I read a book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It is about successful people, how they became successful, what were the factors involved in their success. Was it their individual performance which brought them so far, or was there lot of people involved in their success?
The book starts with an Outliers example of a small town near Philadephia. People of that town were exceptionally healthy than any other town. Some body did a research and found out that they are healthy because of the kind of community they are. They were a very close community with extended families. Everybody knew about everybody else. Everybody shared their feelings, hard time, good times with others. That’s how they were handling the turbulences of this world very well. That was the reason of healthy community of these Outliers.
Next, the book start to explain the Sports people success, who some on the top, who lags behind. The author explains that there are a lot of factors involved in a players success. One of the key one is his Date of Birth.
DATE OF BIRTH
Because players were selected at a certain age on a cut off date. The players who were just after that cutoff date were 1 year older than players who were just behind the cutoff date. That way they had an advantage of being older, stronger, and taller by 1 year.
Author contends that a student or a player, who is older in his class than other has the advantage through out his career. This happens because once he out performs others, everybody’s attention goes towards him. More guidance and coaching is given to the outperforming persons. Nobody bothers about the person who does not perform as good.
If we move the cutoff date to 4 times a year, we have increased chances of getting more out performing people.
THOSE WHO HAVE, WILL GET MORE, THOSE HAVEN”T, REST WILL ALSO BE TAKEN AWAY
The above advantage of age difference has a exponentially increasing effect. Those who are good at something, they get more attention, more resources, more guidance. And hence they get even better from the other than before.
10,000 HOUR RULE
To gain expertise in anything, the thumb rule is that you have to devote 10,000 hours of dedicated effort in that thing. It seems like brain takes that much time to become fully expert at that. So , what ever our children start, the earlier they complete 10,000 hrs( 10 years approx) , earlier they can become expert at that thing. It could be Music or Sports or anything else they are good at doing.
RIGHT OPPORTUNITY AT THE RIGHT TIME and ABILITY TO SEIZE THAT OPPORTUNITY
There comes many opportunities in life. The key is to be ready all the time. Keep ourselves updated all the time. As soon as the opportunity comes, seize it.
Sometimes good things happen at the right time, when we are ready to seize that opportunity. E.g in 1975, there was PC and Software programming revolution. Who ever was ready at that time, made to the top, e.g Bill joy, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc etc.
So the key is, whatever is of your interest, keep doing it and give it your 100%. When you have completed 10,000 hrs in that, i.e you have gained expertise in that, then it is a matter of getting the right opportunity and you can be at the top.
TROUBLE WITH GENIUSES, IQ IS NOT THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS
Essence of this chapter is that having a very high IQ does not guarantee a successful career. The author starts with the examples of Chris Langan, who had an extraordinary IQ. Yet he was not able to make a successful life, why?
One reason is that a person can have a high IQ, but might lack imagination, practical intelligence and emotional intelligence.
Intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.
Chris Langan had to face a very bad child hood. He grew up in crime.What was missing in him was practical intelligence, knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.
It’s a knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want.
Practical intelligence and IQ are orthogonal.
Whare does this practical intelligence comes from? It does Not come from genes. Being social savvy is a knowlesge, which primarily comes from the learnings which has happened in our families and in our social circle.
There are two different parenting philosophies, and these are divided amongst class line. Here the author lists some research results of studying how different parents raise their kids.
The wealthier parents are heavily involved in their children’s free time. Shuttling them from one activity to the next, quizzing them about their teachers, coaches and team mates. They will take them from school, and out them to a sports activity and then to music activity and then to some other activity.
This kind of intensive scheduling was entirely absent from poor childern’s famlies.
Rich parents also challenged the school teachers if their child is doing poorly. Poor parents were intimidated by authority, did not ask any questions from the teacher.
Rich parents foster and assess child’s talents, opinions and skills. Poor parents tend to follow the natural growth path., they do care for their children but let them grow on their own.
Positive side of Poor children is that they grow to be less whiny, more creative in making use of own time, had a well developed sense of independence.
In practical terms, rich children are more advantageous. By heavy scheduling, the child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. They learn team work and how to cope in a highly structured setting. They are taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speakup when they need to. They have a sense of “entitlement”.
They can customize the environment to their advantage, on the other hand poor kids just go with the environment.
e.g Rich kinds parents teach their kid to ask questions from the doctor he is visting. Then he does interact like adults with the doctor. This kind of interaction doesn’t happen with the poor kids.
This is the advantage Chris Langan did not have.
THREE LESSONS OF JOE FLOM
Lesson number one: if you are working on a skill which is not that important right now, but it becomes important later on, then there will not be too many players in that field and you can really shine.
Lesson number two: Sometime, Timing is everything for a profession. It might be that the profession is in great demand and you really shine. It could be that you are really good at something which is not in demand right now. You may fail in these circumstances
Lesson number three: Three things, autonomy, complexity, and connection between effort and reward are the three things which make the work satisfying. Work that fulfills this criteria is “meaningful” work.
Children of the parents, where meaningfull work was going on, learn that if you work hard enough and assert youself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires
CULTURE OF HONOUR, LEGACY
Die like a man, like your bother did
People who come from culture of honor, have the tendency to change their behavior at insult. Culture of honor people would like to dies rather than living with insult. Those who do not come from these kind of cultures may not take a small insult seriously and can just laugh it off.
Where you are from, does make a difference. Cultural legacies are powerfull forces; they have deep roots and long lives. They persist generation after generation.
CULTURAL BIASES, POWER DISTANCE, STARIGHT and EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Different cultures have different Power distance i.e the distance between the boss and the subordinate. In some asian countires e.g japan, China, India, there is a lot of power distance. If boss says something, nobody else has the guts to say anything opposing to that.
On the other hand, there are countries, where this distance is very less. E.g in American culture.
The benefit of less power distance is that there is effective communication at all levels. Better decisions can be made because of better information flow at all levels.
The author gave the examples of some of the plan crashes. He compared the avoided plan crash with the one which happened. The difference was effective communication. In planes which crashed, their either the junior pilots not able to speak up to the senior pilot, or pilots were not able to communicate effectively, in straight words to the ATC.
This chapter also tells about effective communication. In order for any org to succeed, there should be continuous communication happening with all the dependencies of the projects.
ABILITY TO PUT MORE EFFORT IN
Asians are good at mathematics. There are various reasons to that. One is that in asian languages, number system is very good, easy to get and equations are self explanatory. Calculations are inbuild into the language itself. Number sylabii is very small, which helps in saying and calculating very fast.
A JAMAICAN STORY
Here the author tells his own story, his mother’s story. How she ended up in Europe. Who were the people behind this. If we think about it, all those people were responsible for the Author’s success.
