Over Thanksgiving holiday, I was going through some files and came upon a review I wrote about seven years ago for a groundbreaking book by Fortune Senior Editor at Large, Geoff Colvin. Talent is Overrated was one of the best business books I've ever read. I thought it would be timely to share this as we all start moving from Turkey and Black Friday into the season of resolutions.
If you think you know the key to world-class performance, think again.
We all believe that the world’s best performers are different than us. And that perhaps unfortunately is true. However, you might be surprised at exactly how they are different and what truly accounts for their success. Conventional wisdom would explain that the super-human performers came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what they ended up doing and that they had the good fortune to discover their gift early in life. After all, great performers seem to do effortlessly certain things that most of us can only fantasize about doing. But as Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor at Large with FortuneMagazine puts forth in his ground-breaking new book, Talent is Overrated, it turns out that “great performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected.”
In my mind, Talent is Overrated has the three key elements that make a business book great: 1) It poses one important and specific question, 2) The question is answered authoritatively, with both facts and compelling examples, and 3) The answer is counter-intuitive. Put any of the best business books through this sieve -- Good to Great, In Search of Excellence, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and The Tipping Point -- and they will pass this tripartite test.
Let me summarize the key points in the book:
Contrary to what most people believe deeply, what makes some people go so much further than others is not inborn talent, nor even general abilities such as intelligence and memory. Rather, the reason is something called “deliberate practice.” Contrary to “normal adults”, the best performers have implemented a sustained, often life-long, period of deliberate effort designed to improve performance in a specific domain. This turns out to be just as true in business as it is in sports, music, medicine, chess, science, and mathematics.
Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements. It is an activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally; and it isn’t much fun. Deliberate practice is far different than the typical “practice makes perfect” notion. Instead of repeating a task over and over again in your comfort zone, deliberate practice requires that you identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved and then work intently on them. Once a highly specific capability is improved, whether it’s delivering an investment recommendation in a staff meeting, answering a key question in a job interview, hitting a 4 iron from a fairway bunker into an elevated green, or mastering a passage from a demanding music composition, then it’s on to the next step. Top performers get the help of coaches or mentors to select and design the best practice activity to improve, repeat them to a stultifying degree, adjust their techniques based on getting objective feedback, and focus and concentrate on their efforts so intensely that it strains their mental abilities.
If you are motivated to achieve, the fact that deliberate practice is extremely difficult is actually good news. Why? Most people don’t do it, so your commitment to do so will distinguish you. What makes deliberate practice so powerful is that it pushes you beyond what you can currently do and enables you perceive more, to know more, and to remember more than most other people.
Excellent performers perceive more by developing better and faster understanding of what they see. This is evidenced by the best typists seeing more words on a page than others and expert radiologists detecting subtle but life-threatening issues from X-ray readings that elude medical residents. Highly trained pilots are twice as good as new pilots at sorting through the cacophony of air traffic control and in business and finance, the best performers understand the significance of particular information and data that average performers don’t even notice. Great performers in every realm also recall more than seems possible. Jack Nicklaus could reportedly remember every shot he had hit in every tournament. The best direct marketers remember the results of every campaign and which specific variables caused the largest movements in response rates.
At the extreme, the effects of deliberate practice actually change the body and the brain. Endurance runners for example have larger than average hearts. But they weren’t born that way; their hearts grow only after years of training. When they stop training their hearts revert toward normal size. When kids start practicing a musical instrument, their brains develop differently. Brain regions that hear tones and control fingers garner more territory. London taxi drivers, who train rigorously for two years on average, have been found to have larger areas of the brain where spatial navigation is governed. It is significant that the process by which the brain changes is very slow and requires many years of intensive work. Activities need to be replicated thousands and in some cases millions of times for the “rewiring” of the brain that characterizes great performers to take effect.
So the fact is that great performers are different from everybody else. But the key points to recognize are, one that they didn’t start out that way, and two, that the transformations didn’t happen by themselves.
In my interview with Colvin, he said “The heart of the matter is that this is demanding stuff. To excel, you have to pursue these activities at length and with intensity.” He added that it’s difficult to sustain the effort in something if you’re continually doing a cost-benefit analysis. “You need to look deeply into yourself and select something you will find rewarding for its own sake to which to devote yourself.” Of course, it’s relatively straightforward to do this if you have a deep passion for an activity; but how do you discover it when it’s not obvious? “You may not have the passion a priori,” Colvin said, “but as you pursue something it will develop.” I asked Colvin how he is personally applying the principles he writes about in the book. In his work, which involves writing and speaking, Colvin is thinking much more specifically about the core elements of great performance and how each can be improved. For example, he cites the use of story in his articles. “It’s much more effective to show rather than to tell the reader something important. I now review my writing and ask myself, ‘Am I telling or showing? How can I show more?’” He is also seeking feedback of editors and mentors much more than he has in the past. He advises to find someone in your organization whom you respect and know well enough to solicit genuine feedback and then focus on improving. Outside of work Colvin is applying his learning in an entirely different way – moving away from great performance. “I’ve changed my outlook when I play golf,” he said. “I now understand the reality of where excellence comes from and know that I will never be world-class (he’s a single-digit handicap). I can stop deluding myself which is actually quite liberating and have much more fun out there.”
The implications of Talent is Overrated are important and actionable. For me the book is incredibly exciting if your life is your work; it will show you how to maximize what you’ve got and what you can accomplish. These are no mere platitudes. For your career, the principles that Colvin develops are essential because the standards of performance in business will continue to rise relentlessly driven by the power of information technology and the fact that you may well be competing in (and for!) your job with other workers around the world.
Colvin brings to life the principles of deliberate practice with rich examples from a wide swath of life. He takes the reader deeply behind common knowledge of how Tiger Woods, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Bobby Fisher and other “child prodigies” really became great. We see the true genius behind other renowned performers, such as Chris Rock as a stand-up comedian, Jerry Rice as the best receiver in NFL history, and Benjamin Franklin as an essayist. Colvin also convincingly draws on in-depth research on large groups of violinists, mathematicians, and other groups of anonymous mortals. In fact, much of Colvin’s research underpinning is drawn from the leading expert on great performance, Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University, whose work over the past thirty years has set the standard in the field.
The key message of Talent is Overrated is important and timely. If you are ready to devote yourself to becoming a great performer at work or in an avocation, this book will show you how to choose an area to focus on and how to develop and pursue a disciplined regimen of deliberate practice over the long term that will lead you further than you may have ever hoped.
