The Hidden Factors Behind Success: Lessons from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

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Success is often seen as the result of sheer determination and hard work. Figures like Elon Musk credit their accomplishments to relentless effort, but not everyone who works hard achieves extraordinary success. Why? Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers challenges the idea of the "self-made" individual and suggests that success is often driven by external factors such as timing, luck, and opportunity.

What Makes an Outlier?

According to Gladwell, an outlier is a person who reaches a level of success so extraordinary that it's statistically improbable. If most of us are here, outliers are way over there. Their success doesn't just have to be financial. We're talking about anyone who's the world's greatest something. The greatest violinists, swimmers, bankers, YouTube hosts, whatever.

The question Gladwell's asking is: how did they get there? Let's start by talking about opportunity, which Gladwell says nobody can succeed without. Even if you're incredibly smart and talented, you still need a chance to develop and leverage those traits. It takes time, social savvy, and a solid amount of luck to turn your potential into success. Without all that or a very strong support network, you're not going anywhere.

The Power of Opportunity

Gladwell says that, for many of us, the most important opportunities come when we're kids. Early opportunities lead to more opportunities in the future. It's a snowball effect. For example, a middle schooler who's captain of their soccer team has a better chance of being in student government in high school. And both of those look great on an application to Harvard.

For myself, I probably wouldn't be an actor today if I wasn't given early and consistent opportunities to perform on stage as a kid. And kids who succeed early on develop confidence, leadership skills, and a desire to keep chasing success. On the other hand, a kid who fails a lot or doesn't get a chance to try new things, well, that kid's confidence takes a hit, and so does their chance of attaining spectacular success. There's more to it than that, but Gladwell's point is that the opportunity train leaves the station early and it gathers steam fast. According to him, there are 3 hidden factors that can give a kid opportunities: time, social savvy, and hardship.

T(caps)ime: Gladwell explains that extraordinarily successful people tend to be masters of their craft. But how did they get so good at what they do? According to Gladwell, mastering a skill takes about 10000 hours of dedicated practice. That breaks down to about 20 hours a week, every week, for 10 years that's a lot of time! Whether a kid has that time or not and whether they get to choose how to spend it is often a matter of financial privilege. He explains that as a kid, your family needs to be able to afford to give you time. You can't spend 20 hours a week getting really good at soccer, programming, or chess if you have to work a job from high school. And if your family can't buy you supplies or pay for lessons, that limits the kind of skills you're able to develop.

I(caps)ntelligence: But Gladwell's not talking about book smarts or being a genius. He's talking about practical intelligence, or social savvy. Essentially, it's how good you are at reading people and situations, and adjusting your to get what you want. It's stuff like negotiation, confidence, and speaking up for yourself there's a time element here too. But in this case, Gladwell says it's your parents who have to have time. Because we're not born good at this stuff. Social savvy is a skill. To give kids a chance to practice it, Gladwell says parents have to engage with them 1 on 1 to explain why they say no to things their child wants and to give that child a chance to negotiate.If your parents prefer to command rather than explain, or if they discourage you from disagreeing with adults, it's harder to find a place to learn those skills. This is where Gladwell gets controversial. According to him, middle- and upper class parents are more likely to have the time and energy to spend teaching their kids social savvy. He says that parents who have to work multiple jobs might be too tired to negotiate, and that they have to take a more hands off approach. The result, he says, is that poorer children who develop amazing skills might find it harder to talk their way to success.
H(caps)ardship: What Gladwell says is that sometimes hardship can have hidden advantages. To illustrate that, he tells the story of Joe Flom, a Jewish lawyer who grew up during the Great Depression and became an out outlier level success story. The Great Depression was a very difficult time to grow up in America. Kids in that era faced a lot of hardship. But because that generation of children was so small, that hardship contained a hidden advantage. Kids like Flom were educated in small classrooms by teachers who can give them lots of attention. They got a free college education, and they entered a job market that desperately needed employees and was willing to pay them well. But Flom's career was limited by the discrimination he faced jewish lawyers like him were locked out of high profile cases. Instead, they handled boring stuff, like corporate takeovers, which rarely happened at the time. But according to Gladwell, the hardship of being pushed aside like that became an advantage. In the seventies, corporate takeovers suddenly became very common. And because Plum had been handling these cases before it was cool, his experience was very much in demand. As a result, Flom's little law firm became one of the largest and most powerful in the world, and Flom became an outlier. What Gladwell really emphasizes in outliers is that the key to success is opportunity. That opportunity can come in the form of time, which gives you the chance to develop skills and social savvy, or it can be hidden in the hardships you face. In the second half of his book, Gladwell introduces the idea of cultural legacy. According to him, cultural legacy is a leftover from a bygone era.

