Business Bookshelf

By now, Malcolm Gladwell is as much a brand as he is a writer with big ideas. All of his books are in paperback, stacked on tables near the front of any major bookstore. His stories run for thousands and thousands of words in The New Yorker, and folks will read every one of them because few writers are able to fit everything together so well and help us understand our own culture.
The Gladwell brand is so prevalent now that even satirical websites, like MalcolmGladwellBookGenerator.com, have popped up.

So when Gladwell published “Outliers: The Story of Success,” a few years ago and the book’s idea did not match those posed in his first two best-sellers, most critics hammered him. That is not to say that “Outliers” is a bad book. To the contrary, there is a reason Gladwell has sold truck loads of books.

He can tell a story and he can explain ideas more clearly than just about anybody else with a notebook and a keyboard. Is the big idea in “Outliers” – that success in any field has as much to do with circumstance as it does with hard work – as revolutionary as those in “Blink” and “The Tipping Point”? No. But by painting portrait after portrait of success, Gladwell does manage to provide a bit of a blueprint for business owners, regular employees, even folks who just want to get ahead.

The age of great American tycoons is probably over (best to have been born around 1830, Gladwell posits), and there will be few opportunities again to rise to global prominence in computer development (a 1955 birth would have been best), but opportunity is still out there. Just put in your 10,000 hours and be ready when it knocks.
Some other practical business advice from a book that breaks down more than a few misconceptions:

Want to succeed? First put in the hours. Every time Gladwell writes another success story – whether in American computer development or even youth hockey – the magic number really does seem to be about 10,000 hours. If you devote 10,000 hours to your craft, you will be proficient no matter your job description. “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good,” Gladwell writes. “It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” If you work eight hours a day, five days a week, that works out to about five years.

Enough is almost always enough. Gladwell writes about geniuses for a couple chapters and reaches the conclusion that, eventually, above-average intelligence is often as useful and productive as genius. An IQ of 110, the general rule for success in graduate programs, is equal to a genius IQ of 180. Sound odd? Consider the NBA. A 6-foot-3 player stands a better chance of making it than a 6-2 player, who stands a better chance than a 6-1 player. “But past a certain point, height stops mattering so much,” Gladwell writes. “A basketball player only has to be tall enough – and the same is true of intelligence. Intelligence has a threshold.” It might help to hire someone with graduate degrees, but how many do you need in the office?

Be assertive. Gladwell also writes about plane crashes for a chapter, and about why certain pilots tend to crash more often. One reason, he finds, is mitigating language. Hints and suggestions don’t mean as much  as statements and commands. “We will do this” will likely lead to more results than “I think we should try this.” Be clear. Be direct. Make your point. L&L

The author is a freelance writer based in Cleveland.