Tag Archives: Talent is Overrated
Olympic Champions, and Olympic Participants, and that 10,000 Hour Rule
So, as I have watched a few of the events from the Olympics, and I’ve been thinking about the 10,000 hour rule. And I am ready to state the obvious: putting in 10,000 hours guarantees nothing.
First, a refresher. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, described the 10,000 hour rule. To summarize, it takes 10,000 hours to get really world-class good at anything. (Gladwell got the idea/concept from Anders Ericsson).
And then, in the book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, we learn that just any old 10,000 hours is not good enough. You need to put in “deliberate practice” — lots and lots of deliberate practice – in order to get better and better. In other words, you practice with the intent to get better. This kind of practice is exhausting, and almost always needs a very knowledgeable coach, with terrific motivational skills. (A coach who “can correct with creating resentment.” John Wooden).
Now, back to the point of this post: I am ready to state the obvious: putting in 10,000 hours guarantees nothing. Here’s what I mean.
As we watch the Olympics, we see pretty clearly that some athletes have developed a work ethic superior to others. But there are plenty of athletes who put in pretty much the same kind of time, had the same high level work ethic, as the “winners” who beat them when the starter pistol went off.
So, putting in 10,000 hours guarantees nothing. In sports, you need the 10,000 hours, plus the right coach, plus a little luck, plus maybe the right genetic makeup, plus…
Plus, plus, plus…
The more we learn, the more we learn how critical the next “plus” might be.
Now, let me back up. If we were not so fixated on winning the gold, we might come closer to admitting that the 10,000 hour rule does in fact guarantee success. Even making an Olympic Team; or, even being good enough to compete in an Olympics Trials Qualifying Event to try to make the team, takes massive skill. So, why is that not “success?” It certainly should be.
And we do know that in many cases, coming in second is every bit a “win.” Did you see the depth of emotion on the faces of Kelci Bryant and Abby Johnston after they won the Silver Medal in Synchronized Diving? They may not have won the Gold, but, it was the first diving medal at all for the USA since 2000, and the first ever medal for the USA in this particular event. Yes, the Chinese duo were better. Noticeably better. But these two young women were the second best in the world, and their 10,000 hours paid off.
Kelci Bryant, left, and Abby Johnston of the USA show off their silver medals from after finishing second in 3-meter synchronized diving. (By Kyle Terada, USA TODAY Sports)
Maybe we could say this: maybe 10,000 guarantees nothing. But a failure to put in 10,000 hours does guarantee something – you won’t make it to the top without putting in those 10,000 hours.
Now – the other challenge. One reality about this kind of world-class accomplishment is that these athletes show up, every day, with a coach watching and “coaching” every moment. Wouldn’t all of us get better at our jobs if we had that kind of individual coaching, motivating, “pushing us to the limit” daily encounter? I think so.
Work ethic, plus coaching, plus deliberate practice, plus constant feedback, plus measurable goals, plus… The road to true success really is a challenging road.
Are We Truly A “Flabby Lot?” – In A 10,000 Hour Rule World, Why Are We So Flabby?
Discipline is hard – harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can’t even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.
Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto
The list of posts on this blog referring to the 10,000 hour rule, the need for deliberate practice, the books Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, is long. We have chronicled the ascendancy of, the centrality of — call it what you will – “work ethic,” “it take s10,000 hours to master anything…” thinking.
But…
The quote that indicts me personally, in a way that I cannot escape, is the one from Gawande: “We can’t even keep from snacking between meals.”
This morning, Pulitzer winner Kathleen Parker has a column about Wikileaks. In the midst of this column is this section:
With the exception of our military, we are a flabby lot, and I’m not just talking about girth. We are merely disgusting in that department. I’m talking about our self-discipline, our individual will, our self-respect, our voluntary order.
Note the operative words: self, individual and voluntary.
We don’t need bureaucrats and politicians to dictate how to behave; how to spend (or save); what and how to eat. We need to be the people we were meant to be: strong, resilient, disciplined, entrepreneurial, focused, wise, playful, humorous, humble, thoughtful and, please, self-deprecating. We have all the tools and opportunities a planet can confer.
We are a flabby lot. And it shows – not in a good way. We’ve read all about 10,000 hours, but how many of us actually put in the work?
As always, we are back to the “knowing-doing gap.” We know, we just don’t do…
Take inventory. Be honest with yourself. Are you flabby, undisciplined, unfocused? If so, you’ve got your work cut out for you (as do I). Let’s get to it.
