Similar to my review of Outliers, I would recommend that the whole book to be read in order to do justice to Malcolm Gladwell's literary skills and story-telling abilities. Nevertheless, the following are some of the lessons which I find useful from the book and wish to share with all of you:
1) The pitchman must make you applaud and take out your money. He must be able to execute what in pitchman's parlance is called "the turn" - the perilous, crucial moment where he goes from entertainer to businessman. (Of course, this sounds like common sense now but it is important to remind ourselves that it is important to be able to entertain and at the same time, make business. What is the use of being a good entertainer but is unable to generate sales?)
2) The turn requires the management of expectation. (To me, this is the keyword to everything and not just on sales. If your wife expects you to give her a 10-carat diamond ring for your 25 years wedding anniversary but you give her a 9.5-carat ring, you can imagine the dissapointment. But if your wife expects a 1-carat wedding ring but you gave her a 9.5-carat ring, I am sure you will be treated like a king. The same goes with salaries, bonuses, Client's expectations, etc. It is a delicate balance here as well because if you underpromise too much, you may not last until the day where you overdeliver. Again, like I said earlier, it's not easy to be a good manager and no one should be under the illusion that there is a silver bullet that can solve every problem)
3) 'I know how to ask for the money'. And that's the secret to the whole damn business. (To technical people, this word seems dirty as generally, technical professionals don't ask for the money and in some countries, talking about money alone may seem to be against the professionals code of ethics. It makes me wonder whether this is why that it has become such a norm in Malaysia that some clients have no remorse whatsoever when they don't pay their consultants. To me, it is ok to ask for the money as long as you discharges your duty professionally and you have carried out your work in the best interest of the public and the Client. At the end of the day, it is a fair trade and we should have no shame asking for what is rightfully ours. Anyway, this deviates from the key message of this point, i.e. one must have the ability to be able to convert one's services into business and receive the money for it. A lot of people can give good presentations/sales pitch or even provided the services but did not manage to convince the potential client that his products/services are worth the money. The ultimate aim for any business is that people would feel happy to pay for your products/services and will feel that it is worth it!)
4) From an experiment by Kahneman and Tversky, a group of people were told to imagine that they had $300. They were then given a choice between (a) receiving another $100 or (b) tossing a coin, where if they won they got $200 and if they lost they got nothing. Most of us, it turns out, prefer (a) to (b). But then Kahneman and Tversky did a second experiment. They told people to imagine that they had $500 and then asked them if they would rather (c) give up $100 or (d) toss a coin and pay $200 if they lost everything and nothing at all if they won. Most of us now prefer (d) to (c). What is interesting about those four choices is that, from a probabilistic standpoint, they are identical. Nonetheless, we have strong preferences among them. Why? Because we're more willing to gamble when it comes to losses, but are risk averse when it comes to our gains. That's why we like small daily winnings in the stock market, even if that requires that we risk losing everything in a crash. (Does that sound familiar - have you ever wondered why so many people lose money in the stock market? It is important that we understand our own psychological weakness)
5) ....... to succeed in the world he could not be just a dog whisperer. He needed to be a people whisperer. (This statement is about Cesar Milan, the famous dog whisperer/trainer. At first, he was not very successful despite his skills and his life only changes for the better when he realised he needs to be a good communicator with fellow human beings as well. This is a recurring theme in my previous post, to be successful in life and your career, it is not just your technical skills that are important, you must be a good communicator and not a lone ranger)
6) Power-law problems leave us with an unpleasant choice. We can be true to our principles or we can fix the problem. We cannot do both. (Sometimes, effective solution may seem harsh and lack of compassion but to be soft and undecisive may cause more problems in the longer term. As such, to be an effective manager, one has to be decisive)
7) ........whether we revise our judgment of events after the fact..........(An important question if one is involved in forensic investigation or passing judgement about others. Sometimes, we can easily point finger at others and give statements such as "The failure is obvious. It is amateur mistakes" with the benefit of hindsight. Therefore, it is important that we ask ourselves the question, what would I have done if I were in the same position at that time with the same amount of information)
8) "Creeping determinism" - the sense that grows on us, in retrospect, that what has happened was actually inevitable - and the chief effect of creeping determinism, he points out, is that it turns unexpected events into expected events.
