intelligence, motivation, creativity and technical skills yielded nothing. Then, when cognitive, social and psychological measures showed a common pattern for all workers, Kelley realized that it was not who they were, but the way in which the star performers did their work and the way in which they worked with others that really marked them out. In this manual, Kelley seeks to distil the star secrets so elusive to the majority of workers, suggesting nine key strategies (including identifying the critical path, networking, self-management, organizational savvy and big picture perspective) to help anyone become the master of their own performance.