“The Story of Success”
That is the subtitle for Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. In that book Gladwell considers a number of examples of ‘unusual’ success (for example, Bill Gates) and tries to understand what contributed to that level of success. It’s an interesting read and includes discussions about Canadian Major Junior hockey and Korean plane crashes.
There is a great deal of material within the book worthy of pondering further, but one of Gladwell’s key points is that success, even remarkable success, really isn’t a matter of an exceptional individual, but is more about seizing the opportunity, a supportive community, and larger cultural influences.
In Gladwell’s words: “Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky – but all critical to making them who they are” (pg. 285).
According to Gladwell, the community in which we grew up in and the cultural influences that have shaped us – even through past generations – have much more to do with our success than we often believe or would like to admit.
I think great organizations make fostering a community and culture of success a priority. They plan for it; nurture it; encourage it; invest in it. Great organizations seek to create an environment that gives their employees or members a chance to do their best work and a chance to succeed. I have often thought that this is of particular importance for those companies who are a product of a merger of some kind. Melding two different cultures together effectively takes time and effort, but the benefits of that time and effort are significant.
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“The Story of Success”
“The Story of Success”
That is the subtitle for Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. In that book Gladwell considers a number of examples of ‘unusual’ success (for example, Bill Gates) and tries to understand what contributed to that level of success. It’s an interesting read and includes discussions about Canadian Major Junior hockey and Korean plane crashes.
There is a great deal of material within the book worthy of pondering further, but one of Gladwell’s key points is that success, even remarkable success, really isn’t a matter of an exceptional individual, but is more about seizing the opportunity, a supportive community, and larger cultural influences.
In Gladwell’s words: “Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky – but all critical to making them who they are” (pg. 285).
According to Gladwell, the community in which we grew up in and the cultural influences that have shaped us – even through past generations – have much more to do with our success than we often believe or would like to admit.
I think great organizations make fostering a community and culture of success a priority. They plan for it; nurture it; encourage it; invest in it. Great organizations seek to create an environment that gives their employees or members a chance to do their best work and a chance to succeed. I have often thought that this is of particular importance for those companies who are a product of a merger of some kind. Melding two different cultures together effectively takes time and effort, but the benefits of that time and effort are significant.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.