I am a social psychologist who is now a business executive and was fascinated by Gladwell’s Outliers book. His book is one of a few in recent years such as Freakonomics and The Drunkard’s Walk that cause us to challenge our assumptions in both our business and personal lives.
Many of the economic problems in the last year are a function of erroneous assumptions about things like housing prices, incomes and credit. In general, we like to make simple linear assumptions about cause and effect. For example, Gladwell challenges beliefs of those who think variables like effort, IQ, passion, red states/blue states, or socio- economic background are the sole cause of everything.
While Gladwell does a great job in showing the complexity and interaction among factors, he sometimes downplays the importance of some underlying variables:
- In discussing the impact of other variables besides IQ on success, he seems to downplay the fundamental requirement of IQ in many endeavors. The reality is that certain levels are a requirement but not the determinant for success in fields like nuclear physics, getting into Harvard, etc.
- The interesting aspect is who makes it and who doesn’t with the requisite IQ, skills, background, passion and timing. For example, he describes the importance of being born in January for success in Canadian hockey. However, he does not differentiate why only a small portion of Canadians born in January are successful hockey players.
The most interesting aspect of the book, which does not receive enough attention is passion. He argues that success does require effort and talks about 10,000 hours of experience (including some failure) as an important perquisite of success. However, he does not explain why some of us love to spend the 10,000 hours and others are happy playing video games, drinking, watching sports on T.V. etc.
This is particularly evident in the rise of women today in America. They now represent 46% of the labor force compared to 33% in 1960. Given the opportunity in the last few decades, women are simply taking over although they still lag in hard sciences.
There are two obvious implied recommendations from Gladwell and these other books. First, we need to analyze our opportunities and assumptions about our selves and organizations. Second, we should do a SWOT analysis or something like it (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to help determine which and how we should pursue opportunities. In particular, we need to assess ways to take advantage of the struggling economy over the next few years.
