The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell - Essay Example

Book Review Review of the book “ Outliers: The Story of Success ” by Malcolm Gladwell Introduction Malcolm Gladwell is a 51 year old UK- born and Canadian educated journalist who has worked for the Washington Post and the New Yorker. He is now a full time author and public speaker. He has written several best-selling books in the field of social sciences. The book “Outliers” was published in 2008. As the book jacket explains, “stories about successful people focus on intelligence and ambition……. The true story of success is very different and if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should look around them – at such things as their family, their birthplace or even their birth date”. The book is a collection of various case stories that are divided into two parts labeled Opportunity and Legacy. From these stories Malcolm Gladwell draws his conclusions. The book has attracted both strong support and strong criticism, but many of the author’s ideas are extremely interesting and thought provoking. Summary of the Book 1) The Introduction to the book deals with small town of Roseto in Pennsylvania that had a far lower incidence of heart disease than neighboring towns. The better health of the population was unrelated to diet or other lifestyle reasons or genetics. The reason was identified as the strong family ties amongst the people represented by several generations living together. These ties were ingrained in the people from the practice in the Italian region from where they immigrated. Malcolm Gladwell suggests that just as health is influenced by society, success could also be related to society (Gladwell, 2008, p11). 2) The first chapter of the book is titled “The Mathew Effect” from a biblical quotation that says that those that have shall be given even more while those that do not have will have even the little that they have taken away from them (Gladwell, 2008, p15). Gladwell quotes a study in the mid-1980s of Canadian hockey players which found that in any team, the majority of the players were born in January, February or March compared to the later months of the year. The reason for this was found to be the system from the school age where age group teams were formed with a cutoff date of January 1. The children born in the first quarter of a year are on average bigger and more developed than children born six months later. The older children get selected into teams and given coaching in preference to younger children. Gladwell suggests that those who are marginally better in a group often get greater opportunities to succeed (Gladwell, 2008, p30). 3) Chapter two of this section is titled “The 10,000- Hour Rule” and makes two separate points. Software pioneers like Bill Joy and Bill Gates had the opportunity to work on software programming for over 10,000 hours. The then expensive computer access time was made possible due to supportive parents, supportive schools or plain luck. “Not extraordinary talent, but extraordinary opportunities” are the reason for their success. (Gladwell, 2008, p 55). The other point that Gladwell makes in this chapter is that each field has a golden period of opportunity. For software programmers the golden period was the computer revolution of the 1970s and Bill Gates and Bill Joyce born in the mid-1950s could take advantage of it (Gladwell, 2008, p 67-68). 4) Chapters 3 and 4 are both titled “ The Touble with Geniuses”. In Chapter 3, Malcolm Gladwell says that above a threshold, a higher IQ does not necessarily mean greater probability of success. Nobel Prizes have been won by alumni of smaller and less known universities and not just the best colleges. A University of Michigan Law School study has found that the 10% minority quota students did as well in their profession as merit students. Gladwell suggests that this is because “the academic credentials of the minority students are above a threshold” (Gladwell, 2008, p 84). Chapter 4 cites a study on third grade children, which shows that children of wealthier parents, both blacks and whites, were self-confident whereas children of poorer parents developed “an emerging sense of distance, distrust and constraint” (Gladwell, 2008, p 105). Gladwell makes the distinction between “analytical intelligence” of the type shown in IQ tests and “practical intelligence” which includes things like “knowing what to say to whom, when to say it and knowing how to say it for maximum effect” (Gladwell, 2008, p 101). 5) In Chapter 5 Gladwell writes about the success of the lawyer Joseph Flom. He was not hired by the major law firms despite being an honor student from Harvard Law School due to his Jewish origin and joined a start-up law firm. He soon rose to become the managing partner of the firm. They took all kinds of work and developed expertise in the handling of hostile corporate takeover bids and grew to become the top name in this field. Gladwell suggests that the success of Joseph Flom and some other Jewish people was due to their parents having worked in the garment industry. This work gave them “the autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward which are the three qualities that makes work satisfying” (Gladwell, 2008, p 149). 6) Part 2 of the book is titled Legacy and in Chapter 6 titled “Harlan, Kentucky”, Malcolm Gladwell says that a person’s cultural background often influences him in current behavior. Immigrants to Harlan, Kentucky were Scottish-Irish herders who had the ingrained habit of defending their herds and territory from others. These traits remain even after several generations as found in a study of students from the University of Michigan. The descendants of such immigrants were more aggressive in reacting to perceived insults to their honor than students coming from other parts of the US. Gladwell says that a process of “social inheritance” causes attitudes and behavior to get passed on through generations (Gladwell, 2008, p 175). 7) In Chapter 7, Gladwell cites the example of Korean Airlines, which had suffered a series of plane crashes in the late 1980s, including the shooting down of flight KAL 801 over Russian airspace. Gladwell says plane crashes most often occur due to failure of teamwork and communication between crew members. One pilot notices something wrong and fails to tell the commander (Gladwell, 2008, p 184). In Korean culture, it is considered wrong to disagree with or contradict a superior. In many of the crashes, the co-pilot did not communicate any misgivings to the commander. Cultural retraining and the change to using English by pilots for cockpit communications helped the staff to overcome this barrier. When communicating in English, the pilots were able to overcome their cultural legacy of deference to their seniors. 