Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
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Book Reviews of Outliers: The Story of Success
Book Review: A Great Resource for Pastors... Yes, Pastors!
Summary: 5 Stars
Whenever we visit my parents around the holidays, we are excited to find bowls filled with Christmas candy in almost every room of the house. M&M's here. Holiday Mints there. As soon as you come upon a stash, you can't help but grab a handful.
Malcolm Gladwell's books are like Christmas candy for me. Whenever I see a new one, I grab it and go. I knew Outliers: The Story of Success would be a good book, since I found Malcolm Gladwell's previous two books: The Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking to be entertaining as well as informative. Gladwell has a knack for challenging conventional thinking by telling fascinating stories.
Outliers follows the same formula. Here, Gladwell challenges the conventional notion that success comes from being "self-made." He shows how the rise of certain people to success is never a one-person affair. Culture, family, community, and hard work all contribute to one individual's success.
I highly recommend that pastors, preachers and teachers read Malcolm Gladwell. You might think that a book like Outliers is a waste of time. Not so. The illustrations and stories here make for powerful sermon examples.
For example, consider the first chapter in Outliers - a story about the Roseto community. Gladwell shows how this unusual community had virtually no cases of heart disease among people below the age of 65. The doctors and scientists were stumped. No answer seemed to make sense of the data... until they realized that the community itself was acting as a sort of vaccine against heart attacks.
Now think of the ways a Christian teacher can use this material. What does the power of community teach us about the church? How does an example like the Roseto community help us as church leaders to emphasize the importance of community?
Gladwell also speaks of the "10,000 hour rule". Those who succeed are generally those who worked the hardest and longest. It is not talent or innate giftedness, but perseverance that ultimately counts in working up the ladder to success. And he uses the Beatles as proof! (No more details. I don't want to spoil the story.)
Most fascinating to me was the chapter on plane crashes - particularly the Korean airlines that were deemed unsafe for a time because of the unwritten cultural rules of protocol that prevented first officers from questioning their superiors (the pilots). Gladwell peers into Korean culture, showing how the culture's indirect speech was responsible for putting passengers in peril.
While I found the chapter on airlines fascinating, I wish Gladwell had countered with another chapter that shows how our American individualism/assertiveness can be just as dangerous in other circumstances. Some readers might jump to the conclusion that indirect-speech cultures are inferior to direct-speech cultures.
I encourage you to pick up Gladwell's book(s). They are filled with fascinating details and stories. If you aren't a teacher, pick up the book for enjoyment. If you are a teacher, don't miss out on the opportunity to fill a file with powerful illustrations.
Book Review: Taking Advantage of Talent
Summary: 5 Stars
Gladwell has a knack for taking things that should be obvious and presenting them to us in such a way that we feel we've known what he's talking about all along; or, at least, that we should have known all along. That's what he did in his two previous books and that's what he does in this one. Depending on how you feel about that will, in large part, determine your reaction to Outliers.
The topic this time around is a little different. An outlier is something that is markedly different than average. In this book, Gladwell examines people who have been remarkably successful (or unsuccessful) and tries to determine what makes them so. Basically, he is trying to debunk the idea that it is innate talent that in the primary determinant of success. Instead, he looks to things like the chance of birth, the luck of opportunity and the influence of cultural background. And he makes a compelling case.
Gladwell doesn't deny that talent is important but he makes the point that, once you reach a certain level, innate intelligence stops being a factor of success. A genius can be an Einstein or a genius can be a forgotten someone who never has the means or opportunity to make the most of his talent. He goes into the importance of practice (10,000 hours) to reach the expert level at anything. This is something that many understand on some level but the myth of the genius makes it easy to forget.
Beyond his look at correlations between IQ and success, Gladwell delves into his other themes. He uses examples like Bill Gates to show that he was born at the right time and had opportunities that no one else had--computer access at a time when computers were a rare commodity--that made him one of only a handful of people who could take advantage of the PC revolution when it came. Gates had talent, yes, but he had a rare sequence of situations that allowed him to prepare himself to be a success. He talks about how cultural background influences success--the rise of Jewish lawyers in the age of corporate takeovers, the failure of Korean Air because subordinate co-pilots could not communicate with pilots, the rigors of rice growing influencing Asians' ability in math.
But the real importance in analyzing these ideas, which some may find uncomfortable because of what may be seen as whiffs of racism or elitism, is the fact that having this knowledge allows us to make changes for the better. Once they understood their problem, Korean Air was able to turn itself around. Knowing how birth date effects success in sports and school at a young age allows us to plan better to reduce this impact. It is in this ability to make for the maximization of talent that gives Gladwell's work its importance.
Gladwell is a very strong writer and this may be his best work to date. I'm sure there are people out there who will disagree with him; however, it is difficult to deny how engaging he is as a writer. He tells great personal stories. He moves from stories to data. He pulls it all together to make his argument. Agree with him or disagree, but read this book and think about what he has to say.
Book Review: Changing the Culture of the Cockpit
Summary: 5 Stars
Few books cause me to think differently about the world. This book did. I can't stop talking about it. (Just ask my wife.) Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell has gifted us with an absolutely fascinating book that will make you think, ponder, discuss and wonder. He asserts, "I will argue that there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success."
The author continues, "The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."
Titled "Outliers," the book defines an outlier as "something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body." And with one fast-reading example after another, story teller/commentator-on-life Gladwell is off and running.
Why are Asian students seemingly more successful at math? Go back to the rice paddies and observe the rigorous work ethic. Why do college students in the south get more rattled when confronted? Check out their Scottish and Irish ancestors and their "culture of honor." After an alarming number of airline crashes on the formerly named Korean Airlines, how and why did management change the culture of the cockpit? (Don't read "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" chapter at 30,000 feet, as I did last week. Yikes!)
