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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 08.24.09
Malcolm Gladwell Emphasizes Training: "Practice makes perfect"
Malcolm Gladwell's new book may make CEOs blink twice before slashing training budgets. Gladwell writes that in the midst of financial challenges it is more important than ever to focus on retaining and developing top talent. Talent should be "thought about as something a company develops, rather than something that is 'acquired'.
Yes, the human trait we commonly call "talent" or "ability" is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers - whether in memory or surgery, ballet, sales or computer programming - are nearly always made, not born.
Ability, according to Gladwell, is just one factor in success. He points to research that suggests that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. What's more, the people at the very top don't just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
Practice does make perfect. The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field. This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.
Fortune magazine's review of Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success highlights the importance of investing in communicating company mission, culture and skills. "Look around Wall Street, or what's left of it today," he says, "and you'll see lots and lots and lots of people from Goldman Sachs. That's not a coincidence. It's because they took their mission to invest in people seriously."
Gladwell argues that the state of today's economy is the perfect time to invest in talent development. "When it's easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent. Now, you're forced to."
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