If you haven’t picked up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, you may want to grab it for the great nuggets of insight filled within. This book provides some useful advice that most everyone should ponder. While this book has many, we’ll discuss a few key elements that can make you an Outlier.
You put in long hours each work day. You go back to college to get that MBA to get more skills for moving up. You stretch yourself to the limits to accomplish tasks in hopes of gaining the recognition that leads to greater reward. Yet, nothing seems to come. You begin to wonder if you’re doing the right things or if anyone even cares. But there are many highly successful people in the world. Why can’t you be one of them? Well, you can. You just need to change some of the things you are doing or maybe not. Maybe you just need to put more time into doing them or just enlist some support from others. Let’s take a look at what’s worked for the highly successful, as defined in part, by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers.
The 10,000 Hours Rule. Gladwell posits a somewhat simple theory to become a master at your chosen profession; that is, you only need to dedicate about 4hours per day for ten years or 10,000 hours to building your skills. He cited many examples to support this theory, such as Bill Gates and the Beatles. He also stated that it’s very difficult to find a highly successful individual who hasn’t put in their time. This is an important point that shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Just consider the advice Red McCombs gave us. In my previous post, this billionaire told us that it takes a lot of hard work to reach his level of success. Gladwell simply defined the level of effort it takes, based on his research of historical successes. It’s not important whether the number of hours is totally correct and isn’t any guarantee of success for us. The key is that it will take a lot of work. So, if you have expectations that a college degree or special assignment will get you way ahead of the pack, you may want reset those expectations. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do them. I’m suggesting that the fast track may not be that fast. You’ve got to put in your time. Anything less with give you something less.
The Matthew Effect. In sociology, this term suggests that you gain more opportunity as you achieve your goals. You may have heard the phrase “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Gladwell tells us that your environment will play a big role in your level of achieved success. If managers don’t identify your talent and develop it at an early age, it’s unlikely that you’ll achieve stardom. If you do achieve early success, it’s likely that you’ll get extra attention from management and opportunities to develop more skills. Hopefully, this activity feeds on itself, giving you more and more attention.
Of course, some of us may be well passed our early career years. The challenge for us then becomes how to surround ourselves with successful people who can help us obtain more opportunity. I’ve published my own theory last year, called the Blitz Approach, on this which suggests that you create a team of supporters that you work with closely to improve your upward mobility by managing perception within the workplace. Most decisions in organizations are made on “gut feeling.” In short, they are made on little information. Just imagine if you could control that information. Well, you can.
IQ isn’t everything. If you’re in the corporate world, you probably already know this but Gladwell reminds us that genius is not the only or even the most important thing when determining a person's success. All you have to do is look up the corporate ladder to see evidence of that. He discusses the story of Christopher Langan, a man who "despite an IQ of 195 (Einstein's was 150) wound up working on a horse farm in rural Missouri". Gladwell points out that Langan has not reached a high level of success because of the surroundings he grew up in. Langan's life was void of the resources that could be used to help him take advantage of his brain power; thus, he had to find success by himself. In short, you can’t do it alone.
While these factors seem trivial, the evidence Gladwell collected seems to support them. It stills support the old idea that you have to pay your dues. You still have to work for it. It also provides some evidence that shows privilege can support the rise to greatness by providing opportunity that would not normally be available. Most of us aren’t wealthy, nor do we have great networks with resources that could sprinkle that magic fairy dust on us that will transform us into someone successful. But, you can build your own success team and develop some of these resources, such as a close network of people who will help create a better (e.g. more accurate) perception of you within your organization. The good news from all of this is that this stuff works. There are lots of examples in Gladwell’s book. Read it. Heed it. Become a outlier.
Author:
Todd Rhoad, MSEE, MBA is Director at BT Consulting, a career consulting firm in Altanta and author of Blitz The Ladder. He can be reached at todd.rhoad@blitzteamconsulting.com.
