The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell - Book Report/Review Example

The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell Introduction “The Story of Success” is a book written by one of the most profound writer called Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell has an extraordinary gift of simplifying things that seem to be complex into simplified knowledge. He is alive and rational writer in his works as he quests for rational justification for various obvious concurrences, mysteries, and daily problems. He is an opportunist in an intellectual sense, in that he manipulates new fashion of writing with smart phrases to give details and description of given social phenomenon. In his book, “The Story of Success”, Malcolm Gladwell tries to dismiss the belief of American individualism as the rationalization of what forms a successful person. Galdwell instead chooses to study deeply into outstanding performance in individual accomplishments at present and in the past, exceptional performances in culture, and aptitude testing trends (Gladwell 120). He argues that the background of a person plays a major role in the determination of whether that individual will succeed. Some of the background factors he points out in his book include; dates of birth, methods of parenting, culture of communities, lineage, and access to specialized resources. The author states that success is not just an inherent capability but it is collective with various factors as cultural bequest, opportunity and purposive hard work. Gladwell precisely proves his affirmation through success stories in his book. The Book’s Overview The writings of Malcolm in his book are far from being radical, but they are interesting and placidly convincing. The author’s strength is in his style of writing and choice of words in the book. The book is not likely to tell the readers about something they may differ with it may not require logical thinking, or it may not speak of something not already known. Malcolm book acknowledges that it is true that hard work and diligence are key to success, but the book also points out that luck is involved for one to be at that particular position where the hard work results to success. The Story of Success is not necessarily a story about success, but the tale give a rather different and a new way of perceiving what is success. The title of the book is a twist of the author’s work significance. Gladwell ventures his studies mostly in what makes some individuals more successful than others. He calls them the “outliers” who are usually perceived to have to have a far above intelligence and talent. Gladwell however goes ahead and challenges this notion by studying the background of a few outliers (Gladwell 120). The author starts by assessing a small Roseto town in Pennsylvania. A town known for the least number of residents with heart illnesses. Researchers noted that apart from other probable causes such as genetics and diet, the researchers discovered that also the tight social composition of the community kept them comparatively healthy. The author talks of a dominant culture that survives through generations which ends up making the town an “outlier”. The book basically is divided into two major parts; one where the author talks of opportunity and he mentions what contributes to opportunity as 10000hours, timing, opportunity itself, meaningful work and upbringing. The second thing the author secondly speaks of legacy where he concludes that morals are continuous down without our knowledge from generation to generation of which has an impact on our current behaviour (Gladwell 120). Malcolm Gladwell book, The Story of Success, is a book that directly but in a rather unique way has aspects of organizational behaviour concepts. In the introduction Gladwell talk of a research done on immigrants in relation to heart diseases. Stewart Wolf, a researcher, discovered something interesting while carrying out a study on the Roseto community. The research showed that compared to the rest of the country, the people of the Roseto community had minimum cases of heart ailments. Stewart joined with Bruhn John to study further the anomaly of low heart complications in the community as compared to the rest of the country. Contrary to the what was expected to be the cause such as place, genes or exercise but Wolf discovered that the community of Roseto in the 1950s were in good health condition because of their uncensored culture uprooted from Roseto in Italy. The author suggests that the researchers should have thought about what could have caused the abnormality, not just in a medical way but also in a new way with issues as the ethos of the community. In chapter one, The Mathews Effect, the author talks of the most common questions we ask ourselves about the “outliers” such as what personality do they have, their intelligence, talents they are born with, what they are like, or what type of lifestyle they lead? The other is interested on the “outliers” are viewed and described. He talks of the research on the professional hockey players from Canada who went through various evaluations from kindergarten to distinguish the best player from the rest (Rigney 105). The most obvious results of the study as expected would be the best player would be one with a natural talent for athletics and may have gone an extra mile since birth to perfect his talent. Contrary to these expectations, the author has a different explanation where he says “ the best are the best because of the month in which they were born”. The author bases his explanation on the fact that the qualifying cut-off age class for hockey in Canada is 1 January. He also infers the same analogy for the European