Cultural Legacy

The humans of the past learned that certain behaviors made them more successful, so they passed those behaviors down. The lifestyles that led to those ways of living might not exist anymore, but we're still raised with those values. For example, Gladwell says cultures of diligence emphasize hard work and dedication. According to him, a history of rice farming tends to foster values like cooperation and teamwork and putting in long hours because the more you work, the more you get. In short, people from different cultures learn different ways to respond to challenges, stand up for themselves, and work together and depending on the context, those approaches either help or hinder their chances of success. What works well in one context may not be helpful helpful in another. It gets a bit controversial, but Gladwell's not saying that one culture is better than any other. What he's trying to point out is that every culture comes packaged with pitfalls, and that being aware of those shortcomings allows us to make adjustments that maximize our chances of success. To highlight this, Gladwell tells a story about how a South Korean airline improved its safety record by changing its internal culture.

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South Korea's culture 

According to him, South Korea has what he calls a culture of deference that values authority. In practice, Gladwell says, that means people aren't comfortable doing things like openly disagreeing with their boss or telling elders what to do. In South Korea specifically, Gladwell says people often use what's called mitigated speech. Because a subordinate wouldn't feel comfortable commanding their superior to do something, they'd phrase their request as a suggestion.

They'd mitigate it. Instead of turn right at the next light, they'd say something like, shall we turn right here, sir? Gladwell says mitigated speech helps enforce the hierarchy. It helps people work together efficiently because everyone knows who's calling the shots. But sometimes, it can cause trouble.

Here's the example Gladwell uses: Back in the nineties, Korean Air had many more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world. It was a major problem that had to be investigated. The investigation discovered a number of issues, but Gladwell highlights one in particular. When the engineers and flight crew brought concerns to their captain's attention, they used mitigated speech. They were polite, they showed deference, and that downplayed the importance of the message.

And often, the captain either ignored that message or didn't get the hint. And that led to the crash. When Korean Air discovered that their cultural legacy of mitigated speech was hurting them, they made some major adjustments to their company culture. Ladewell especially highlights that Korean Air started using English for all of the culture. Gladwell, especially, highlights that Korean Air started using English for all in flight communications.

Unlike Korean, English doesn't have 6 different levels of politeness built into it, so you can be straightforward without being rude. Switching to English let the flight crew speak up boldly and clearly without feeling disrespectful. That improved communication in a major way, and Korean Air's flight safety improved with it. Obviously, there was more to it than just that. Gladwell doesn't mention this, but the investigation found several other factors.

For example, Korean Air's parent corporation had drawn a lot of criticism for putting profits before safety. And when the company was growing quickly in the eighties, they had hired a lot of pilots with minimal qualifications. But cultural legacy played a big role here, and in this context, it really hurt the airline. So making the switch to English was a really big deal. And it's worth noting, it wasn't all bad.

That same cultural legacy had advantages, too. When Korean Air investigated the aftermath of those crashes, they found that the flight crews and passengers had done an amazing job working together. That same respect for authority, and a cultural mindset that values everyone doing their part, helped them get organized and save lives. What Gladwell's really getting at here is that our cultural legacy can have a much bigger impact on our success than we expect. That's why it's so important to be aware of your cultural legacy and how it leads you to behave, and to be open to making adjustments that help you succeed.

In his book, Gladwell asks us to stop admiring outliers for their talent and drive. He argues that the most successful people in our society are those who take advantage of the fact that they're given more opportunities. Instead of praising outliers, our society should explore how to build more systems that create opportunities for more individuals. If we can do that, the outliers may become the norm rather than the exception. This book has lots of great insights into the hidden aspects of success that we didn't have time to cover in this video.

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