David Kronfeld – Remarkable: Book Review & Audio Summary

Book Info

• Book name: Remarkable
• Author: David Kronfeld
• Genre: Business & Economics, Self-Help & Personal Development
• Published Year: 2021
• Language: English

Audio Summary

Synopsis

In Remarkable, seasoned business professional David Kronfeld challenges the conventional wisdom that working harder, smarter, and faster is enough to advance your career. Instead, he argues that business is fundamentally a team sport where success depends on being noticed by the right people for the right reasons. Drawing on years of practical experience, Kronfeld reveals that business intelligence isn’t about IQ or theoretical knowledge—it’s about mastering a limited set of core concepts through hands-on experience. This refreshingly honest guide shows professionals how to compete successfully in the business world by developing interpersonal skills, leadership abilities, and strategic visibility that truly matter for career advancement.

Key Takeaways

• Business success requires experience and practical skills over raw intelligence or academic achievement—IQ alone doesn’t predict career advancement
• Getting noticed by the right people for the right reasons is the missing ingredient in most career advice about working hard and being competent
• Business is a team sport where no individual is indispensable, and acknowledging this reality is essential for thriving professionally
• Career advancement is fundamentally competitive, requiring you to consistently outperform rivals across multiple evaluation rounds
• The skills that matter most—interpersonal communication, leadership, commitment, and creativity—are developed through years of doing, not classroom learning

My Summary

Why Your School Smarts Won’t Save You in Business

I’ll be honest—when I first picked up David Kronfeld’s Remarkable, I was skeptical. Another business book promising career acceleration? But within the first few pages, Kronfeld hit me with something that made me sit up straight: the idea that everything we learned about success in school might actually be holding us back in the workplace.

Think about it. From kindergarten through college, we’re conditioned to believe that intelligence equals success. Get good grades, ace the tests, master complex theories, and you’ll rise to the top. The entire education system revolves around IQ as the ultimate predictor of achievement. But Kronfeld argues—and I think he’s absolutely right—that this framework completely falls apart once you enter the business world.

Here’s why: academic success is about absorbing increasingly complex information and building abstract models. Each concept layers on top of the previous one, creating this massive tower of theoretical knowledge. In that environment, having a high IQ genuinely gives you an advantage. You can process information faster, see patterns more quickly, and integrate new ideas more efficiently.

But business? Business operates on entirely different principles. You’re not constantly learning new theoretical frameworks. Instead, you’re applying a relatively limited set of core concepts over and over again in different situations. The problems you face rarely have black-and-white solutions like math equations where angles must add up to 180 degrees. Instead, you’re navigating shades of gray, weighing risks against rewards, making decisions without complete information.

As someone who transitioned from academic writing to the business side of book blogging, this resonated deeply with me. When I was writing books, success meant crafting compelling arguments and demonstrating expertise through research. But running Books4soul.com? That requires a completely different skill set—understanding reader psychology, building partnerships, managing timelines, motivating contributors, and yes, getting noticed in a crowded digital landscape.

The Skills That Actually Matter

So if IQ isn’t the golden ticket, what is? Kronfeld identifies several critical abilities that determine business success, and none of them can be taught in a semester-long course.

First, you need interpersonal skills—the ability to read social dynamics, understand what motivates people, and navigate complex human relationships. I’ve seen brilliant people with impressive credentials fail miserably because they couldn’t connect with colleagues or clients. Conversely, I’ve watched people with average academic backgrounds thrive because they genuinely understood how to work with others.

Communication skills are equally vital. It’s not enough to have great ideas; you need to articulate them in ways that resonate with different audiences. When I’m pitching a new content series to potential sponsors, my ability to communicate value matters far more than my knowledge of literary theory.

Leadership skills enable you to set direction and motivate teams toward shared goals. This isn’t about barking orders—it’s about inspiring people to invest their energy in a common vision. Even if you’re not in a formal management position, leadership matters. Every time you propose a new initiative or try to get buy-in for an idea, you’re exercising leadership.

Finally, Kronfeld emphasizes commitment, dedication, knowledge, and creativity. These qualities are developed through years of practice, through trial and error, through learning what works and what doesn’t in real-world situations. There’s simply no shortcut around this process.

The Real Recipe for Career Advancement

Here’s where Kronfeld really challenges conventional wisdom. Ask successful people how they got ahead, and you’ll typically hear some variation of: work hard, work smart, give it your best. Sound familiar? It’s the advice plastered across every motivational poster and LinkedIn post.

But Kronfeld calls this out for what it is—vague platitudes that sound good but provide zero actionable guidance. What does “work smart” even mean? How do you know when you’re doing it? There are thousands of approaches that could qualify as working smart. The advice is so broad it’s essentially useless.

