Malcolm Gladwell
Creating an environment of innovation and success
Malcolm Gladwell was a speaker at the recent Discovery Leadership Summit and these are his thoughts on 'Creating an Environment of Innovation and Success'.
As a leader, it is essential to know how to create an environment for innovation and success. Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of Outliers, Blink and the Tipping Point, provided his insights into some of the actions leaders should take to create an environment for innovation by highlighting anecdotes and stories from his research and the book “Outliers: why some people succeed and some don’t”.
To illustrate his points, Malcolm related the story of the famous band, Fleetwood Mac. If one hears the often told history of the band, it seems that the band members were incredibly lucky to meet up with each other when they did, that they were an instant success and went to dominate the charts with their hit album “Rumours”. But, according to Gladwell, when you dig deeper into their history – the story is not so simple and their rise to stardom was not so easy.
Gladwell’s first point on creating an environment for success is that it takes effort, lots of effort. In fact Gladwell believes that any real successful artist, sportsman or entrepreneur had 10,000 hours or about 10 years worth of effort or practice before making it big. For instance, the hit album ‘Rumours’ was actually Fleetwood Mac’s 16th album and the band had over 10 years of working on their music with band members leaving and new ones joining before they found the ‘dream team’ that we all know and love. They were not an overnight success story. And so Gladwell assures us that innovation is not some magical process that happens instantaneously, but a product of many hours of time and effort. Gladwell provided the audience with many other examples. Take the master chess players – they all had over 10,000 hours of practice before becoming the master players that they are today. Mozart is always touted as a child progeny, but the music he composed at 8 years of age was really not that good. It was only after more than 10 years of composing that he composed his masterpiece. Same story with the Beatles and Bill Gates – each of them had years of practice in playing music together or computer programming before they got to the innovative songs and business idea that they are renowned for today.
Secondly, Gladwell believes you have to first fail to really succeed later. He outlined two key strategies that people employ to succeed. There is the ‘capitalisation strategy’ where someone that was born into privilege, good education and family connections takes advantage of those strengths and opportunities. The other strategy is called ‘compensation’ where people succeed not because of their strengths but in spite of their weaknesses. Such success is harder and rarer, but is a far more powerful way of learning. Take American football as an example. A study was done to assess whether the top college quarterbacks, those that were the strongest, fastest and most intelligent, were the top professional quarterbacks when they were promoted. And what they found was that in fact it was the mediocre college quarterbacks that ended up being the top professional quarterbacks because it was these guys that were hungry and determined to succeed that ended up being the top performers. This goes to show that being forced to deal with obstacles means that one ends up being more determined to succeed. Looking at the top list of entrepreneurs in the world, many of these entrepreneurs had some learning disability when they were younger. Sir Richard Branson is an example as he has dyslexia. And these entrepreneurs learnt early on how to overcome these disadvantages by delegating well, by learning leadership skills, by problem solving and making sure they have excellent oral communication skills. These are all the key attributes necessary to be a successful entrepreneur.
Thirdly, experimentation and allowing others to experiment is essential in the innovation process and in achieving success. There are two types of creative people – those ‘conceptual innovators’ who have one bold idea that drives their success going forward. Someone like Picasso, who by 24 years of age, was one of the greatest painters the world has ever seen. And then there are ‘experimental innovators, those that through careful trial and error with lots of repetition have a breakthrough idea. An example would be Paul Cezanne, the famous impressionist painter that through incremental improvements and experimentation at the age of 50 produced the outstanding art that he is famous for today. Mark Twain, the renowned author of Huckleberry Fin, took 9 years to finish the ending of the book as he experimented with various different types of endings.
Why is trial and error and experimentation so useful in the innovation process? According to Gladwell it gives depth of emotion when someone has struggled and experienced failure before eventually succeeding. And in today’s complex world with complex problems, one needs time to experiment and try different solutions before coming up with the breakthrough innovation.
And lastly, as a leader, Gladwell feels strongly that we must see potential in other people and give them the freedom to achieve that potential. Looking at Fleetwood Mac’s story, Warner Music stuck with the band throughout their experimentation period or ‘struggle years’ of over 10 years before the band finally made it big. The patience of Warner Music and the freedom they gave Fleetwood Mac during those years helped the band get to their eventual success. Today’s music world wouldn’t wait that long. And Gladwell believes that investors and venture capital are also too impatient which means that the world is potentially losing out on some great innovators that were not given the freedom to achieve their potential. To be a great leader one must give your people the time and space to experiment and fail.
