Book Review: Outliers

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Not long ago I asked a consultant in my field for some advice.  He's a few years older than me, and much better at what we do than I am.  I asked him about how he would have handled a specific situation, and his recommendations were golden.  Then he asked if I had read Outliers.  "Yes," I said.  "I love Malcolm Gladwell."  "Well," he replied. "Don't forget the 10,000 Hour Rule. When you have been doing this for as long as I have, these things will be just as natural to you."

I loved that answer!  So smart, so kind, and probably so true.  I did not know what Outliers was about when I picked it up, but it sure is strong stuff.  Gladwell had a lot to live up to after The Tipping Point and Blink, and he does not disappoint.  The art and science of achieving excellence is a wonderful subject for an author of Gladwell's profound talent.  He finds the relevant social scientific research from rarely-read university journals, roots out compelling stories of those whose accomplishments surpass any in their field, and connects the dots in a way that makes any of us feel like the possibilities for our own lives are endless.  We just have to find and embrace where the puzzle pieces fell in our favor.

So what if I wasn't born in January? I am not interested in hockey.  I was a high-performing kindergartener, however, and have been reaping the benefits of extra attention and high expectations ever since. Until Outliers, I didn't know why it was that some things seemed to come more easily to me than to others I knew.  It turns out that the luck of the draw, together with my willingness to practice, formed an avalanche that continues to roll.

Gladwell tells his own mother's family story in the epilogue of Outliers to great effect.  The learning in his works is never confined to the main thesis, but expands out exponentially and even increases with a second reading.  Thanks, Malcolm!  Your relatives must be crazy proud!

A short summary, written by me, is available for download here.

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Book Review: David and Goliath

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Cracking into a fresh book by Malcolm Gladwell is like opening a favorite bottle of wine. It's something I save for a special occasion: a Friday night, maybe, or a Sunday afternoon when I have time to myself and no one will disturb me. Arrange my chair. Fix my snack and my drink. Settle in. This is going to be fun.

Gladwell does not disappoint with David and Goliath. He is a master at storytelling and devoted to making social scientific research come alive in a way that both informs and entertains. His basic premise for this one is first that lopsided conflicts produce greatness and beauty as underdogs overcome long odds, and second that most of us fail to accurately grasp the true significance and value in these events. OK, Malcolm, I'm listening.

See, David beat Goliath because he didn't fight according to social norms. He did the unexpected, caught the giant off guard, took advantage of his weakness (poor eyesight), and prevailed. The story has come down to us as evidence of God's favor on the righteous, but Gladwell suggests we see it in a more empowering manner: David and Goliath were not in the same fight. David didn't buy in to the standard assumptions about what it would take to beat a large and experienced warrior. David thought outside the box and found an Achilles heal. Says Gladwell, "The powerful and the strong are not always what they seem."

There are a number of ways that ordinary people can "pull a David."

--Be so ignorant of what is expected that you have no choice but to invent something completely different. (A basketball coach who knows nothing of basketball.)

--Put ourselves in a big and diverse pool of colleagues so as to feel more confident in one's own abilities than we might feel in a smaller, more elite universe. (Big Fish, Little Pond.)

--Be disagreeable in support of a radical new idea. Get under other people's skin and get their attention.

--Develop skill as a work around to a disability. (Being dyslexic and struggling to read requires one to think more deeply and therefore build real analytical skills.)

--Come through a terrifying situation and learn that it wasn't so bad after all. The fear of the thing we fear is often worse than the actual thing.

--Go all out when there is nothing left to lose.

--When suffering discrimination, pay attention to how an oppressor group functions, what they care about, and how they operate. Know thy enemy. (They haven't bothered to pay attention to you.)

--Use power according to the Principle of Legitimacy, giving voice to those who must obey, and exercising authority consistently and fairly.

--Forgive those who trespass against us (because retribution and harsh penalties backfire every time.)

What Gladwell wants his readers to do is to challenge our assumptions about what creates advantage or disadvantage, and to consider a new approach. Rethink the paradigm. Don't fight Goliath on Goliath's terms. Invent your own. That's where personal power and success lie.

Good one, Malcolm. Much appreciated. Now, how much longer until the next one?




