PwC's US CEO Paul Griggs: The 20-Minute Habit That Moves Careers

PwC's US CEO Paul Griggs runs the firm's entire American business, and he started there as an intern. In an interview with Business Insider, Griggs said one habit — twenty minutes of unprompted research — separates the employees who climb from the ones who stall.

Griggs credits curiosity when no one is watching. He pointed to a line often attributed to Benjamin Franklin to summarize what it takes to move up: "Energy and persistence conquer all things."

What does the 20 minutes look like?

Griggs described two employees to make the point concrete. One leaves work on Friday and mentally clocks out for the weekend. The other spends 20 minutes researching a problem he did not know the answer to, then carries on with his plans.

That small effort compounds. Over time, the second employee shows up better prepared to conversations, picks up concepts faster, adds more value, and earns more opportunities. Both employees did their jobs. The difference came from what one of them did with a few spare minutes.

Repeated over months and years, that choice separates the people who get noticed from the people who do not.

Where did the notebook habit come from?

Early in his career, Griggs worked with a colleague who brought a notebook to every meeting. The colleague wrote down anything he did not understand, which produced a running list of questions to research later.

Griggs suggests the same tactic for today's workers. Write down the concepts and questions you want to learn more about. Then spend a little extra time digging into them.

The application is simple. Keep a list of terms, numbers and ideas from meetings that you cannot explain. Pick one item each day. Give it 20 minutes — reading a report, asking a colleague, or looking up how a process works.

The habit also pays off in conversation. When you have already researched a topic, you ask better questions, and the people around you notice the preparation.

Why does this matter now?

People notice extra time spent getting better at the job. Natural curiosity helps workers stand out, especially when information is easy to find.

The advice is also modest in what it asks. It requires no new degree and no major project. It asks only a willingness to follow your questions a little further than the people around you.

What can business owners take from it?

Griggs's example carries three direct lessons for owners and managers.

• Hire and promote for curiosity. An employee who researches what he does not know without being asked shows initiative that is hard to teach.
• Encourage the habit. Give the team room to spend time learning. Ask people what they looked up this week. That question makes research part of the culture.
• Model it yourself. A founder who writes down what he does not understand in each meeting, and follows up, demonstrates the behavior he wants from the team.

The broader picture

Griggs's own path gives the advice weight. He moved from intern to the top of PwC's US business, and the habits he describes are the ones he says still apply to workers today.

The mechanism is compounding, not heroics. Twenty minutes on a Friday, one notebook entry per meeting, one researched question per day — these choices cost little and build the preparation that managers reward. For firms competing for talent, the lesson is that the cheapest signal of future performance may be what a candidate does when nobody assigned the work.