Monday, September 24, 2012

The Origin of Talent

A national radio broadcaster regularly receives music singles from would be musicians who feel they have the talent to become stars and who just need to get discovered. This broadcaster said that he receives more singles than he can listen to on a daily basis which, spanning his entire 26+ years in syndication, is potentially hundreds of thousands of songs.

In over 26 years and hundreds of thousands of songs from aspiring musicians only once did he receive a single that he believed to have star quality. Most of what he received was bad to average at best - some was even good - but only one in one hundred thousand plus songs stood out as being distinctively exceptional.

The broadcaster’s name is Howard Stern and the one in one hundred thousand plus talent independently went on to become the acclaimed musical artist Kid Rock.

The point being that truly exceptional talent is as rare as it is vivid, and when channeled correctly, it is irrepressible.

A Star is Formed
Anders Ericsson is a professor of psychology and a pioneer of the “Expert Performance Movement” who spent years studying the progression of talent in top performers across varied pursuits. Mr. Ericsson offers that regardless of the field, expert performers are almost always made, not born. He even suggests that talent is overrated as a trait.   

Mr. Ericsson theorizes that the reason talent is so rare isn’t because the potential for it is in such limited supply. Rather, exceptional talent is rare because it takes substantial time and practice to realize it. If you aren’t doing something that you are truly passionate about, then you most likely won’t possess the desire to undertake the extreme work required to be exceptional at it.

Mr. Ericsson also believes that, far from being innate, talent is actually something that everyone can acquire through deliberate practice. Deliberate practice, beyond excessive repetition of a task, involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback on the actions used to achieve those goals and concentrating on the technique that goes into achieving the goal as much as on the goal itself.

That is not to say that all people have equal potential. Instead, deliberate practice can make mediocre talent good, good talent great, and great talent exceptional.

Average to Exceptional
Hitting a baseball is widely considered to be one of the most difficult things to do in all of sports. It takes exceptional eye-hand coordination, a high awareness level, strong intuition and years of practice. Even then a good hitter will only succeed roughly 30% of the time.

There was once an athlete who at 30 years old wanted to chase his lifelong dream of playing baseball professionally. It had been at least 15 years since he stepped onto a baseball diamond as a player. More so, when he had played he played as a pitcher, a position that commonly doesn't hit. Now, attempting to enter baseball as an outfielder, hitting would be essential to his game.

To make up for his 15 year absence from the game this player woke up every morning before sunrise to practice hitting. He was always the first player to arrive and the last to leave. He would take batting practice for hours before “official” team batting practice began, then take it again in the time between team batting practice and the game, and finally one last time for a few hours after the game.

Every single day he practiced in this manner, sometimes until his hands were bleeding.

The player played wound up hitting .202 with 51 RBIs and 114 strikeouts in 127 games. Poor stats by most measures, but when you consider this was done in AA minor league ball against some of baseball’s top prospects after 15 years away from the game, they look less so.

Furthermore, all of his coaches noticed marked improvement from spring training to the end of the season. In the Fall League that follows the minor league season he batted .252 - a decent average for any player. And that against pitching prospects that most considered to be professionally bound.  

Through disciplined hard work and deliberate practice this player, in just 1 year, went from not playing baseball in 15 years to being decent at what many consider to be the most difficult athletic skill of any sport.

The players name was Michael Jordan and anyone who has ever coached or played with him consider him to be the hardest working athlete they have ever seen. Is he a great athlete - sure. But it was his unparalleled work ethic and his use of deliberate practice that made a poor baseball player average, and an exceptional basketball player the greatest that has ever played the game.  

Monday, September 17, 2012

The Derivatives of Leadership

In 1989 the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union radically altered the geopolitical landscape which, to that date, had shaped the American military identity. The military institution West Point is charged with developing students into future leaders, and this dramatic shift in global power influence drastically impacted West Point’s traditional assumptions on the composition of leadership.

To confront this change West Point embarked on a deep cultural reflection that sought to understand the essence of leadership and the processes required to meet the obligation of shaping the next generation of leaders. Here are some lessons from that journey.

Knowledge is Perishable and is Trumped by Character
“Beast Barracks” is a gruelling six-week camp that introduces cadets to West Point by systematically breaking them down through a series of physically and mentally demanding experiences.

Beast Barracks is not meant to develop mechanical attributes such as strength or toughness. Instead Beast Barracks is designed to build character by forcing cadets out of their comfort zones. The thinking goes that stripping bare the self-esteem creates a state of confusion and questioning, which in turn offers a unique opportunity to mold identity.

West Point believes that 
a leader is someone who chooses the “harder right instead of the easier wrong.” Knowledge and skills are important, but without moral judgement there is no compass to direct that expertise.