9) ....... consequences of creeping determinism: in our zeal to correct what we believe to be the problems of the past, we end up creating new problems for the future.
10) Stress wipes out short-term memory. People with lots of experience tend not to panic, because when the stress suppresses their short-term memory they still have some residue of experience to draw on. (For example, it is probably good to give pressure to students to study hard but when it is close to the exam day, it is detrimental to their performance if they are under too much stress)
11) Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.
12) ......... performance ought to improve with experience, and that pressure is an obstacle that the diligent can overcome.
13) The usual prescription for failure - to work harder and take the test more seriously - would only make their problems worse (This is in relations to choking in relations to stereotype threat resulting in the person taking the challenge too seriously. In the book, Malcolm cites examples that black students aren't as good at test-taking as white students, or that white students aren't as good at jumping as black students. Because of such stereotyping, good black students would tends to choke or think too much during a test which results in their poor test scores. This is simlar to good students taking important exams. If they think about the consequences if they don't do as well as they are expected in the exam, the pressure will makes them choke. So, while pressure is good, one must be mindful whether such pressure is suitable on a particular person).
14) We have to learn that sometimes a poor performance reflects not the innate ability of the performer but the complexion of the audience; and that sometimes a poor test score is the sign not of a poor student but of a good one.
15) Risk homeostasis - under certain circumstances, changes that appear to make a system or an organization safer in fact don't. Why? Because human beings have a seemingly fundamental tendency to compensate for lower risks in one area by taking greater risks in another. (For example, car safety features have improved tremendously over the years but does it reduce the fatality rates. It doesn't seem so. When the car safety features improve, we simply drive faster and tailgate closer. So does it reduces the risk of fatalities by improving car safety features. In a company, it can also suffer similar risk homeostasis where the more checklists produced will just encourage employees to pay less attention to their own works. Worth pondering isn't it? For me, we must not get the wrong message here. It doesn't mean that we have to stop improving car safety features because it doesn't seem to help in reducing risks of accidents. What is more important that we are aware of the risks that we are taking when we decide to drive faster. With improvements to the system, at least we have a choice whether we want to reduce the risk or we decide to take the extra risk. The key is awareness!
I am sure some of you can also relate to risk homeostasis in management where the more you check or manage your subordinates, it seems they will become more careless because they know you will check and solve their problems.)
16) ......final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contigent on the efforts of others.
17) "What IQ doesn't pick up is effectiveness at commonsense sorts of things, especially working with people," Richard Wagner, a psychologist at Florida Sate University says.
18) It argued that flawed managers fall into three types. One is the High Likability Floater, who rises effortlessly in an organization because he never takes any difficult decisions or makes any enemies. Another is the Homme de Ressentiment, who seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. The most interesting of the three is the Narcissist, whose energy and self-confidence and charm lead him inexorably up the corporate ladder. Narcissists are terrible managers. They resist accepting suggestions, thinking it will make them appear weak, and they don't believe that others have anything useful to tell them.
19) The broader failing of McKinsey and its acolytes at Enron is their assumption that an organization's intelligence is simply a function of the intelligence of its employees. They believe in stars, because they don't believe in systems.
20) The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around. (I would modify this statement a bit. An organization will not be smart if it don't have a system despite having talent. I would disagree with Malcolm Gladwell here as talent within a proper system will make the organization better. In the case of Enron, it looks like they just let their so called talented people do whatever they like without a proper system)
21) ....... if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.
22) One of the most important things is that you have to come across as being confident in what you are doing and in who you are. How do you do that? Speak clearly and smile.
In summary, this book once again opened up my eyes on seeing things from many different angles. It certainly makes me a better manager if I remembers the lessons learned from this book (I hope). For that, I would recommends Malcolm Gladwell's books to anyone who is open-minded and is willing to look at things from another person's (or dog's) perspective.
By the way, Happy Chinese New Year and let's hope that this Water Dragon year brings us good health and joy.
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