What does the "Matthew Effect" (per the first book of the New Testament) have to do with hockey players born in January? Teachers, parents and grandparents will be amazed at his data on I.Q., education and school vacations--the U.S. school year is 180 days long. Japan's is 243 days.
You will insist that Gladwell's conclusions cannot possibly be true. Are they? You'll sense sadness at how we fail to understand culture--and the incredible harm of wasted years and lives--all preventable, claims the author. He makes a compelling case about luck, timing--and the extraordinary power of the 10,000-hour rule and how it contributed to the success of Bill Gates and the Beatles.
Read the book and then host a team discussion on the vast implications for your organization, such as what to consider when recruiting new team members and how professional development programs might need to change based on a person's ethnicity. For example, Greeks and Guatemalans are in the top five of the "uncertainty avoidance" countries (high reliance on rules), while Swedes and Jamaicans represent the top-five cultures best able to tolerate ambiguity.
On work, Gladwell writes, "Those three things--autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward--are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying." I would add leveraging your strengths, as discussed in the Team Bucket, one of 20 competencies in my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit.
Book Review: Another tool for the mental toolbox
Summary: 5 Stars
This book worked on several different levels. As with Gladwell's other books, it's written in a manner that keeps the reader interested and moving through it quickly. Beyond that, however, the book addresses a number of common conceptions about success and turns them on their heads, leaving you with some insights and ideas that could be quite valuable.
The first of these ideas is that the combination of talent and hard work is what it takes to be successful. On the talent front, there's good news; reading through Gladwell's book, you find that talent, while certainly nice to have, is certainly not a "need to have" attribute if you are looking to succeed. On the downside for those seeking the shortcut to success, there doesn't seem to be any getting around the hard work side of the equation. Gladwell's successes got to the top putting in an enormous number of hours (apparently 10,000 hours is the magic number for true mastery of your chosen field).
So if talent isn't required, what separates the hard-working successes from the hard-working failures? Unique opportunities and circumstances says Gladwell. Bill Gates gets to program at his high school in the 60s, the Beatles get an odd chance to play almost endlessly in Hamburg, Germany, Canadian youth hockey players get chosen for elite teams getting disproportionate levels of coaching, practice and games.
Finally, there's the idea that your upbringing establishes in you an outlook on life and the system that can be elemental to your success or failure regardless of everything else. If you've learned to use societies systems to your advantage and understand how to get people on your side, you can go a long way despite some bad missteps. If you view the system as your enemy, boatloads of talent and hard work may not be enough to overcome what ultimately amounts to self-sabotage.
Other than being interesting, though, what purpose does the book serve? I'd say many, and they differ depending on your role. If you are looking for success yourself, you'll need to scramble for opportunities to get exposure to your field that others miss and you'll need to dedicate yourself to your field. If you're a parent trying to pave the way to your kids' success, you'll want to expose your kids to experiences that give them time to explore interests and you'll want to instill the idea that hard work is critical to success. Teachers, coaches, managers, and leaders could use these ideas to find performance in people and places that would usually be overlooked.
Ultimately, Gladwell's point is that by understanding the true roots of success, we can nurture more of it. His point isn't that it's great that Bill Gates got the opportunity to build Microsoft, but that it's somewhat of a tragedy that our society didn't get 10 or 50 Microsoft's simply because computers weren't available to more talented, interested, hard-working kids in the 60s.
There's a lot of usable insight in this book and it's fun to read too. I can't ask much more of that from a book.
Book Review: The Keys to Success aren't what you think they are
Summary: 5 Stars
Book Review submitted by: Stephen J. Hage, SteveH9697@aol.com
Gladwell has a way of looking at the world that's different from the way most of us do. A large part of his talent lies in his ability to see things that, even though they're there, we tend to miss. He displayed that unique ability in The Tipping Point and in Blink and delivers, in spades, once again in Outliers.
The book explores people who do things out of the ordinary by delving deeply into how and why they were able to do what they did. Using his unique way of looking at the world, Gladwell offers surprises few would even think to look for.
In dealing with who gets to the top in the hockey world in Canada, Gladwell looked at the player roster of the 2007 Medicine Hat Tigers. The salient feature of the roster is that seventeen of the twenty-five players were born in January, February, March or April. Looking deeper, he shows why that's so. The eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey in Canada is January 1. "A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year--and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.
This being Canada, the most hockey-crazed country on earth, coaches start to select players for the traveling "rep" squad--the all-star teams--at the age of nine or ten, and of course they are more likely to view as talented the bigger and more coordinated players, who have had the benefit of critical extra months of maturity.
And what happens when a player gets chosen for a rep squad? He gets better coaching, and his teammates are better, and he plays fifty or seventy-five games a season instead of twenty games a season like those left behind in the "house" league, and he practices twice as much as, or even three times more than, he would have otherwise. In the beginning, his advantage isn't so much that he is inherently better but only that he is a little older. But by the age of thirteen or fourteen, with the benefit of better coaching and all that extra practice under his belt he really is better, so he's the one more likely to make it to the Major junior A league, and from there to the big leagues."
Turns out that in hockey, in Canada as in so many other endeavors, besides talent, timing, circumstances, and luck play a big part in separating winners from losers.
The book is filled with similar stories chronicling what elements, in the lives of people like Bill gates and groups like the Beatles, illuminate how and why they became so spectacularly successful...such outliers.
To be sure, talent is an important and necessary ingredient but, in and of itself, it is almost never enough.
Gladwell's singular strength is the way in which he sees the world. His writing ability then creates a lens through we get to see the same things he sees.
This is a good read and I recommend it without reservation.