July 22, 2009 at 8:43 am · Filed under Commentary, Review, Society
I recently finished Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers. If you’ve never read any of his work I strongly recommend it. For one, he’s an incredible writer and his style is one I find highly accessible while remaining interesting and creative.
Summarizing a book in a few words never does it justice (so go read it yourself), but in this book he takes on the idea of success (he deals with extreme cases of failure to prove his point as well, but I’m most interested with the success angle.) Success is certainly something we all know a lot about whether we personally feel successful or not. It’s the goal. It most likely has different definitions for each of us, as we rearrange a hierarchy based on what matters to us – family, career, relationships, money, time, spirituality, and much more. There may be some of us who have lost hope or resolve, but I highly doubt there isn’t a person alive that doesn’t want to be successful at what matters to them.
We are also working off a paradigm of the success story. You know the kind. They are told in our childhood classrooms, our family dining room, and the company boardroom. It’s the classic story of “poor kid makes good,” pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, loaded with talent, they out-work the competition to climb to the top of their game. We’ve all heard about these ‘outliers.’
In Outliers Gladwell examines several of these stories a bit more extensively. He studied professional athletes, business tycoons like Bill Gates, and even his own family. Upon further inspection it became clear (and thus was the thesis of the book) that these “outliers” were not the result of superior intellect, talent, or mere effort – these success stories had a lot of help. The help came in a variety of ways: being born in the right generation in the right part of the world, circumstantial access to exclusive opportunities at a young age, being of a certain ethnic heritage, and the list goes on.
His point is not that these people were given success – they also had to work for it. What he does tell us is that the “success stories” we grew up with (and still idolize) are not about people that are innately superior, at least not entirely – they were given a leg up in some way, they had greater opportunity. And ultimately, if Gladwell is right, it means many of us have not reached our potential – not for lack of innate talent or intellect – but for lack of the right opportunities.
How would the world change if we could learn from these stories and create improved systems at the family, community, and institutional levels that replicated these opportunities for future generations?
Have you read the book? What were your impressions?
If not, be sure to check it out. I think you’ll find it very interesting.
Outliers
July 22, 2009 at 8:43 am · Filed under Commentary, Review, Society
I recently finished Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers. If you’ve never read any of his work I strongly recommend it. For one, he’s an incredible writer and his style is one I find highly accessible while remaining interesting and creative.
Summarizing a book in a few words never does it justice (so go read it yourself), but in this book he takes on the idea of success (he deals with extreme cases of failure to prove his point as well, but I’m most interested with the success angle.) Success is certainly something we all know a lot about whether we personally feel successful or not. It’s the goal. It most likely has different definitions for each of us, as we rearrange a hierarchy based on what matters to us – family, career, relationships, money, time, spirituality, and much more. There may be some of us who have lost hope or resolve, but I highly doubt there isn’t a person alive that doesn’t want to be successful at what matters to them.
We are also working off a paradigm of the success story. You know the kind. They are told in our childhood classrooms, our family dining room, and the company boardroom. It’s the classic story of “poor kid makes good,” pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, loaded with talent, they out-work the competition to climb to the top of their game. We’ve all heard about these ‘outliers.’
In Outliers Gladwell examines several of these stories a bit more extensively. He studied professional athletes, business tycoons like Bill Gates, and even his own family. Upon further inspection it became clear (and thus was the thesis of the book) that these “outliers” were not the result of superior intellect, talent, or mere effort – these success stories had a lot of help. The help came in a variety of ways: being born in the right generation in the right part of the world, circumstantial access to exclusive opportunities at a young age, being of a certain ethnic heritage, and the list goes on.
His point is not that these people were given success – they also had to work for it. What he does tell us is that the “success stories” we grew up with (and still idolize) are not about people that are innately superior, at least not entirely – they were given a leg up in some way, they had greater opportunity. And ultimately, if Gladwell is right, it means many of us have not reached our potential – not for lack of innate talent or intellect – but for lack of the right opportunities.
How would the world change if we could learn from these stories and create improved systems at the family, community, and institutional levels that replicated these opportunities for future generations?
Have you read the book? What were your impressions?
If not, be sure to check it out. I think you’ll find it very interesting.
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