Outliers: The Story of Success
Posted on January 20th, 2010 by Shane Gill – 3 Comments
The self-made man and his rags-to-riches struggle is often glorified in our society, especially in Australia. The most endearing is the story of Donald Bradman: his relentless practise with a cricket stump and golf ball leads to one of the most illustrious careers in sporting history.
The Don is a perfect example of an outlier. His batting average is a freakish 4.4 standard deviations above the mean, a statistical anomaly that hoists his success well above any other sporting hero. Michael Jordan has nothing on Donald Bradman.
The story of The Don is also typical of an outlier. He emerged from Australian bush leagues to make a lasting mark on international cricket. His habit of hitting a golf ball against a water tank has become part of Australian lore. We attribute The Don’s success to the hard work he put in as a youth - he is self-made. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell contends that there is much more to success than a bit of hard yakka.
Outliers is a masterfully crafted collection of stories about people that stand out from the crowd: rockstars, geniuses and sporting heroes. Malcolm Gladwell examines the reasons behind extraordinary success and failure. By the end of the book you will be convinced that life is the product of history, community, opportunity and legacy. Lady luck has far more to do with success than most of us would like to admit.
There is no denying that Donald Bradman’s time spent practising with a stump and golf ball contributed to his cricketing success. Practise makes perfect, and Bradman got his practise in while he was young. But surely there have been other young boys who have spent their free time with a ball and bat, mimicking their heroes. I can clearly remember the years I spent in the backyard with my hockey stick, imitating Wayne Gretzky and scoring goals on my younger brother. Yet I am no hockey superstar (if only I had been born in January - see the book for details).
A quick glance over Donald Bradman’s biography gives insight into some of the advantages The Don might have had over other cricketers. Donald Bradman was born in 1908 and raised in New South Wales, Australia: the best possible place for cricket. Australia began its domination over England in 1897 and New South Wales was the team to beat from 1895-1966. Bradman had the benefit of honing his skills against the best in the world from day 1. You would only need to travel to the next town to find Bill O’Reilly, one of the greatest bowlers of all time.
At age 12 Bradman was keeping score for his town club when they showed up a man short. Bradman was asked to fill in - by his uncle, the captain of the team. When Bradman turned 18, Australia’s ageing cricket team lost the ashes and many players retired. The recruitment effort that followed and Bradman’s knack for replacing injured players would eventually lead him to sporting glory. The Don was always in the right place at the right time.
A quick glance a Wikipedia reveals so much, but the story we tell is of a boy playing in his back yard. Maybe we want to believe that if we work hard anything is possible. Or perhaps: it’s too late for us now so why bother. Outliers encourages us to go beyond our simplistic view of life and to realise that there is no secret to success. Putting in time is a requirement, but it is nowhere near the complete picture. If we are going to be successful, we need to look far beyond the convenient and acknowledge that “self-made” is a delusion.
Thanks Shane,
Just to tie this back to a previous post - the article in the OZ that I referenced in my post about 10,000 of Deliberate Practice being required to reach “Guru” status stated that this book (and another which we have not yet read and reviewed) drew on the research documented by Anders Ericsson.
Shane’s post has me interested to read more of this recent book by Malcolm, which will follow my reviews of two of Malcolm’s other books, “Blink” and the “Tipping Point”.
For instance, in terms of “lucky breaks” our company is the recipient of some of these - the fact that we use the internet to repackage electricity market data and make it understandable to people in different parts of the globe is a business model that just could not have existed 15 years ago as:
1) No internet (in practical terms)
2) No electricity market.
3) Software development technology improved to the point of making it possible.
etc….
Hence “luck” certainly does play a part.
My view on luck is summed up in the quote by some wise person (forget who exactly) who said something along the lines of “yes, luck does play a part - but I find that the harder/better/smarter I work, the luckier I get“.
Cheers
Paul
What Gladwell misses is the power and reach of the networks or connections we accidentally or deliberately build, and the processes we use to search out “success memes” so that we can take advantage of rising trends. None of that depends upon birth or life circumstances, or upon emotional or cognitive intelligence. Great book and definitely worth the money, but just google “success meme, outliers” and you’ll see there’s a whole new world out there.
[...] back to the works of Anders Ericson that has lead to books such as “Talent is overrated”, “Outliers” and “The talent code” – all of