“One Job of the Coach is to Correct,” says Randy – “I Don’t Agree,” says Cheryl… Time for Some Dialogue
Coach:
a : a large usually closed four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage having doors in the sides and an elevated seat in front for the driver
a : a private tutor
b : one who instructs or trains <an acting coach>; especially : one who instructs players in the fundamentals of a competitive sport and directs team strategy <a football coach>
From Randy:
So, the other day at Take Your Brain to Lunch, I am in mid-presentation, and I say something like this: “the purpose of a coach is to tell me what I am doing wrong.” I referred to athletic coaches, people hired by the likes of Martina Navritilova and other “individual” stars. I am convinced that such an athlete cannot watch himself/herself, and thus needs a coach to watch, find the flaws, and correct. I used to play tennis (back in the days when rackets were made of wood, tennis balls were white, and the tiebreaker had not yet been adopted), and I know that’s what my coaches did for me. They saw my flaws, pointed them out, and drilled correction into me.
And I got better. (I would have gotten much, much better if I had practiced they way my coach told me to. But that’s another story).
Anyway, Cheryl Jensen, my blogging team member and the leader of Take Your Brain to Lunch, who is a personal coach, tells me I’m wrong. She says that a coach should not look for areas to correct, but instead should… well, let her tell you.
By the way, I disagree with Cheryl. Thus, this dialogue…
Cheryl, your turn.
From Cheryl:
As much as I try to avoid ever correcting people in public for fear of embarrassing them or damaging a relationship, I did indeed disagree publicly with Randy last week. When we traded time at the microphone, I offered a very different perspective. Randy is correct in that I am a professionally trained coach by The Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and the International Coach Federation (ICF), the governing body of professional coaching. Our official definition of coaching is “Coaching is a partnership with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
Another cornerstone idea from our CTI training is “People are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole.” This means coaching is not about fixing what’s broken. It is about helping the client look and find what’s already within and then directing that talent, energy, and focus towards their goals. There are 3 main reasons I coach: to facilitate learning, create movement towards client goals so they can improve their performance and enjoyment from life which of course includes work. So the whole idea of looking for what’s broken and then offering advice is totally counter culture from professional coaching to me. Rather than offer answers, we offer questions for the client to explore their areas of interest. Rather than offer advice, we ask questions to create options the client wants to implement. Rather than assign responsibility, we offer opportunities that will facilitate additional learning and new insights.
Outliers, Talent Is Overrated, And Others – Creating Conversations About Success
I’m a little fuzzy on “the point” of this article in Slate.com. But I know this, she is right about the popularity of Outliers, and the overall subject.
Here’s the article: Give It a Rest, Genius — What the new success books don’t tell you about superachievement by Ann Hulbert. Of the books discussed in the article, I have presented synopses of two: Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
She describes the (relatively) new-found fixation on the 10,000 hour rule. She is right to say that Colvin’s Talent is Overrated is more specific, more “demanding” than Outliers. Here are a couple of paragraphs from her article:
In their calculus of success, these books endorse perspiration over inspiration as the key to extraordinary performance. The prevailing term is “deliberate practice,” introduced by K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist cited in every one of these books for research that has led to the “10,000-hour rule.” That’s how much intensely focused training it takes to reach the expert level, in any field. Coyle’s more New Age coinage is “deep practice.”
Higher expectations can indeed work wonders for anyone, but truly relentless drive is a rarity. Amid all the recycled material in Bounce, Syed offers a sobering firsthand reminder from the sports front: The necessary fanatical commitment to mastery is most commonly inspired by competition, which has a way of winnowing ruthlessly. But in an era when plenty of American workers feel we’re running in place and just barely keeping up, the mixed message of this genre is one we’re understandably more eager to hear: Maybe we don’t have to become magnitudes more frenetic than we already are—just a whole lot more focused—and we, too, stand a chance of zooming ahead.
I remember this thought from Lewis’ Moneyball. By the time a baseball player is a young adult, it is simply too late to teach him not to swing at a ball. Here’s the quote:
What most scouts thought of as a learned skill of secondary importance (the ability to take a lot of pitches) the A’s management had come, through hard experience, to view virtually as a genetic trait, and the one most likely to lead to baseball success.
The A’s acknowledged that it probably could be taught – if you could begin at about age 5…
So, what does all of this say to us as adults in the actual pursuit of current and future success. I think two things:
1. You may not ever be world class, but you can get better with deliberate practice. For example, do you speak, and is speaking a key part of your path to success? Then watch yourself on video, hire a speech coach, scrutinize every part of your speaking, from content, to delivery, to gestures, to eye contact. Extrapolate this principle into any work you actually do. Watch yourself do it. Hire a coach to catch your flaws (you’ll probably not be able to see them – and, I hate to tell you – you do have some!). You have to work hard at developing the talent needed to excel.
