Malcolm Gladwell launches a new book soon, Outliers, which I can’t wait to read. It’s topic, quite broadly, is talent and the new world of work. I’m not sure which way he is going to swing with the book, but he always ensures a gripping read and a different view point that stun most of his reading audience, this blogger included!
But tonight I was reading his latest article for The New Yorker and seem to have stumbled onto his new contention – that talent sometimes takes time to incubate and that the greatest artists/writers and creative people of all time tend to either be young geniuses or old masters. He notes in his article, however, that the young guns get much more celebrity and kudos because they are young than those who become masters late in life. In his New Yorker article, he compares artists Picasso and Cezanne, who came to creative mastery at polar opposite stages in life.
We here in Australia also share this preponderance to celebrate youth more than they often deserve – from the AFL Draft and the mystery and news paper inches filled with wondering about who will pick up the latest talent, to the fresh celebrity of a new graduate employee who holds a certain ‘something’ that makes them more important or valuable than the older stage-rs.
Col Duthie posted last week at the Ergo Blog about how HR departments often try to ‘fix’ people within their companies by attending to their weaknesses with training programs and development course, when they should really be trying to leverage people for their strengths. I agree with this kind of thinking, but the Gladwell article has served to make me pause before blindly calling halt to working on my weaknesses. What is the best type of talent strategy to leverage your company towards a more innovative organisation?
Is it to find the best talent, perhaps the best marketer, creative or even administrative assistant and deal with the variants on performance such personality types experience? Or should HR functions search for people on the path towards their ultimate mastery, and thus pick people up who are still learning and can be funneled into ‘learning and development’ programs?
Perhaps more broadly, is it better for people to create the right environment and pursue their dreams of being ‘the’ person in their field? This is the kind of thinking I am most enamoured with lately. Pat Allan (whilst he will claim he is far from there) is doing it with gusto. Tim Ferris has made a living from giving himself space to ‘be’ and created a huge bread-crumb trail for people to follow with his 4-Hour Work week. Julian Cole seems to be carving out a great niche in something he loves, Sandra Arico is making amazing waves in the world of consulting whilst Ross Hill has become ‘the’ Ross Hill recently with the continued baby steps of Yabble. My question – how do you create that environment? Gladwells book should provide yet more fodder for the brain, but right now do you prefer the young-genius route or the old-master route…and which path are you on?
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