The real insight—the one that makes this book actually remarkable—is this: to advance your career, you need to get noticed by the right people for the right reasons. Let me break down why this matters so much.

Understanding Necessary Versus Sufficient Conditions

Kronfeld uses a philosophical framework that clarified things for me immediately. Hard work, competence, and effort are necessary conditions for success—you can’t get ahead without them. But they’re not sufficient. They won’t guarantee advancement on their own.

Think of it like oxygen and water for human survival. You absolutely need them, but having air and water alone won’t keep you alive. You also need food, shelter, and other essentials. Similarly, in your career, working hard and being good at your job are baseline requirements, not differentiators.

What’s missing from the standard advice is context. Your behavior doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it exists in a competitive environment where you’re constantly being compared to other people. From landing your first job to earning each subsequent promotion, you’re competing against other candidates across multiple evaluation rounds.

This shifts the question from “Am I working hard enough?” to “How does my performance compare to my competitors?” And that’s where visibility becomes crucial.

The Three-Part Formula for Getting Noticed

Getting noticed sounds simple, but Kronfeld breaks it down into three essential components, and all three must align for career advancement.

First, you simply need to be visible. If nobody notices you at all, it’s impossible to demonstrate that you’re better than your competitors. You could be the hardest worker in the company, but if you’re laboring in obscurity, it won’t matter. I see this constantly in the blogging world—talented writers producing excellent content that nobody reads because they haven’t figured out how to build visibility.

Second, you need to be noticed for the right reasons. Getting your boss’s attention because you’re consistently late or making errors won’t advance your career. The visibility has to showcase your strengths, your contributions, your value to the organization. This is about strategic reputation management—ensuring that when people think of you, they associate you with positive qualities and achievements.

Third, you need to be noticed by the right people. Demonstrating brilliance to colleagues who have no influence over your advancement is nice, but it won’t move the needle. You need visibility with decision-makers—the people who control promotions, raises, and opportunities. This doesn’t mean being a shameless self-promoter or kissing up to management. It means understanding organizational dynamics and ensuring your work gets in front of the people who matter.

Applying These Insights to Your Daily Work Life

Reading about these concepts is one thing; actually implementing them is another. Let me share some practical ways to apply Kronfeld’s insights, drawing from both his book and my own experience.

Document and Communicate Your Wins

Many of us were taught that good work speaks for itself. It doesn’t. In most organizations, managers are juggling dozens of priorities and can’t track every team member’s contributions. You need to make your achievements visible.

This doesn’t mean being obnoxious or constantly bragging. Instead, develop a habit of documenting your accomplishments and sharing them appropriately. Send brief update emails highlighting project completions. In meetings, reference your contributions naturally when relevant. Maintain a “wins folder” where you track successes, positive feedback, and measurable results—this becomes invaluable during performance reviews.

For Books4soul.com, I started sending monthly updates to our advisory board highlighting traffic growth, successful partnerships, and reader engagement metrics. This simple practice transformed how they perceived the site’s progress and my leadership.

Build Strategic Relationships

Remember Kronfeld’s emphasis on business as a team sport? No one succeeds alone. Invest time in building genuine relationships with colleagues across different departments and levels. These connections serve multiple purposes—they help you understand organizational dynamics, create advocates for your work, and open doors to opportunities you might never hear about otherwise.

I’m not talking about transactional networking where you only reach out when you need something. Build real relationships by offering help, sharing knowledge, and showing genuine interest in others’ work. When I started connecting with other book bloggers and authors not just to promote my site but to genuinely support their work, everything changed. Opportunities emerged organically because people knew me and trusted me.

Seek High-Visibility Projects

Not all work is created equal when it comes to career advancement. Some projects naturally have higher visibility with decision-makers. Look for opportunities to contribute to initiatives that leadership cares about, cross-functional teams that expose you to senior managers, or problems that, when solved, deliver obvious organizational value.

This requires strategic thinking about how you allocate your time and energy. Yes, you need to complete your core responsibilities, but if you have bandwidth for additional work, choose projects that will get noticed by the right people.

Develop Your Communication Skills Deliberately

Since communication is one of those critical skills Kronfeld identifies, treat it as a continuous improvement project. This might mean taking a public speaking course, practicing writing more concisely, learning to tailor your message to different audiences, or simply asking for feedback on your communication style.

I’ve invested significant time in improving how I write for different contexts—summary posts require different language than editorial pieces, and email communications need different structures than social media posts. This wasn’t natural talent; it was deliberate practice over years.

Understand Your Organization’s Values and Priorities

To be noticed for the right reasons by the right people, you need to understand what your organization actually values. Is it innovation? Efficiency? Customer satisfaction? Revenue growth? Once you understand these priorities, you can frame your contributions in terms that resonate with decision-makers.

