Issue No. 116 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a national bestseller that will make you think and think and think. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Gladwell on Success
Few books cause me to think differently about the world. This week’s book did. I can’t stop talking about it. (Just ask my wife.) Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell has gifted us with an absolutely fascinating book that will make you think, ponder, discuss and wonder. He asserts, “I will argue that there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success.”
The author of The Tipping Point and Blink continues, “The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.”
Titled Outliers, the book defines an outlier as “something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body.” And with one fast-reading example after another, story teller/commentator-on-life Gladwell is off and running.
Why are Asian students seemingly more successful at math? Go back to the rice paddies and observe the rigorous work ethic. Why do college students in the south get more rattled than Northerners when confronted? Check out their Scottish and Irish ancestors and their “culture of honor.” After an alarming number of airline crashes on the formerly named Korean Airlines, how and why did management change the culture of the cockpit? (Don’t read “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes” chapter at 30,000 feet, as I did last week. Yikes!)
What does the “Matthew Effect” (per the first book of the New Testament) have to do with hockey players born in January? Teachers, parents and grandparents will be amazed at his data on I.Q., education and school vacations—the U.S. school year is 180 days long. Japan’s is 243 days.
You will insist that Gladwell’s conclusions cannot possibly be true. Are they? You’ll sense sadness at how we fail to understand culture—and the incredible harm of wasted years and lives—all preventable, claims the author. He makes a compelling case about luck, timing—and the extraordinary power of the 10,000-hour rule and how it contributed to the success of Bill Gates and the Beatles.
Read the book and then host a team discussion on the vast implications for your organization, such as what to consider when recruiting new team members and how professional development programs might need to change based on a person’s ethnicity. For example, Greeks and Guatemalans are in the top five of the “uncertainty avoidance” countries (high reliance on rules), while Swedes and Jamaicans represent the top-five cultures best able to tolerate ambiguity.
To order this week’s book from Amazon, click on this title: Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) According to the author, “job applicants at Microsoft are asked a battery of questions designed to test their smarts, including the classic, ‘Why are manhole covers round?’ If you don’t know the answer to that question, you’re not smart enough to work at Microsoft.”
2) Gladwell writes, “Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” Do you agree?
The Strategy Bucket - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Strategy Bucket, Chapter 3, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to ignite the awesome power of a Big Holy Audacious Goal (B.H.A.G.).
President Harry S. Truman said, “You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.”
Is your plan big enough for the next two to three years? Does your strategy leave room for expecting the unexpected?
According to a book review in the Wall Street Journal last week, the chairman of Nestle complained that his competition now is no longer Mars or Pepsi but telephone companies. “Five years ago seventy percent of the pocket money of kids was to buy chocolates, ice cream; now eighty percent is in telecom. Can you imagine the impact for my business?”
What will impact your organization next year? Check out Chapter 3 for the four strategic best practices in strategic planning. Plus, visit the Strategy Bucket on our website for resources, more downloadable worksheets, and other book recommendations, including Worksheet #3.1: "Summarize Your Plan With a G.N.O.M.E. Chart." Download this simple tool to summarize your strategic plan on one sheet of paper. Identify your Goals, Needs, Objectives, Methods and Evaluation process.
CEO Dialogues – Dec. 3, 2008. CEOs: Join your colleagues for the next CEO Dialogues, a one-day roundtable for presidents, CEOs, executive directors and senior pastors, at South Hills Country Club in West Covina, Calif., with John Pearson, Alan Bergstedt and Stan White. For more information, visit CEO Dialogues.
CEO/Board Chair Dialogues – Jan. 20-21, 2009. CEOs and Board Chairs: Join your colleagues for this first-ever dialogue for the CEO and the board chair, a 24-hour retreat in sunny Phoenix in January with Bob Andringa, Fred Laughlin and Dale Lefever. It’s limited to 12 teams of two (24 people). For more information, visit CEO Dialogues.
I am always impressed by Gladwell's ability to break down what appears to be a simple concept into different equally important layers that I never would have considered. The reasearch is impeccable, and the conclusions make practical, realistic sense. If you are someone who associates and/or works with people of varied socioeconomic backgrounds, the evidence of Gladwell's conclusions are obvious.
Posted by: Espana | January 30, 2012 at 07:41 PM