Book Abstract: Takeaways from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers
I have had the chance of reading a few good books off-late, this post is my takeaways in brief from one of my favourite's this year- Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers
Outliers is a fact and data driven take on the story of success. It covers what goes behind the scenes and the factors that had contributed to someone's success. Malcolm Gladwell [MG] has successfully punctured the notion of "self-made" man for me. As mentioned earlier in one of my posts last week, MG clearly puts across the facts around how success is more than just about having the talent, but also about the hard work, perseverance, opportunities and being at the right place at the right time. This post will cover the key aspects of the book.
The book primarily is broken down into two aspects of success - Opportunity & Legacy (Culture)
Opportunity
As per MG, success comes to folks who grab the opportunity whole-heartedly and invest their time and effort to master or succeed in their respective skills. The examples of how certain individuals have been successful is well researched and have data points that substantiate why success is not directly related to someones IQ levels. Some my take aways from this section:
Being at the right place at the right time: His research on how being born during the right period is one of the influencing factors for one's success. MG clearly articulates how being born during the right period along with the right set of circumstances are a great recipe for success. Below are some of his examples:
- Most of the prominent businessmen who built the great American Industry and the financial institutions were born during the decade of 1830 - 1840
- Silicon Valley stalwarts like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Vinod Khosla were all born between 1950 - 1960
I m not trivialising their capabilities, but merely point out that being born during the right period increases the chance of succeeding in their respective fields
Hard work & Perseverance: MG talks about a 10,000 hour rule, which brings in the perspective of effort someone has put in to learn and master in their respective fields
- Beatles in one of their interviews had attributed their success to some of the performances in Hamburg during the early part of the career. They performed for over 270 nights over a period of 18 month and each gig lasted for over 8 hours
- Both Bill Gates and Bill Joy had access to over 7000 hours of computing during the late 60s which allowed them to hone their programming skills. This was unheard of in the 60s when computing power was only restricted to large universities and very large corporates. Some of these just happened by chance
Legacy (Culture)
As per MG, the culture and legacy of ones upbringing plays a key role in success and transformation. He has brought in a lot of transformation anecdotes and examples right from the airline industry (how safety aspects of Airline industry improved through changes in culture) to fields of rice paddies in China and their relationship to how most of SE Asians perform well in Math to how KIPP transformed American education system in some of the backward suburbs of America.
This book is definitely a compelling read to understand how success follows a predictable course and that, not all the brightest succeed