Habit, Learning, Motivation

Talent Is Overrated – What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

Download this executive summary in PDF: Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

Chapter 1 – The Mystery

Most people never reach outstanding performance even if they practiced for decades.
On average, experienced managers don’t produce high-caliber outcomes.
You become fine at your work with hard work but you won’t become a great performer.
Extraordinary performers may have a gift that they discovered at a younger age.
Some searchers argue that the “gift” is a myth.
High performers have average IQ.
Deliberate practice is the key because they train themselves more efficiently.
Today the scarce resource is no longer money but human ability.
With the internet, workers have to compete with other workers around the world.

Chapter 2 – Talent Is Overrated

Researchers made a study on musicians to try to find if “talent” was a thing. High performers practiced more.
The elite group practiced 2 hours per day vs 15min for the lowest group.
Talent: a natural ability to do something better than most people.
Is someone talented if he needs years of practice to reach this level?
Parents may be nurturing a skill in their children and call them gifted.
The science of genomics has not proven yet that it exists genes identify particular talents.
Mozart’s father was also a musician and a teacher. Mozart’s “talent” probably comes from hard work from a younger age.
Tiger Wood’s father was a golf addict and also a teacher. Same as Mozart, hard work made the champion.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are other examples of high achievers and there is no evidence that they were going to become great business persons.

Chapter 3 – How Smart Do You Have to Be?

Memory and intelligence are two key skills for great performance.
Memory can be trained with practice.
IQ measures general intelligence but doesn’t measure social skills, honesty, or wisdom.
Higher intelligence doesn’t necessarily correlate with higher performance (ex: salesperson).
IQ is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once a person has been at a job for a few years, IQ predicts little or nothing about performance.
A high IQ is not a prerequisite to extraordinary achievement.
We are limited by our physical constraints (ex: height)
Experience, inborn abilities, intelligence, and memory don’t automatically drive high performance.

Chapter 4 – A Better Idea

Jerry Rice is a football player, he spent little time playing football but designed his practice around his specific needs.
In a study, the best violinists put more hours of lifetime practice.
“The differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”

Chapter 5 – What Deliberate Practice Is and Isn’t

Deliberate practice is an activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun.
Deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them.

Chapter 6 – How Deliberate Practice Works

High performers have better perceptions and interpretations of the indicators that average performers don’t even notice.
They anticipate the future to be better prepared and detect better the information.
They also have more knowledge in their field. By understanding deeper the problem, they have better strategies to solve problems.
Long-term working memory: top performers understand their field at a higher level and thus have a superior structure for remembering information about it.
Expert’s superior memory doesn’t extend beyond their field of expertise.
The more you practice the more you have myelination of your neurons.

Chapter 7 – Applying the Principles in Our Lives

First, define what you want to accomplish.
Then design the first steps of your deliberate practice.
Practicing directly:
- The music model: analyze a speech and its elements, and get feedback after each repetition.
- The chess model: compare your decision with the one chosen by your mentor (case study).
- The sports model: working on critical specific skills.
Practicing in the work:
- Before the work: deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them.
- During the work: self-observation with metacognition (knowledge about your knowledge, thinking about your thinking).
- After the work: self-evaluation compared to their standards.
Deepening your knowledge: become an expert in your field, build a mental model of your domain. The model helps you distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, and enables you to project what will happen next.

Chapter 8 – Applying the Principles in Our Organizations

Deliberately put managers into stretch jobs that will require them to learn and grow.
Give short-term work assignments outside of the person’s expertise to stretch him.
Encourage them to be active in their communities to learn new skills.
Mentoring and candid feedback.
Deliberate practice through inspiration.
Invest time, energy, and money.
Make leadership development part of the culture.
Develop teams, not just individuals (risks are low trust, competing agendas, unresolved conflicts, unwillingness to face the real issues).

Chapter 9 – Performing Great at Innovation

As products and technologies are becoming commoditized, innovation and creativity are becoming even more valuable by the day.
Inspiration striking the genius is a myth, you need around 10 years of deliberate practice to get the “inspiration”.
Knowledge is not a burden that limits people’s creativity.
Technical innovation comes from the improvement of existing technologies.
Organizations are not innovative, only people are.
Give clear direction on what kind of innovations are valuable for the organization.
Authorize your team to innovate and fail, extrinsic motivation (money) is not required.

Chapter 10 – Great Performance in Youth and Age

With rising standards and knowledge, you need more effort to hope to excel.
A supporting home environment enables a person to start developing early.
Parents choose the teachers for their children and invest time, money, and energy.
Need the combination of a stimulating and supporting environment to get an attentive and engaged student.
Aging makes people slow down but doesn’t impact the performance of an expert in his field (musician, chess player, athletes).
To maintain the performance, the expert still needs deliberate practice.

Chapter 11 – Where Does the Passion Come From?

Deliberate practice is difficult and not funny but high performers may enjoy the practice.
Intrinsic drive is more powerful than extrinsic drive.
The extrinsic motivation that is controlling reduces creativity.
In an organization, employees are discouraged because they don’t have the opportunity to work on projects they selected by themselves and because when they get promoted, they have more responsibilities and less freedom.
High performers are not born with “passion” but find their intrinsic motivation later.
Multiplier effect: “Each increase in competencies is matched to a better environment, and, in turn, the better environment will be expected to further enhance their competence.”
To start the multiplier effect, starting deliberate practice earlier makes the child feel he is special, and begin learning skills where competition is sparse.