8) In Chapter 8, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that the ability of Asians in math is due to their cultural background in growing rice in paddy fields which requires greater precision and complexity than other crops. Asian languages also have shorter and more logical words for numbers than English. 9) In the final chapter, Gladwell suggests that longer school hours in Asian countries give their students an edge over Amercian children. Inner city children from South Bronx placed in intensive study schools which have 50% - 60% longer school hours achieve the same success as children from rich suburbs. Gladwell summarizes the book by saying “It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities and have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them” (Gladwell, 2008, p 267). Critique of the book 1) In statistics, the term “Outlier” is an observation that lies an abnormal distance from other values in a random sample from a population. In statistical analysis, such outliers are often ignored for fear that their inclusion would distort the findings. Malcolm Gladwell’s does choose outliers in terms of extraordinary success or unusual ability for inclusion in his book. The problem for the reader occurs when he then argues that the success of the outliers is not unusual but as a result of their opportunity and cultural background. 2) The introductory chapter talks of the better health of the people of Roseto town as being due to the close family ties of the immigrants to that town from a region of Italy. To make such a conclusion acceptable to the average reader, Malcolm Gladwell should have identified at least one other town where similar family ties exist, resulting in similar outcome on health. In the absence of such validation, it just remains an interesting story. The story of Roseto also does not appear to have any real connection to the rest of the book. 3) The chapter on “The Mathew Effect” does have some grounding in conventional theories of organizational behavior. As a report by career consultant Barbara Moses points out, bosses playing favorites is one of the top complaints of employees in organizations. The report says that a survey by the Georgetown University of 300 executives at large US corporations found that 92% see favoritism as influencing promotions. The causes of favoritism can be varied. The most common reason is that the favorite is a better performer, more reliable, makes the boss look good or is simply more likeable. The favorite could also have more potential (Moses, 2012). However, an alternative view could simply the normal bell curve distribution of employee ability and performance which is well accepted in Organizational behavior theory. In any group of individuals, a few would be at the top end of the curve in ability and performance, the majority would be in the middle and a few at the bottom end. Any manager would tend to encourage and support the advancement of his better people and spend less time on the middle majority or the bottom end low performers. 4) It is also easy to accept the basis of “The 10,000-hour rule” which essentially says that talent alone is insufficient, it must be honed with practice to achieve success. This chapter of the book has attracted widespread debate. Anders Ericcson, the Florida University psychologist whose study is quoted in the book, is reported to have said that for the 10,000-hour rule to be effective, the practice has to be “deliberate, dedicated time spent focusing on improvement” (Bradley, 2012). Malcolm Gladwell clearly does not mean to say that practice alone is sufficient. He clearly means to say instead that innate talent in people such as Bill Gates requires the extensive practice that the 10,000-hour rule suggests to achieve success. There must surely have been other software programmers with computer access, but who did not go on to found Microsoft. Organizational theory would support the need for talent being a pre-requisite to hard work. Every employee in a company or organization would work around 2,000 hours in a year... He or she would reach the 10,000-hour mark in about 5 years. However, without the requisite talent, none would advance in their careers to higher positions of responsibility. In fact corporate training programs are aimed at teaching employees new skills or improving innate skills to occupy higher positions of responsibility. 5) The two chapters on genius are also readily acceptable for a student of organizational behavior. As Mathew Knight writes in a CNN article, IQ testing or its surrogates such as GMAT, GRE or SAT scores are widely used in the US for admissions to colleges and for employment. It is widely believed in the US that IQ is a strong indicator of ability to learn. Various studies in the US and in Europe have shown a strong correlation between IQ test scores and job performance. Mathew Knight cites a study by two professors at the Rotterdam School of Management that suggests that students who get higher score in such tests often have access to opportunities and resources to further improve their skills compared to students who get lower scores (Knight, 2011). This finding supports Malcolm Gladwell’s Mathew Effect theory. The Rotterdam School study also found much weaker correlation between IQ tests and job performance in their studies in China and the Middle East, where college admissions were not so strongly based on IQ tests (Knight, 2011). Robbins and Judge in the textbook “Organizationsl Behavior” define Intellectual Ability as the ability to perform mental activities such as thinking, reasoning and problem solving. IQ tests and tests such as the SAT and GMAT are applied to test a person’s intellectual ability (Robbins and Judge, 2013, p 52,53). Gladwell’s distinction between analytical intelligence and practical intelligence is also reflected in recent organization behavior studies where greater emphasis is now given to Emotional Intelligence, which is now believed to “set star performers apart from the rest of the pack” (Bradberry, 2014). Emotional Intelligence is defined as being made up of personal competence and social competence, similar to Gladwell’s definition. 