There was a lot of hype around Malcolm Gladwell last year when I was in the MBA program. People were talking about how insightful his writing was. I never really bought into the hype then, but with all the driving I was doing over the Christmas break, I decided to listen to audio books instead of music. I loaded "Outliers" in my mp3 player and started listening.
The premise the book is to examine the reasons behind the seemingly anomalous success behind the likes of Bill Gates, the Korean Air safety record turnaround, and the success of some Jewish New York lawyers. His argument is that these success are not simply the result of the tenacity, determination, and talent of the individual, but rather the result of environmental, cultural, and time factors that put the individual in the perfect place at the perfect time.
The book's been out for a while and I think anyone can find plenty of reviews about it with a simple internet search so I won't go into great detail here.
I found two parts of the book really interesting. The first was the reason why most top level hockey players have birthdays in January through April. It turns out that the cut off date for kids hockey is January 1st. Kids born earlier in the year tend to be more physically developed than their later-born peers, especially at the age when they start to jump to higher level hockey programs. The most physically developed and talented then go on to receive better coaching, more ice time, play with higher skilled players, and thus get a better chance for elite level success. It's an interesting observation, but Gladwell doesn't offer any suggestion to even out the odds a little more to group hockey players according to physical maturity rather than strictly age.
Another interesting point was in his discussion of the Korean Air disasters. There was a time when Korean Air had the worst airline safety record in the world and airports were starting to refuse landing for Korean Air flights. Gladwell argues that the major reason behind these crashes was cultural. He talked about the Korean culture being very hierarchical leading to a great reliance on the captains. Junior pilots were afraid to challenge both their captains and the air traffic controllers that they were talking to. Gladwell introduces Hofstede's Power Distance Index study to explain the effect of cultural differences on the airline's safety record.
The discussion about the airline itself didn't interest me very much, but Hofstede's study did. I'm a mix of two high power distance cultures: filipino and arab. Over the past 20 years now, I've been living in a very low power distance North American culture. I started thinking about previous interviews, jobs, negotiations, relationships, and friendships and how that cultural difference affected me in terms of how I behaved and what I expected out of the behaviour of my superiors and peers. It was eye opening and explained a few things about my past. I now notice it in my behaviour, how I talk, and how I think. I don't feel the need to change my viewpoint or values, but at least now I can understand the communication modes better. I recommend that any new immigrant or foreign student to have a look at Hofstede's study and to try to be conscious of it when coming to North America. It will help a lot in interviews.
I found the rest of Gladwell's book unremarkable. He talks about the minimum 10,000 hours required to be an expert in anything. This idea isn't new. There are a few documentaries that talk about the brain and how it grows with repeated practice at a given skill. Susan Polger's father was a psychologist in Hungary and had the idea that any child can be trained to be a master in anything as long as the child had an affinity for the skilled practice. There's a whole documentary about it called "My Brilliant Brain", you can watch it here. The CBC also had a documentary along the same lines as part of David Suzuki's show "The Nature of Things" called The Brain that Changes Itself. It's based on a book by Toronto psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Norman Doidge.
Gladwell also spends a great deal of time developing the idea of environmental factors that contribute to the success or demise of the individuals that he talks about. This is nothing new to anyone who has an avid interest in entrepreneurship. Almost every success story has an element of fortuitous random convergence of outside factors that place the entrepreneur at the right place at the right time. In most cases, it's a type of lucky meeting between people that leads to success.
Gladwell's writing style is very wordy for my taste. I got the impression that he over belays some points and gets repetitive at times. Maybe it's because I prefer a direct approach to communication and don't need to hear a lot of verbiage to understand a given argument. Overall, I think "Outliers" is a worthy read. Maybe his other books are a little better and more insightful. I've got another audio book and hardback book of his to get to this year.
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