2. Every job requires this kind of attention to get better. You know that line “this call might be monitored.” I wonder if anybody who monitors such calls is doing so to help the people on the calls get better, or are they just trying to catch them doing something wrong?
Help yourself, and others, get better – day in and day out — by focusing on getting better. That may be the take-away message of these books!
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You can purchase my synopses of both Outliers and Talent is Overrated, with audio + handouts, at our companion site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.
Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto – Its Primary Value
After this Friday, I will have presented synopses of well over 200 books over the last twelve years. This includes books presented at the First Friday Book Synopsis, the Urban Engagement Book Club, and quite a few “special commission” presentations. For a number of years, I said that The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe was the best book/my favorite book. Then, I shifted that assessment to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
My reasons for such a personal ranking are obviously quite subjective. One reason is this – after reading those books, I kept thinking about them, a lot. I remembered their stories, and I pondered their implications. Both of them became part of my thinking, and I “built” on such thinking with other books – notably, Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin as the logical follow-up to Outliers (the 10,000 hours requires very serious practice discipline/”deliberate practice” to maximize those hours), and a number of books on innovation that seemed to make more sense when preceded by the thoughts in The Creative Habit.
Well, I may move The Checklist Manifesto to the top spot in my own little ranking system.
Why?
I think the more deeply I delved into The Checklist Manifesto, the more aware I became of just how big a challenge modern day complexity really presents. The title of the book may be misleading: “The Checklist Manifesto” makes it sound like a simple book – just create and use a checklist to get things done. But it is born of a deeper issue – complexity. For example, in the book Atul Gawande describes how for most of human history, a “Master Builder” would oversee all of the big building projects. Today, with our 80 + story high-rises, there is no “Master Builder” who could possibly know enough to get such a building built as the Lone-Ranger type expert.
Here’s a revealing excerpt:
Every day there is more and more to manage and get right and learn. And defeat under conditions of complexity occurs far more often despite great effort rather than from a lack of it.
It is not clear how we could produce substantially more expertise than we already have. Yet our failures remain frequent. They persist despite remarkable individual ability.
(our) know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us.
That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure…
In other words, it is not the solution of the checklist that has most intrigued me about this book, although I think I am a true convert to his solution. His case is absolutely compelling. But it is his diagnosis that makes it so valuable. And, this is no surprise – Gawande is a surgeon, and proper diagnosis is sort of critical in the process of successful surgery.
Recently, I mentioned a book entitled How to Read Slowly. Let me recommend that you put The Checklist Manifesto on your reading list – and carve out a time to read it slowly. I think it is that valuable.
Finding Talent Remains an Important Issue
Even in a down-economy, discussions about assessing, developing, or obtaining talent will not go away.
Indeed, this week we learned about another business best-seller on this topic.
Top Talent by Sylvia Ann Hewlett (Harvard Business School Press, 2010).
Over the years, at the First Friday Book Synopsis, we have featured books such as these on talent:
- The War for Talent by Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, Beth Axelrod (Harvard Business School Press, 2001)
- Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin (Portfolio, 2008)
I think the major reason that the quest for talent will not go away is that it is part of the consideration at the top of a company’s Performance Management system. The first step is to “hire the right person.” The second step is to get the person off to a good start with proper orienting or onboarding. What’s funny is that if more companies would take the time to get the right person and get that person off to a great start, everything else under performance management would fall in place. For example, companies would need to less counseling, progressive discipline, firing, and so forth.
However, this is not the case! When managers have openings, they want to fill them as quickly as possible. Companies are not taking the time and care to be sure that the new hire is a proper fit. Talent is a huge consideration in this process, but not the only factor. Yet, it is this rush to fill an open position, rather than ensuring that a person is right for the job, that creates so much trouble.
I understand this. Many times managers with open positions do the work of the open position. That means at least two jobs – if not more. But, I think of the old line, “do you want to pay me now or pay me later?” A company does not have to take the time to get the right person, but when it does not, it will pay for it later in many ways.
Talent is important. That’s why we continue to see authors write about it, and why we see customers purchase books about it, that ultimately make best-seller lists.
What do you think? Let’s talk about it.
P.S. – By the way, did you know you can purchase synopses of the two talent books I refer to above at 15MinuteBusinessBooks.com? You get the audio presentation along with an outline and sheet of key quotes.
