Outliers

So I just finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Wow. What an interesting and engaging read. In Outliers, Gladwell seeks to repudiate the iconic American thesis that success is largely within a person's control. That is, the generic story of the "self-made person" is really a myth. To be sure, natural ability and hard work do matter, but, to Gladwell, two other factors matter just as much (if not more): opportunity and (cultural) legacy.

Opportunity is the chance gifts doled out by history. It's the practice time you are blessed with (Gladwell says it takes 10K hours to master a skill), the resources you were given as a youth, or, most serendipitously, the year you were born and the era you were born into. Opportunity is, fundamentally, out of your control. Again, you obviously have to do something with opportunity when you get it, but success comes via the open doors of chance. 

The second half of Outliers focuses on legacy. Legacy is the culturally-based understandings that we all have embedded within us. That is, we think, act and feel based at least in part on how our culture has shaped us. For me the most fascinating chapter of Outliers is the 7th chapter, provocatively entitled "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes." To think that the Korean cultural value of politeness and deference could become a key factor in the tragic crashing of an airplane is at first glance preposterous. And yet, in the end, Gladwell's analysis of something called "Power Distance Index" makes it seem more cause and effect than crazy. For me chapter 7 feels like a must-read for anyone who is in regular cross-cultural communication situations.

I'll take away a lot from Outliers, from thinking through what opportunities have I been given in my life, to what opportunities I'm giving my children, to where I've invested my 10K hours (into thoughtful supervision that balances the mission and care for people, perhaps?), to how I have been formed by my cultural legacy, in particular as a middle-class white man.

Most of all, though, I find a key component of my worldview undergirded by Outliers. I grew up with the presupposition that an individual charted his or her own path to glory, that the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" story was viable and even the goal to shoot for. Along the way, in particular as I've experienced displacement and the chance to walk in the shoes of others, I've come to realize that that story is way oversimplified. Success is about more than one person's self-determination, and the wider systemic factors have lots of power and are more than worth a critical and thoughtful examination. 

In the end, if you're interested in, or open to, having your presuppositions challenged, Outliers is the book for you. Two thumbs way up.