football players. Gladwell also cites the research done a Canadian Psychologist Roger Barnsley who studied the Canadian hockey players and argues that the system is skewed to the kids born close to the cut-off age if the talented are identified at a tender age, separated and offered specialized training. Another study done by Elizabeth Dhuey and Kelly Bedard gave the same results for the best math students. The students with birthdays closer to the cut-off age have a higher probability of getting to college as compared to the rest. The author uses this research to conclude that the date of birth also has an impact on the sum success in a given society. The author also points out that one can be successful by doing practice again and agai. He argues that if the successful hockey do not have the innate ability for athletics then they are successful as a result of doing much practice (Lane 95). The author comes up with a 10,000hour theory that assumes if one does a 10,000hours practise, the person will master the subject well which would to the individual successful. Malcolm supports his argument sing the research done by K. Anders Erickson in the 1990’s who studied musicians who practice for long hours in Berlin at an academy of music. The study showed that those most of the musicians started practising at a tender age of 5 years. However, the most best performing musicians were those that practised for a total of 10,000hrs by the time they attained the age of 20. The author presents three scenarios of 10,000 hours rule successes. He talks of the cases of Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and the Beatles. He talks of Bill Joy who had Unique opportunities that contribute to his success. Joy had the opportunity to attend to the only university that acknowledged time needed for system computers. He uses the same appraisal on Bill gates upbringing, and he discovers that Gates also had time to practice programming for long hours that coincide with the 10,00 hours rule. Gates had the opportunity to have sufficient exposure with computer software. Gladwell Malcolm also looks at how cultural legacy affects success. He points out that cultural legacy is powerful, and they survive the generation after generation long even after the context in which they were established has long been obsolete. The author uses the happenings of Harlan, Kentucky to support his analysis of the power of cultural legacy. He focuses on the Harlan county formed by eight families from northern British (Emory 67). He talks of the “culture of honor” that stood firm in a dispute and spread through the region the Scotch-Irish immigrants had inhabited. He supports his analogy by the study done in Michigan University by Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen. The study showed how the 18-20 years old were insulted and this was studied by looking facial impressions of the students, saliva, hormone, and how they handshake. “The story of success” is a relevant book in the organization set up. The book points out major areas that impact the human behaviour in general. This aspect of the book acknowledge what results to organization behaviour (Gibson, Ivancevic, Donelly, Jr, Kanopaske 120). It is relevant to organizations whereby for instance if the employees apply the 10,000 hours rule, they end up mastering their job requirements and hence yield high results as a result of effectiveness and work efficient. In an organizational set up the cultural may affect the performance of employees. This can be a case where the employees from a rich lineage may want superior positions and dominion over the rest of the employees. If such employees do not get those positions, they may feel underrated by the organization which may result to low job morale hence poor performance. To some extent the Mathew effect pointed out in the book has a direct impact to organizational behaviour. If some employees are perceived to be more talented than others, they may be promoted to higher levels of the organization which may be of positive impact or negative to the organization. It can be positive in the sense that the rest of the employees may be motivated to work harder for promotion as the ‘outliers’(Gibson, Ivancevic, Donelly, Jr, Kanopaske 120). Conclusion Malcolm Gladwell is one of the controversial writers that puts forward a different way of perceiving success in his book The Success Story. He uses different success stories to prove his discoveries. He uses studies as the Roset community with a low rate of heart disease compared to the rest of the country, the 10,000 hours rule pointing out big names as Bill Joy and Bill Gates, and the powerful force of cultural legacy. The book relates to the different organizational behaviour concepts as it talks about the different factors that shape the behaviour of an individual to becoming a successful person in the community. Works Cited Emory, Campbell. Gullah Cultural Legacies:: A Synopsis of Gullah Traditions, Customary Beliefs, Art forms and Speech on Hilton Head Island and vicinal Sea Islands in South Carolina and Georgia . Georgia: BookSurge Publishing , 2008. 67. Print. Gibson, J. , J. Ivancevich, J. H. Donnelly, Jr., and R. Konopaske. Organizations, behavior, structure, processes. McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2011. 120. print. Gladwell, Malcolm . Outliers, the Story of Success. Newyork: Little, Brown & Company, 2009. 120. print. Lane , Phillis. The 10,000hours rule,You Become What You Practice. Chicago: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform , 2012. 95. Print. Rigney, Daniel. The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage. Columbia: Columbia University Press; First Edition edition , 2010. 105. Print. Read More