It is tempting to think about people like Bill Gates as having alien DNA, that enabled them to achieve more than the rest of us. A alternative notion: that people need only work harder than others to achieve more, is tenet of American self-reliance. In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true secret to success is more complicated. He argues that extraordinary people are inseparable from the environment and culture that produced them. The book more than anything attempts to tell us “hey, these people aren’t that special. We’d have a lot more people like them if more people were given similar opportunities”
Gladwell first debunks the myth of the super-human. He believes that innate human attributes such as height or I.Q. only matter until a certain point. He uses the concrete example of basketball, explaining how a 5’ 9” player has very little chance of playing in the NBA, however after certain point extra inches don’t matter. A 6’ 8” player is not necessarily better than a 6’ 6” player (like Michael Jordan). He goes on to apply the same logic to the credentials of students entering graduate programs. Again he demonstrates how after a certain point, the person who scored a 1400 on the GRE is not necessarily going to achieve more than the one who scored 1300. His point is that there are thresholds after which one is smart, or tall enough. After that point, other factors, such as the willingness to work hard, start to matter much more.
Gladwell goes on to examine how various factors of a person’s environment can dramatically effect the type of success they are likely to achieve. He examines the trivial things about us such as our birthday, and more important aspects such as our culture. In each case he demonstrates how these seemingly insignificant data points have had huge effects on successful people. Among his episodes: he demonstrates how those born in December can’t really expect to be professional hockey players. He explains why Korean Air had such a terrible safety record, and how they saved it. Finally he shows how specific people were given wonderful opportunities, and took advantage of them.
The truly remarkable idea of this book is that most people are capable of success on par with so called ‘Outliers’. Society need only find ways of creating opportunities for more of them. Gladwell floats some intriguing ideas for how this might be done, especially within the context of education. He proffers the possibility that poorer children would be keeping up with rich children if they didn’t take such long summer vacations. He suggests that Universities would improve their student bodies by establishing minimum standards and then selecting students by lottery. He calls his book something between a correction and a full out Assault
on the pervasive myth of success and achievement.
The book gets my recommendation because it is a fascinating read. If you are in the position to work with children, or if you wish to be a parent, I think you’ll enjoy Outliers. Extreme conservatives might object to the slightly liberal tone. Gladwell suggests that the best way to raise a ship is to raise the tide. He does not however, go so far as to demand government “do something”. I recommend the audiobook version as it is recorded by Malcolm Gladwell personally. His voice is well suited to the prose; the subtle non-verbal qualities of his voice bring Outliers to life.