Malcolm Gladwell
Creating an environment of innovation and success
Malcolm Gladwell was a speaker at the recent Discovery Leadership Summit and these are his thoughts on 'Creating an Environment of Innovation and Success'.
As a leader, it is essential to know how to create an environment for innovation and success. Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of Outliers, Blink and the Tipping Point, provided his insights into some of the actions leaders should take to create an environment for innovation by highlighting anecdotes and stories from his research and the book “Outliers: why some people succeed and some don’t”.
To illustrate his points, Malcolm related the story of the famous band, Fleetwood Mac. If one hears the often told history of the band, it seems that the band members were incredibly lucky to meet up with each other when they did, that they were an instant success and went to dominate the charts with their hit album “Rumours”. But, according to Gladwell, when you dig deeper into their history – the story is not so simple and their rise to stardom was not so easy.
Gladwell’s first point on creating an environment for success is that it takes effort, lots of effort. In fact Gladwell believes that any real successful artist, sportsman or entrepreneur had 10,000 hours or about 10 years worth of effort or practice before making it big. For instance, the hit album ‘Rumours’ was actually Fleetwood Mac’s 16th album and the band had over 10 years of working on their music with band members leaving and new ones joining before they found the ‘dream team’ that we all know and love. They were not an overnight success story. And so Gladwell assures us that innovation is not some magical process that happens instantaneously, but a product of many hours of time and effort. Gladwell provided the audience with many other examples. Take the master chess players – they all had over 10,000 hours of practice before becoming the master players that they are today. Mozart is always touted as a child progeny, but the music he composed at 8 years of age was really not that good. It was only after more than 10 years of composing that he composed his masterpiece. Same story with the Beatles and Bill Gates – each of them had years of practice in playing music together or computer programming before they got to the innovative songs and business idea that they are renowned for today.
Secondly, Gladwell believes you have to first fail to really succeed later. He outlined two key strategies that people employ to succeed. There is the ‘capitalisation strategy’ where someone that was born into privilege, good education and family connections takes advantage of those strengths and opportunities. The other strategy is called ‘compensation’ where people succeed not because of their strengths but in spite of their weaknesses. Such success is harder and rarer, but is a far more powerful way of learning. Take American football as an example. A study was done to assess whether the top college quarterbacks, those that were the strongest, fastest and most intelligent, were the top professional quarterbacks when they were promoted. And what they found was that in fact it was the mediocre college quarterbacks that ended up being the top professional quarterbacks because it was these guys that were hungry and determined to succeed that ended up being the top performers. This goes to show that being forced to deal with obstacles means that one ends up being more determined to succeed. Looking at the top list of entrepreneurs in the world, many of these entrepreneurs had some learning disability when they were younger. Sir Richard Branson is an example as he has dyslexia. And these entrepreneurs learnt early on how to overcome these disadvantages by delegating well, by learning leadership skills, by problem solving and making sure they have excellent oral communication skills. These are all the key attributes necessary to be a successful entrepreneur.
Thirdly, experimentation and allowing others to experiment is essential in the innovation process and in achieving success. There are two types of creative people – those ‘conceptual innovators’ who have one bold idea that drives their success going forward. Someone like Picasso, who by 24 years of age, was one of the greatest painters the world has ever seen. And then there are ‘experimental innovators, those that through careful trial and error with lots of repetition have a breakthrough idea. An example would be Paul Cezanne, the famous impressionist painter that through incremental improvements and experimentation at the age of 50 produced the outstanding art that he is famous for today. Mark Twain, the renowned author of Huckleberry Fin, took 9 years to finish the ending of the book as he experimented with various different types of endings.
Why is trial and error and experimentation so useful in the innovation process? According to Gladwell it gives depth of emotion when someone has struggled and experienced failure before eventually succeeding. And in today’s complex world with complex problems, one needs time to experiment and try different solutions before coming up with the breakthrough innovation.
And lastly, as a leader, Gladwell feels strongly that we must see potential in other people and give them the freedom to achieve that potential. Looking at Fleetwood Mac’s story, Warner Music stuck with the band throughout their experimentation period or ‘struggle years’ of over 10 years before the band finally made it big. The patience of Warner Music and the freedom they gave Fleetwood Mac during those years helped the band get to their eventual success. Today’s music world wouldn’t wait that long. And Gladwell believes that investors and venture capital are also too impatient which means that the world is potentially losing out on some great innovators that were not given the freedom to achieve their potential. To be a great leader one must give your people the time and space to experiment and fail.