6) The three chapters of Gladwell’s book covering the Joseph Flom story where Jewish cultural heritage contributes to success; the Harlan, Kentucky story on inherited behavioral traits and the Korean Airlines story together serves Gladwell’s theory that a person’s cultural legacy contributes in large measure to his behavior. This idea relates quite well to our the class discussion on Cultural Values and Influences in Organization Behavior. The definition of Culture as “the shared values, beliefs, motives, identities and interpretations that result from the common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations” used in the class discussion is also the theme of Gladwell’s three stories. However, Gladwell’s suggestion that the Korean Airline crashes were entirely due to the culture of deference to authority requires some scrutiny. Korea has many enormously successful large corporations such as Samsung, Hyundai, LG, Kia Motors and POSCO. These companies have competed with global corporations from various countries and have succeeded without the kind of problems faced by Korean Airlines. These companies have perhaps developed an Organizational Culture as discussed in our classes which has helped them succeed. In discussions on culture in large companies it is also important to recognize the vast diversity that is prevalent in any workforce that can swamp any inherited cultural traits of the founders. The diversity in the workforce includes the mix of men and women, older and younger employees, differing levels of education and training all of which are overlaid on the cultural differences. In US companies, for example, the ethnic groups could include besides Caucasians and African Americans, Hispanics, Chinese, Indians and other ethnic groups. Even amongst the ethnic groupings, there would be significant differences between first generation immigrants and their children. For Joseph Flom’s law firm it is inconceivable to imagine that the Jewish inheritance of garment making would apply across a company that employs several thousand lawyers. The concept of the law firm having developed an Organizational Culture that helped it succeed is more likely to be true. 7) Gladwell’s linkage of math ability of Chinese students with the precision and hard work needed in paddy cultivation, however, appears a little contrived. His other suggestion that the Chinese language uses more precise names for numbers is perhaps more acceptable. Differing math ability has been the subject of various studies, some of them controversial. For example, Larry Summers, the President of Harvard University, resigned his post after controversially suggesting that women have different abilities than men. In mathematical tests the distribution of scores for women tends to be lower than that for men. The lower mathematical ability is thought by some people to be the reason for fewer women opting for courses in engineering, natural sciences or computer sciences at major universities compared to law, medicine or dentistry. Others believe that engineering and science courses are seen by women as less personally fulfilling. There are of course many women with superior math ability to men negating any generalization (Robbins and Judge, p 61). It would appear that the reasons for the superior math ability of Chinese students to be similarly subject to perceptions rather than any scientific correlation with the language or the profession of ancestors. 8) In the final chapter of his book, Malcolm Gladwell returns to his theme of longer school hours in Asian countries, making that education system superior to the Amercian school system. He appears to have focused primarily on success in a profession or a corporate role. There is enough evidence to show that extra-curricular activities are also important in the development of a child. Participating in extra-curricular activities such as sport, dramatics, music or even a part time job has resulted in children developing time management skills, the ability to prioritize, take responsibility and develop leadership skills (CollegeBoard). The general consensus is to let the child select what he or she likes doing rather than the parents or the school attempt to program a series of activities. 9) In the Epilogue titled “A Jamaican Story”, Malcolm Gladwell recounts his mother’s background as the child mixed parentage in Jamaica and the opportunities that she seized to educate herself, marry a Canadian and become accepted into Western society. This story appears to be Malcolm Gladwell’s attempt to explain his own legacy. In summary, The Ouliers is an extremely readable book and it is no surprise that it has been a best seller. The various stories that Malcolm Gladwell cites grab and hold our attention. Perhaps Gladwell’s objective was to write a best seller and not an academic textbook. The major criticism of his book arises from his tendency to use one-off examples and generalize from them. Gladwell almost never quotes a contrary opinion to his theories. As Christopher Chabris has written in an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Malcolm Gladwell too often presents as proven laws what are just intriguing possibilities and musings about human behavior” (Chabris). The book is undoubtedly good supplementary reading for a student of Organizational Behavior. References: 1) Bradberry, T., (2014). “Emotional Intelligence-EQ”, Forbes, 9 Jan 2014. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2014/01/09/emotional-intelligence/. 2) Bradley, D., (2012). “Why Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule is wrong”, BBC In-depth, 14 November 2012. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/ 20121114-gladwells-10000-hour-rule-myth. 3) Chabris, C.F., (2013). “Book Review: David and Goliath”, The Wall Street Journal, 28 Sept 2013. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/ 4) CollegeBoard. “The Extracurricular Edge”, College Board, no date. Retrieved from http://professionals.collegeboard.com/guidance/prepare/extracurricular 5) Gladwell, M., (2008). “Outliers – The Story of Success”, Little Brown and Company, Hachette Book Group. 6) Knight, M., (2011). “Does IQ predict performance at work?”, CNN Route to the Top, 28 Feb 2011. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/ 02/28/IQ. jobs.study/>. 7) Moses, B., (2012). “Does your boss play favorites?”, The Globe and Mail, 10 May 2012. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/does-your-boss-play-favourites/article4170253/. 8) Robbins, S.P. and Judge T.A., (2013). “Organizational Behavior”, 15th Edition, Prentice Hall. Read More