Product Description Expanding on a landmark cover story in Fortune, a top journalist debunks the myths of exceptional performance.
One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called ?What It Takes to Be Great.? Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field--from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch--are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn?t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades.
And not just plain old hard work, like your grandmother might have advocated, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness.
Now Colvin has expanded his article with much more scientific background and real-world examples. He shows that the skills of business?negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest?obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort. Even the hardest decisions and interactions can be systematically improved.
This new mind-set, combined with Colvin?s practical advice, will change the way you think about your job and career?and will inspire you to achieve more in all you do.
Horrible! November 22, 2008 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Several years ago I saw a quote from a highly respected business leader to the effect that shelves of management books come out every year, and most are not worth reading. This one isn't either.
Colvin tells us that in field after field, people with lots of experience were no better at their jobs than those with very little. Hard to believe, and it isn't true. Yes, more experienced doctors reliably score lower on tests of medical knowledge than less experienced doctors just out of training and medical school. However, there are also journals full of evidence that "practice makes perfect" - those with years of experience at eg. surgery have better outcomes. Also, my own experience definitely proved that new computer programmers are very useful, at first.
As for talent, Colvin admits that not all researchers believe that specifically targeted innate abilities don't exist. Need more evidence - ask yourself why black athletes consistently outperform most whites in running, basketball, and football. The answer - they're bodies are different, with a difference in foot structure and possibly other areas also.
Colvin goes in so many directions that it sometimes is difficult to keep track. Focusing on business success, presumably his area of greatest interest as a Fortune editor, allows explaining some of the research difficulties of explaining business success w/o reference to talent.
1)Critical requirements vary situationally. New products eventually become commodities. The managerial skills necessary for success in these two life-cycle phases differ greatly.
2)Agreement on what "good business performance" consists of is often lacking. For example, is it growth in market share, short-term profitability, peer ratings, social responsibility, situational depending on the economic cycle, or worker ratings? All have been used, creating lots of confusion.
Eventually Colvin cites evidence that the amount of musical practice is the best predictor of musical skill. Duh! (Previously it was neophytes are better than those experienced. At still another point he cites Jack Welch's practice at managing as key to his success at G.E. - except he didn't have any, just started out managing with his chemical engineering degree and was successful from the start.) But why is it that after years and years of hard (and embarrassing) practice I still can't catch very well? Because I lack talent.
Bottom Line: "Talent is Overrated" is one of the majority of business books that aren't worth reading. Both Colvin and Malcomb Gladwell should stop wasting trees.
How Do They Get So Good? November 18, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Geoff Colvin deals with a fascinating and worthwhile subject: How do extraordinary, world-class performers get to be so good? This is an outstanding book!
The basic argument of the book is that high level skill is achieved primarily through tons and tons of hard work over a long period of time. (In other words, I'll have to write a lot more book reviews in order to start getting more people to find my reviews "helpful".) So, rather than innate skill or some kind of mysterious "giftedness" being the cause of exceptional performance, Colvin writes, "[t]he factor that seems to explain the most about great performance is something the researchers call deliberate practice." The concept of "deliberate practice"--which is a little bit more rigorous and demanding than what might be thought of as "practice" in the more general sense--is explained with some detail in the book.
In addition to disputing the idea of some kind of special giftedness, Colvin disputes the idea of high IQ or special innate ability for memory as explanations for superior ability and achievement. In fact, his chapter that deals with the development of memory, among those who require it in their field of endeavor, was very enlightening.
"Talent Is Overrated" deals with the study of peak performance in a broad range of fields of including the arts, science, business, chess, music, writing and sports and provides interesting stories and examples of the world class achievers in the various disciplines. This is helpful because it is interesting to see that the principles of great performance apply--at least in a basic sense--in a pretty general way to all fields of endeavor.
Leaders will be interested to note that Colvin explains the application of some of the key concepts of exceptional performance to organizations rather than just looking at the matter as it applies to individuals.