The recent tests faced by society’s most prominent leaders and institutions seem to prove this out. From the legitimacy of the U.S. war on terrorism, to the moral failure of the Roman Catholic Church, to this decade’s numerous business scandals - the question of failed leadership has consistently been raised, and at that question's core often exists a failure of character.

Anything can be learned, and in today’s dynamic environment where technology imparts revolutionary change at time warping speed, much of what is learned quickly becomes obsolete. However it is our understanding of who we are and who we want to be that provides the clarity of direction to guide the decisions and sacrifices required of leaders.

The Need for Self Reflection
Although Beast Barracks relies on creating confusion and uncertainty, West Point recognized that character is not typically formed amidst the confusion of action, but rather through quiet reflection after action. Upon completing Beast Barracks cadets are required to write essays reflecting on what they learned about leadership and about themselves. Here is a brief excerpt from a cadet’s essay:

“No one could have survived BEAST if they had thought of themselves. Selfishness would have come to mind in my previously undeveloped self. I learned that selfless service is not only necessary to be a competent leader, but also to being a morally correct person.”

Warren Bennis, founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at USC’s Marshall School of Business, says “there is no difference between being an effective leader and a becoming a fully integrated person.” Mr. Bennis believes that people won’t be able to deploy their full talents without self awareness of their strengths, weaknesses and overall character.

The Individual Nature of Leadership
Finally, West Point concluded that leadership cannot be transmitted through a specific bundle of skills or lectures. True leadership must be experienced not taught, and is deeply personal, as the experience needs to be internalized by the individual in order to be translated into leadership.

This means that to effectively develop leaders corporations need to create personalized experiences that are unique to each individual and that are in essence, reflective journeys toward leadership. Unfortunately this is usually in direct contradiction to the typical team focused, homogenized training provided by most companies.

The truth is that most organizations are not built to effectively develop leadership, which means that the path to becoming a leader must be paved by the individual. Ironically, that in and of itself is the essence of leadership.
 

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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Subtle Art of Self Persuasion

There was a couple in the early stages of relationship when, one turned to the other and exclaimed, “You’re perfect.” One would assume that statement would be met with some level of positivity. On the contrary, the recipient felt something just short of revulsion.

Character flaws notwithstanding, when questioned as to the source of this negative emotion the reply was in some respects poignant. The reasoning went that being in the very preliminary stages of attraction the “couple” still knew very little about one another. As such, the blank spaces were filled with the imagination of what could be. In attributing perfection to the relationship at such an early stage, in reality what the person was actually doing was fulfilling their want of a perfect relationship by applying it to the situation.

Essentially the “You are perfect” had nothing to do about the declaree and everything to do with the declarer. It was their imagination, fueled by the desire for a perfect relationship, that led one person to convince themselves that the other was somehow “perfect”.

This ability to convince ourselves of the things we want to be true is a common occurrence that happens beyond the scope of relationships. As evidence, take this recent Adweek article where an ordinary man pretends to be a celebrity to the effect that people wind up treating him like one.  

Talking To Ourselves
Peter Wason was a cognitive psychologist who coined the term “confirmation bias”, which describes people’s tendency to favor information that validates their preconceptions, hypotheses and personal beliefs regardless of the information’s basis in truth.

Mr. Wason conducted an experiment where he presented subjects with a number sequence: 2,4,6. The subjects were told that the sequence was created by a rule that they were to uncover by generating their own three-number sequences. After each attempt the subjects were told if their sequence met the rule, and they could generate as many sequences as needed until they were confident of the rule.

The rule was “any three numbers in increasing order”. Despite the rule’s simplicity only about 25% of the subjects figured it out because most, upon selecting a hypothesis, only looked for evidence to validate that hypothesis while eschewing any attempts to refute it.

Once told they were wrong, the subjects were allowed to try again. However, when suggested to use a different approach, most continued to only look at ways that supported their hypothesis.  Mr. Wason concluded that people have a confirmation bias; they are prejudiced to test a hypothesis by working to confirm it instead of working to falsify it.

Put another way, once people have a belief they have a tendency to perceive things in ways that support their belief at the expense of any evidence to the contrary. A relationship is perceived as perfect because it is imaged to be that way, and only evidence that supports that belief is accepted.

Marketers are regular victims of confirmation bias:

We fall in love with our ideas and create reasons why they work while ignoring why they don’t.
We chase trends while ignoring the lack of data supporting their value.
We do what we have always done while ignoring the metrics around diminishing returns.
We create slogans of perceived grandeur while ignoring their emptiness of meaning.
We blame our agencies or clients for bad work while ignoring our own role in the creation.
We consistently talk to ourselves while ignoring our consumers.

The story didn’t end well for the “couple”, as the imperfections of the person inevitably became apparent, disappointment ensued, and that person wound up getting dumped. Don’t talk yourself into believing what you are saying. Actively find the holes in the story and fill them with texture or press delete and start again.

Be aware of your confirmation bias, because it ultimately leads to “a dump”.