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Book Review: What the Dog Saw

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I bet university professors love Malcolm Gladwell.  He takes their social scientific research (some of it pretty esoteric) and turns it into popular reading for millions of people.  On page 297 of What the Dog Saw, there are four such professors mentioned - assuming Herman Melville and TS Eliot were not university professors.  And that's just one page!  What the Dog Saw contains more than 20 separate stories, which originally appeared as articles in The New Yorker magazine.  Each is pithy, poignant, fun, and worth knowing.  It's high-quality instruction in a spoonful of sugar.

Gladwell does what the professors can't.  He makes their work readable.  The irony here is that he does it using the proof method that university professors all value: state a thesis, mine the materials for supporting argumentation, write it up in a compelling manner, and restate the thesis.  Sometimes you have to show how competing theses fail.  We all learned that kind of writing in school, and it is practiced a million times a day all around the world.  It is Gladwell who is the master, however.  He's got the bit about compelling so pat he must have to work at being boring.

Of all the lessons in What the Dog Saw, the one about choking and panicking has stayed with me the longest.  Gladwell places us in the cockpit with John F. Kennedy, Jr. and on the greens of Augusta with Greg Norman in 1996.  He explores the mental mechanics of the pressure-packed situations they were in and draws out the learnings in their mistakes.  What could be more valuable than that?

I put this one together with two other of Gladwell's wonderful books and make a two-page summary available for free download here.


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Book Review: Blink

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


To understand the significance of this book to me, you would have to know that I highly value my own powers of intuition.  That was not always the case.  After years of accepting the general view that my brother, Paul, was smarter than me I headed off to Ohio State and took some classes in Women's Studies.  That's where I learned about different ways of knowing... and came to understand that Paul's kind of genius was similar to the analytical genius of those who defined genius in the first place.  My kind was different: instinctive, female, other... not as valued, but just as valuable. 

So, then, along comes Malcolm Gladwell with a 254-page disquisition on how it all works.  The good and the bad.  The thoughts that should be honored and the ones that should be reexamined.  The activity of the subconscious mind that both perceives and calculates.  Yikes! 

Gladwell's particular genius is in making difficult subjects accessible and entertaining.  I don't know if he is required reading on college campuses yet or not, but he should be. More and more, we all have to be familiar with his work in order to be culturally literate in America.  Just the other day I heard someone on TV predict that Microsoft will soon learn the lessons of "New Coke" with their Windows 8 product and that they will be issuing an apology -- and "Windows Classic" -- within the year. LOL! Since in all likelihood most of Microsoft's workforce were not even born yet when the New Coke debacle took place, I sure hope their professors made them read Gladwell.  

My two-page summary combines this one with two more of Gladwell's books. Download it for free here,

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Book Review: The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Boy am I ever glad Malcolm Gladwell writes books.  They are entertaining, educational, and page turning... just the thing to take on a beach vacation. 

The Tipping Point was a bestseller for a very good reason... it is useful information with endless application. Gladwell pulls together some very relevant social scientific research from the world's best universities - which would otherwise not be accessible to the rest of us -- and he makes sense of it.  He weaves it together with interesting stories of real people to show how the learning works in real life.  And it all comes together to prove a valuable point, in this case that Little Things Can Make Big Difference. 

Years after The Tipping Point's publication, my friends and I still use many of its key words and concepts in our discussions.  We know who the connectors are in our community, and the salesmen.  (I am the maven in my social circle!)  We talk about getting to 150 supporters of any effort we undertake, and about the stickiness of our ideas.  Sometimes we have to remind each other of the specifics of this chapter or that, but the main themes come back quickly - I think because of Gladwell's superior ability to paint pictures with words.

By using such a range of examples and stories, Gladwell demonstrates the diverse applications of the research he reports on.  In some ways, The Tipping Point is the ultimate "how to" book. The techniques are universal... each reader gets to choose what to apply them to.  I first heard the book discussed in a training on launching a pro-environment messaging campaign.  I now use it with clients who advocate for people with disabilities.  It's endless. 

If you haven't read this one yet, I recommend taking it along on your next vacation.  You will be glad you did. In case you are curious, but not sure you are ready to dive in, here's a two-page summary, written by me.



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