Malcolm Gladwell has an astounding ability to draw our attention to critical social issues (Crime, Education etc) by co-relating mostly ignored phenomena and facts to unprecedented change. In his recent book- "Outliers", he has once again jolted the conventional wisdom and has provided an intriguing view of exceptional success achieved by very few.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom that exceptional success results only from individual talent and sheer determination, Malcolm has taken a deep dive into the circumstances of exceptionl success of well known pople ( Bill Gates--chairman of Microsoft Inc. and one of the richest man in the world, Bill Joy--Writer of UNIX and Java computer languages, Robert Oppenheimer--Physicist who led the American effort to develop nuclear bomb, Joe Flom--Last living partner of the most powerful law firm in the world ) and has made a convincing argument that:
Expectional Success == Talent x Cummulative Advantages x Inheritances
In other words
Exceptional Success == Talent x Opportunities x Cultural Traits
The gist of Malcolm's argument is that if we we take away the impact of opportunities and cultural legacies, most of these outliers (exceptionally successful people) could have achieved only a modest success. Through this argument, Malcolm reminds all of us to focus on optimizing systems, policies and practices for providing opportunioties (for cummulative advantages) and re-norming cultural traits (exploiting strengths and diminishing weaknesses) so that talents of many can be sharpened and vigorously applied with increasing resolve. By doing this, society can produce multitude of outliers compared to just very few thus benefiting everyone. "Outliers" IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK WHICH I STRONGLY RECOMEND TO EVERYONE TO READ AND UNDERSTAND THE PRECISE ANATOMY OF SUCCESS,
Amazingly, there is a striking similarity between the gist of Malcolm's "Outliers" and the message advocated in my recently published book--"Organizational Turnarounds with a Human Touch." Although my book is in the context of organizational success compared to individual success in outliers,nevertheless, like outliers, my book also jolts conventional wisdom and provides a radical view of turning aroud an organization from a poor/struggling status to a benchmark/enviable status.
The conventional view which is strongly embraced and perpetuated by most organizational leaders is:
" Running an organization is a complex affair. It needs special breed of people to lead the charge and is impossible without a heavy dose of money,technology and expertise"
This conventional view which is widely believed and demonstrated results in very few outlier organizations and multitude of others struggling and under-performing. With this conventional view, the sub-performing organizations learn to justify their poor performance by attributing their failure to the complex nature of their work, lack of leadership talent and scarcity of financial and technological resorces at their disposal.
Contrary to the conventional view and based upon my real successes in turning around many organizations in many countries and cultures, I have leaned, reinforced and passionately propagated (through my book) that:
"Running an organization is as simple as functioning of Nature. . It just requires enkindling true leadership in all through inspiration and it needs continous nourishment and reinforcement of human dignity and human creativity".
Armed with this simple mind-set and focussing on providing opportunities to all through inspirational leadership and by removing impediments like Cultural Pollution (outdated/manipulated values and practices) and Human Mis-alignment (destructive competition), I was able to dramatically improve organizational effectiveness and move many organizations from a deep sea of self-pity to the soaring skies of authentic pride. Although the four stage sequential process of turnaround is detailed in more than 200 pages of my book, but, the gist of that approach is briefly summarized as below:
Ability to Capability----Increase Self-Esteem by creating environments of Simplification,Total Learnig and Sharing.
Capability to Proficiency--- Cultivate Winning Attitudes by removing imprdiments of Cultural Pollution and and Human Mis-alignment.
Proficiency to Excellence--- Facilitate Growing confidence by institutionalizing the cycle of excellence tool.
Excellence to Thrilling&Recurring Success---Instill Empowering Mentorship through the use of Cycle of Authentic Pride tool.
Making an outlier organization (consistently performing and delighting) is not about having few super-star leaders and abundance of enablers (money,technilogy,expertise), but it is all about providing opportunities and tools to all by creating environments in which there is a natural evolution of organizational ability to capability to profociency to excellence to thrilling and recurring success.
When explainations and beliefs take the form of conventional wisdom,they become popular notions and get embraced,reinforced and perpetuated as the only truths and majority views. That closes door on looking facts and phenomena in a different perspective thus status quo starts to prevail and get solidified. Since progress is always the result of demonstrating reslessness with status-quo, conventional wisdom must always be challenged and tested. Perhaps, the following words from Mark Twain say it all:
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it is time to reform (or pause and reflect}"
Both of Malcolm'sbook "OUTLIERS" and my book "Organizational Turnarounds with a Human Touch" are bold steps to jolt the conventional wisdom about success and they both provide an intriguing and refreshing perspective about individual and organizational success.
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