Build for the long term

My thinking is definitely a product of what I read and experience.  Right now, I’m reading Life, Inc., going through some harrowing politics at work,  just read this fantastic Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker today, and we’re all trying to figure out the Zappos.com sale to Amazon.com.

When I put those pieces together, here’s what I get:  in today’s corporate environment, decisions get made for the wrong reasons.  Value systems have shifted.  Focus is on the short term.  Monetize.  Squeeze every penny out of what we can right now.  The end of the quarter is right around the corner.  We’ve been trained to value everything by how much money it’s worth.  And in the board room, we’ve gotten to the point where executive hubris (which is bad enough on its own) might be at the root of the financial crisis (read the Gladwell article before you call me crazy).

But, I think there is hope.  If you buy into Rushkoff’s notion that we’ve been indoctrinated to live our life according to the rules of corporations, then I think we can look to companies like Amazon and Zappos for change.  Their focus on the customer and long-term approach rehumanize the individual.  The Jeff Bezos video was great to watch in that respect; I especially like when he talks about pursuing initiatives that might not have a pay-off for five to seven years.  Refreshing.

Next post I’d like to tie in the Gladwell article & how enterprise2.0 efforts can bring transparency to decision making.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I’m beginning to read Malcom Gladwell’s new book, Outliers. In it, he sets out to discover the secrets of the truly successful, of those who have achieved beyond the normal, aka an outlier.  He really sets out to dispell the notion that successful people are nature (he was born a genius/talented/special) and not nurture mixed with some really long hours at the office.  Maybe nurture isn’t the right word for the argument he lays out; he builds the case that there are very real, but maybe not obvious (at first glance) reasons successful people are successful – practice hours, month of birth, order of birth, etc…

Here’s a clip of a CNN interview Gladwell did with Anderson Cooper.  There are better clips, but this one gets to the heart of the book quickly:

After reading Nassim N. Taleb’s The Black Swan, my first reaction to Outliers is that Gladwell is falling into one of three black swan traps:  trying to concoct an after-the-fact story that explains these revolutionary events/people.  Taleb argues that these stories are nice (we’re humans, we like stories, that’s what we do), but they never provide any predictive power; we will never be able to determine the cause of Black Swans/Outliers BEFORE they happen.  So far, Gladwell offers two reasons for success:  luck & 10,000 hours of practice.  One we can do nothing about, and one, we can only hope to do something about.  10,000 hours is a long time.

Gladwell’s previous books have had profound impacts in the business world, and I’m waiting to finish to see what Outliers might have in store for us this time around.  I can begin to see an adaptation of the theory he uses for the success of many American tycoons (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates, Jobs) for those in social media (a trend I’m currently interested in).  But, again, other than the 10,000 hour rule, I can’t use any of his stories to help me be more successful.

After 70 pages, I’m skeptical.  Gladwell has put together a nice backstory for some audaciuosly successful & rich people, but that’s about it.  So far, all I’ve got is that people are a function of their circumstances.  If Bill Gates wasn’t Bill gates, someone else would be.  I’m still early into the book.  Hopefully, Gladwell will outline more predictivie elements, maybe even some within our control, of success.