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One of the best things that happened at the 2008 ASTD International
Conference & Exposition in San Diego early this month was having
Malcolm Gladwell as a keynote speaker. Again Gladwell astonished the
attendees with his precise and sharp observations of a lot of things
we don’t usually give a second look, analyze them with his
thoughtful journalist mind and come up with a conclusion that is at
once simple and profound.
His first two book were the thought-provoking
bestsellers, The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big
difference and Blink: The power of thinking without thinking.
Gladwell was named by Time in 2005 as one of its most influential
people.
In his keynote speech, Gladwell talked about his
upcoming book (for release this November), The Outliers: Why some
people succeed and some don’t, where he explains the roots of
achievement. “We pay too much attention to what successful people
are like, and too little attention to where they are from; that is,
their culture, their family, their generation and the idiosyncratic
experiences of their upbringing.” He writes about two kinds of
innovators and creativity. He used the metaphor of artists Picasso
and Cezanne to explain his point.
He called the Picassos of this world as
conceptual innovators. They have one big bold notion, but they are
not able to replicate their original audacious idea. He recalled
that when Picasso was young, he produced such imaginative and
overconfident artwork, but as he grew older his work became less
remarkable. On the other hand, Cezanne took a long time to master
his art, but along the way he developed deep knowledge and technical
expertise and produced significant works of art after decades of
patient toiling and continued to do so in his old age. Gladwell
referred to Cezanne as an experimental innovator.
For sure, there are Picassos and Cezannes in our
midst. There are those who show a lot of promise early on and there
are those who bloom late in their careers or personal life. The
experimental innovator loves to experiment, uses the trial and error
method, pursues a series of technical experiences and grows on the
job. The conceptual innovators dazzle with their genius and soon run
out of ideas.
One big implication of this shift in frame of
reference forwarded by Gladwell is for business leadership, people
management and parenting. This new theory renders aptitude tests as
useless. This theory proposes a greater flexibility in assessing
people to avoid mismatch of people and actual demands of the job.
Leaders need to regard people as blank slate and trust in their
abilities. Among successful people—how many opportunities did they
get? How many lucky breaks?
On the other hand, Gladwell said that parents
don’t have to be amazing; they just need to be not bad. Children
don’t need to go to the best school to succeed, they just need one
heroic help.
One other implications, according to Gladwell,
is the futility of planning, What is needed is business is
flexibility, structure and a very powerful nurturing culture.
Companies must be willing to wait and take chances.
This new way of looking at things will surely
give us lots of food for thought and completely shake some of our
firm beliefs.
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www.learningandinnvoation.com; innovationcamp@yahoo.com
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