For example, if leadership is focused on growth, don’t just report that you completed a project—highlight how it contributed to user acquisition or revenue. If the priority is efficiency, emphasize how your work streamlined processes or reduced costs.

What Makes This Book Different

The business and career advice space is incredibly crowded. What makes Remarkable stand out is Kronfeld’s willingness to challenge sacred cows and speak uncomfortable truths.

Most career books either focus entirely on internal factors (your mindset, your habits, your skills) or external factors (networking, personal branding, office politics). Kronfeld integrates both perspectives, acknowledging that success requires both genuine competence and strategic visibility. You can’t fake your way to the top, but you also can’t assume that excellence alone will get you noticed.

I also appreciate that Kronfeld doesn’t promise overnight transformation. He’s upfront about the fact that developing business intelligence takes years of experience. There’s no shortcut, no hack, no secret formula. But you can accelerate the learning process by being intentional about what you focus on and how you position yourself.

The book’s emphasis on business as a team sport also feels refreshingly honest. In an era of personal branding and individual contributor worship, Kronfeld reminds us that no one is truly indispensable and lasting success comes from enabling others, not just promoting yourself.

Where the Book Could Go Deeper

While I found Remarkable valuable, it’s not without limitations. The advice, while sound, sometimes feels somewhat general. Kronfeld identifies important principles but doesn’t always provide detailed frameworks for implementation. Readers looking for step-by-step action plans might find themselves wanting more specific guidance.

The book also focuses primarily on corporate environments. If you’re an entrepreneur, freelancer, or working in non-traditional settings, you’ll need to adapt the advice to your context. The core principles still apply—you need to be noticed by the right people for the right reasons—but the tactics for achieving that look different outside traditional organizations.

Additionally, while Kronfeld acknowledges that business is a team sport, the book still centers primarily on individual advancement. I would have loved more discussion about how to balance personal career goals with genuine team contribution, or how to advance your career while actively lifting others up.

How This Compares to Other Career Books

If you’ve read other business and career development books, you might wonder how Remarkable fits into the landscape. Let me offer some quick comparisons.

Unlike books like Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You, which emphasizes skill development almost exclusively, Kronfeld balances competence with visibility. Both matter; neither alone is sufficient.

Compared to networking-focused books like Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone, Remarkable offers a more nuanced view. Yes, relationships matter, but they need to be built on genuine competence and contribution, not just schmoozing.

And unlike mindset-focused books that emphasize internal transformation, Kronfeld keeps the focus on practical, external behaviors and strategies. This makes the advice more immediately actionable, though perhaps less inspirational.

The book that Remarkable most reminds me of is Patrick Lencioni’s work—practical, focused on organizational dynamics, and willing to challenge conventional wisdom. If you enjoyed The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, you’ll likely appreciate Kronfeld’s approach.

Questions Worth Pondering

As I finished Remarkable, several questions kept circulating in my mind. How do we balance strategic visibility with authentic contribution? Is there a risk that focusing too much on being noticed leads to performative work rather than genuine value creation?

I’m also curious about how these principles apply across different industries and organizational cultures. In some environments, self-promotion is expected and rewarded. In others, it’s viewed negatively. How do we navigate these cultural differences while still ensuring our work gets recognized?

And here’s the question I keep coming back to: How do we create organizational cultures where good work is naturally visible, where people don’t have to play political games to get noticed? What would it take to build systems that surface and reward genuine contribution without requiring constant self-promotion?

Final Thoughts on Getting Remarkable Results

Here’s what I keep thinking about days after finishing this book: Kronfeld has articulated something that many of us sense intuitively but struggle to name. We’ve all seen situations where the hardest worker gets passed over for promotion while someone with better visibility moves up. We’ve watched talented people languish in obscurity while less capable but more visible colleagues advance.

The traditional advice to “just work hard and good things will happen” feels increasingly inadequate, yet many of us resist the alternative because it feels like playing politics or being inauthentic. What Kronfeld offers is a middle path—be genuinely competent, but also be strategic about ensuring that competence gets noticed by people who matter.

For me, this book reinforced the importance of being intentional about visibility while never losing sight of substance. The goal isn’t to become a shameless self-promoter; it’s to ensure that your genuine contributions get the recognition they deserve so you can create even more impact.

Whether you’re early in your career or a seasoned professional looking to break through to the next level, Remarkable offers a refreshingly honest look at what it really takes to advance. The insights won’t make you uncomfortable—they might challenge some of your assumptions about meritocracy and fairness—but they’ll also equip you with a more realistic and actionable framework for career success.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you experienced situations where excellent work went unnoticed? How do you balance genuine contribution with strategic visibility? Drop a comment below and let’s continue this conversation. After all, as Kronfeld reminds us, business is a team sport—and that includes learning from each other’s experiences.