Because the bottom line of great performance is identified as years of "deliberate practice", Colvin states that the "deepest question about great performance" is this: "Where Does The Passion Come From?" It's a fantastic question and I'm glad that he dealt with the issue. Why do the world class performers submit to the long, exhausting, difficult, often painful work that is required to achieve their level of mastery? Is the motivation intrinsic or extrinsic, or a little of both? That is the subject of the last chapter of the book.
I find the message of "Talent Is Overrated" to be extremely encouraging and motivating because it convincingly reports that you do not have to blessed at birth in some super-human way in order to develop exceptional skill in your field--I'm already out of luck if that's the case. This means high-level performance is possible--with a lot of hard work--even for us mere mortals.
Dan Marler Oak Lawn, IL
Talent Is Overrated, But for Many, Perseverance Is the Final Issue November 16, 2008 This book is written to challenge the notion that high performance is either about innate talent or hard work. Colvin makes it possible for business people (and other professionals) to think for themselves rather than listen to the parade of management experts, consultants and celebrity CEOs who claim that they have the final answer about productivity and human performance. This book will help you separate the nuggets from the nonsense.
Colvin knows the latest research on expertise and much of the new neuroscience. He also knows that the research supports his thesis that deliberate practice is what really separates top performers from everybody else.
Previous reviewers have assessed the major emphases of the book, and surfaced important matters to help readers decide whether they should buy this book. Based on my own long experience as a business coach, I want to emphasize the importance of the last chapter: "Where does the passion come from?" For years managers have asked me to assess the motivations of a particular employee to ascertain whether he or she is "motivated enough" or "highly motivated"--necessary characteristics for an important project that may be a key objective of an organization or a given manager. Colvin addresses that issue in a discussion never before seen in a business book.
In that last chapter, he emphasizes the necessity of intrinsic motivation, constructive feedback and extrinsic motivation, and the "multiplier effect." The multiplier effect refers to how the very small advantage gained in some field can spark a series of events that produce a far larger advantage. In other words, success in an endeavor inherently encourages you to work for still more success. And, in spite of the frustrations of deliberate practice, that success makes the work of digging still deeper into a competency enjoyable.
This is a book that may not sell easily. It goes against the grain too much, and many of us understand the difficulty of arguing against conventional wisdom. As one respondent put it to me in a discussion about the wrongheadedness of innate intelligence, "I can't believe that. It goes against everything I've ever thought or learned. I simply reject the notion." He tuned out and turned off.
It will be a sad day if these ideas are rejected by the great unwashed.
This is an important book dealing with a subject that is just as necessary for families and the educational system as it is to businesss.
Debunks the talent myth November 13, 2008 This is a great book that exposes in great detail the "talent myth" and the notion that all great achievers have superior innate intelligence. The author explores the careers of many sports, music and business greats, and concludes that these high achievers' success results from "deliberate practice," which is the studied repetition and improvement of those things in your field that you're NOT good at.
Experts and superior performers also immerse themselves totally in their "domain," which gives them a huge edge in interpreting new information. Studies show once someone has built up this deep pool of knowledge in their domain, they don't loose it. You'll get older and mental acuity will decline in every area but your domain.
To have this drive to deliberately practice and immerse yourself in your field to become truly great, which is a decade-long commitment to even get in the running, you must "know where you want to go." You'll never have this dedication if you're not dead set on your goals.
Highly recommended. Should be read with Gladwell's 2002 article "The Talent Myth," and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Fascinating! November 10, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is fascinating in the respect that it is simple, but so very true. When you read it, what you realize is that to become great at anything, and I do mean anything, it requires a certain persona that most of us just don't have. Also, after I had completed the book, there was this certain something that I had that I felt no one else had--a certain knowledge that I could be great at anything I wanted to become great at--it is a must read book for anyone that wants to become truly great at whatever.
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