Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell has written another interesting read in Outliers that follows his successful works Blink and The Tipping Point. In Outliers, Gladwell looks at the lives of extremely successful people–athletes, business men and women, musicians, Jewish and Asian immigrants and others. He poses the question, what makes these individuals he researches vastly successful?
The answer in many cases is time on task–hours of practice, whether it’s swinging a baseball bat, programming computers, playing music. The magic number is 10,000 hours. But it’s not just practice that brings success. Rather it’s a combination of drive, opportunity, and intelligence. Just having a IQ of 160 does not insure success or wealth nor does the obvious benefits of coming from a wealthy family mean children will be outstanding. He also claims that one can overcome small deficiencies in one area by excelling in others.
What makes the book interesting is that it is essentially series of case studies that analyze not only the lives of headliners like the Beattles and Bill Gates. but “unknowns” (at least to me) who attain fabulous success in their specific fields. New Your attorney Joe Flom, who becomes tremendously successful in the area of securities trading, had a Jewish Romanian grandfather who imigrated to America at the turn of the century with a few dollars in his pocket and opened a small grocery store. His children expanded the store into a number of supermarkets. Their children became doctors (8 of them) and lawyers (3 of them). Brains, drive, and family support made the difference. In contrast, Chris Langan was a brilliant child of a disfunctional family. His mother married four times, forgot to fill out financial aid forms and left Chris fending for himself with unsympathetic college administrators. The difference between Flom and Langan is the difference between similarly bright individuals with drive, one with a supportive, financially successful family, one without.
Gladwell also looks at factors over which we have no control affect some Outliers. Birthdates make all the difference in successful Canadian hockey stars. He looks at the birthdays of the outstanding players and realizes that so many of them are in the first three months of the year. They start playing earlier than their October to December peers who have to wait out a year before beginning the pee wee league. The numbers make a difference.
Equally interested in an explanation of why Asian students do so well in math. It’s the Chinese and Japanese language that has monosaylabic words for numbers allowing children to recite numbers at a significantly quicker speed than English speakers. This early familiarity plus a more logical naming of larger numbers encourages rather than hampers children in the early years of learning math.
Another fascinating story concerns the crash of a Korean airliner. Cultural training from childhood sets absolute rules on respect for authority. In the case of the tragic loss of life in this air disaster, the co-pilot saw a problem that the senior pilot did not but only quietly hinted at the danger so as to not insult his superior. After several oblique warnings, he finally pointed out the threat but too late to avert the crash and loss of life. In contrast, Americans are much less hesitant to state their opinions, even if at odds with a senior colleague. The result–Korean pilots now train to speak up, make their observations clear and forceful. We may not be as quick at math, but Americans are not afraid of speaking their mind.
Outliers is a page turner. Gladwell opens our eyes to the ingredients of success, power, and influence. It’s a great read for the new year.
