Tag: talent

Talent is distributed, privilege is not

Researchers Bell, Chetty, Jaravel, Petkova, and Van Reenen studied data from the lives of 1.2 million inventors/patent holders in America in an attempt to understand the impact of nature and nurture. The found that –

1. A child’s chances of becoming an inventor vary sharply with characteristics at birth – such as their race, gender, and parent’s socioeconomic class.

2. Children from high-income (top 1%) families are 10 times as likely to become inventors as those from below-median income families. These gaps persist even with similar math test scores in early stages (highly predictive of innovation rates)

3. Children whose families move to a high-innovation area when they are young are more likely to become inventors.

4. Girls are more likely to invent in a particular class if they grow up in an area with more women (but not men) who invent in that class.

This study is a landmark study in its ability to explain the real drivers of of success. Talent and mindset play far less important roles than the stories we’re told would have us believe. Below is my hypothesis on how it actually works. (Based on the data from this study, it may well move from completely unscientific to being backed by some science. :))

Talent, it turns out, is well distributed, privilege is not.

Search for talent

Companies all over are locked in a search for talent. And, every one of them will tell you how hard it is to find talented people – especially within the constraints of their internal diversity targets.

There’s one reason this “search for talent” is hard – companies only search for talent when they need to fill a position. So, it isn’t really a search for talent. It really is a search for whoever is available now who can do the job.

There is only one time to build your pipeline for great hiring – well before you need to do it.

This exact dynamic plays out in business. Everyone is rushing to please investors in the next quarter. But, every once a while, there will come a Jeff Bezos who decides to stick around and play a very different game. The best time to make a great investment is well before you need it.

But, this isn’t about them, it is about us too. After all, careers are no different. Nearly everybody you know is focused on a horizon between today and 6 months from now. Need to finish that project, get promoted and we’ll see what happens after that. There are very few who are consciously focused on what might be needed five years or even ten years from now.

We all have a choice. Yes, we need to engage with the present. But, we also can choose to build consciously for the future.

We need to plant trees well before we need their fruits.

Testing for a relationship between innate talent and expertise – The 200 words project

(continued from part 1)
We measure innate talent in the mind with “IQ”. IQ had no relation with the London taxi drivers who passed the qualification test.

While the average IQ of scientists is higher than the average person, there is no correlation between IQ and scientific productivity either. Richard Feynman, one of the most brilliant physicists of all time, didn’t make it to the top 5%. Researchers have suggested that the minimum requirements for performing capably as a scientist is around 110 (top 25%). Beyond that, there is little or no additional benefit.

Similarly, dental students’ early success was found to be related to their existing level of visuospatial ability. But again, this trend disappeared with residents.

And, a study of 91 fifth grade students who were given piano instruction for 6 months found that students with higher IQs performed better at the end of the 6 months. However, as years of study increased, the correlation between IQ and music performance got smaller and smaller.This finding is similar to other studies of this nature.

If there isn’t an observable link between “innate talent” and expertise, do we explain expertise with the 10,000 hour rule?

Coming up next week.

It is unclear if the IQ requirement in research is for one to succeed as a scientist or to do the writing and admission tests required to get a PhD. – Anders Ericsson

—
Source and thanks to: Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

(The 200 words project involves sharing a story from a book/blog/article I’ve read within 200 words)

Talent -> Skill -> Work ethic

Watch a bunch of 5 year olds playing a new sport and you’ll quickly be able to spot the ones with natural talent.

8 years later, however, it’ll get harder to tell which ones were the talented ones from the group you first saw. This is also because 9 out of every 10 who started out at 5 are probably not even playing in this group. The differences observed at this stage become less about talent and a lot more about skill.

A further 8 years later, you’ll be hard pressed to remember if the survivors (again 1 out of 10 you saw 8 years back) were among the original talented 5 year olds. In this group, everyone has above-the-threshold talent and skill. It is work ethic that sets them apart.

Talent is what we are born with. It has a lot to do with our mental and physical make up. Some bodies, for example, are just a lot more suited to long distance running. Skill is when we wrap process around that talent. We use that mental and physical make-up and coax it to do a series of counter intuitive things that enable the individual to perform that skill at a certain level of consistency. For a soccer player, it is often learning collect the ball and make a difficult pass/take a shot in one fluid movement. Talent helps speed up the skill acquisition process. And, the speed of the skill acquisition process determines if you have what it takes to become a professional in what you do. However, skill alone doesn’t do much in a professional’s life. Sure, prodigious skill could result in a brief spell at the top. But, again, it is work ethic that makes a top top professional.

You’ve seen this in every field. Michael Phelps is a great example of natural talent (he was born with an abnormal wing span) who was able to learn the basics of swimming very quickly. But, it is when his coach coaxed in an unmatched work ethic that the became a machine that won a record number of Olympic medals. Whether it is Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant, Jerry Rice, Rafael Nadal, Cristiano Ronaldo, Sachin Tendulkar, Michael Schumacher or Tiger Woods, you’ll be hard pressed to find a superstar who doesn’t have an awe-inspiring work ethic.

And, while we are at it, I’d like to call attention to two important points. First, talent isn’t completely overrated. It helps greatly in the first stage. But, the irony is that we often see above-average talent triumph prodigious talent because they have to work a lot harder on the process. I once met a ticket collector on the DLR in London who used to be a teenage player at Chelsea football club. He said John Terry (Chelsea’s captain and legend) was among the least talented and skillful players as a teenager. All the others, however, just lacked the discipline and work ethic he had.

Second, notice how being professional involves mastering yourself and things you control. Talent isn’t in your circle of influence. Skill sort of is. But, work ethic? It is completely what you make of it.