4 controversial new wrinkles on success?

After his bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink, Malcolm Gladwell is back with Outliers (November 2008), which he dubs ‘The Story of Success’. It makes some fascinating points in what I believe is a significantly flawed book that is full of omissions on what it takes to get what you want in life. You be the judge.

Outliers:  At the start of the book they are defined as “men and women who do things out of the ordinary.” By the end the outlier “is not an outlier at all.” Confused?

Gladwell’s thesis is that the success of outliers “is not exceptional or mysterious.” He argues that it is not enough to ask what successful people are like – what most books do on this topic. He believes that outliers get “lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages” such as having the right parents, community, economic class and culture.

Here are four major points from the book:

1. Opportunity/luck.

Gladwell gives numerous examples of the role played by extraordinary opportunities that were also seized. Here are two: In 1968 Bill Gates was likely the only 13 year-old in the world allowed unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal. It all started when parents at the elite private school he attended in Seattle raised money for a computer club – something most universities did not have at the time. To say he took complete advantage of this is a huge understatement. Later, during his high school years, he would be at the local university computer lab from 3-6am and 20-30 hours at the weekends.

In 1960 a struggling high school rock band was lucky to get an hour on stage anywhere in England. Biographer Philip Norman writes: “It was an accident.” A strip club owner from Hamburg, Germany “happened to meet an entrepreneur from Liverpool who was down in London by chance.” This fluke connection gave the Beatles a chance to play 270 nights between 1960-1962. “When they came back, they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.”

2. Hard Work.

“Preparation is way more important than innate talent.”

This is the 10,000 hour rule – the amount of time people need to become a world-class expert at anything.

Neurologist Daniel Levitin in his 2006 book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession: “In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time.”

When the Beatles played in Hamburg:

John Lennon: “we had to play for eight hours”

Pete Best: “we played seven nights a week”

I can’t help but notice that there are no comments about ‘we attracted all this success into our lives by meditating on effortless abundance!’

3. Talent.

You don’t need to be a genius to be successful. Success and IQ only work to a point. You only need to be smart enough. Just like in basketball, you only need to tall enough. Michael Jordan was not the tallest player in the NBA at 6’6” but he is certainly considered to have been the best.

4. Practical intelligence.

I call this ‘social skills’ and was delighted to see it featured. While most books on success endorse personal and professional development, I’ve never noticed it being spelled out so bluntly and clearly. You need good people skills!

We all know people who have the talent and expertise but how effective are they in these three areas?

a) Knowing what to say to whom

b) Knowing when to say it

c) Knowing how to say it for maximum effect

I had coffee not long ago with someone about a possible joint business project and, while he had the talent and expertise, I thought of him immediately when I read this list. His feedback to me that day was abrasive and I felt like I was being talked down to. We failed to connect on anything personally and the one time we did hit on a mutual interest, I found myself not wanting to share my enthusiasm with him! Afterwards I could not figure out what was wrong with the meeting until I realized that I simply could not warm up to him. Why?  Because every time we built a little consensus, he seemed to have this knack for saying something to rub me the wrong way!

The flaws with this book.

Give or take a few passing comments, it’s bewildering that Gladwell fails to mention how critical it is to have a burning desire in life as described so frequently in Napoleon Hill’s 1937 classic Think and Grow Rich. Nothing is said about the importance of taking complete responsibility for your life, self-belief, clear goals/mission, confronting fear, asking for what you want, handling rejection, surrounding yourself with successful people or any of Jack Canfield’s  other 64 Success Principles. What about the recent research on super achievers done by John Eliot at Rice University?

Or how about the 33 qualities of a good entrepreneur listed in Richard Branson’s most recent book, Business Stripped Bare (2008) that I covered in a recent ezine? Sure, Branson mentions all of the above four points in his writings. He even acknowledges that having the right genes helps. But he also has 28 others and nine chapters each with 3-6 success qualities covering what he believes it takes to be successful in his book Screw It, Let’s Do It.

Malcolm, it clearly isn’t that simple!

I do commend Gladwell for opening our eyes to the social, biological and cultural factors that can impact success. How can it be ignored that 14 of the richest 75 humans ever to have lived since the PHARAOHS were born within NINE YEARS of each other in the SAME COUNTRY (the United States) in the 1830’s? How can it be ignored that in 2009 half the world’s population – three billion people - live on $2/day or less? And, certainly, if more people had the opportunities that Bill Gates and the Beatles were afforded, they would achieve much greater success.

 But to call it ‘The Story of Success,’ to simplify things down to the degree that Gladwell does, and not to acknowledge all the other factors runs the risk of sending the message that if you’re not lucky or born in the right place at the right time, then you can choose to be a victim and take little responsibility for your life.  This bothers me greatly.

Please forward this to professionals important in your life. Thanks!