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http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/b/leadership/68/talent-is-overrated/

Columnist Jim Citrin

Talent is Overrated

by Jim Citrin

posted on Nov 24 04:40pm

Jim Citrin http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/columnists/jim-citrin/index.html

Contrary to popular belief, most top performers do not achieve success

because they are blessed with innate gifts.

If you listened to the mellifluous President-Elect Obama deliver his

acceptance speech at Grant Park on November 4th, you wouldn't be alone

in thinking that his oratorical gift was naturally endowed. So too with

Tiger Woods, who famously has been honing his apparently innate gift for

golf since he outputted Bob Hope on the Mike Douglas Show at age two.

Similarly, in describing his investment prowess Warren Buffett has oft

been quoted as saying that he "was born to allocate capital."

We all believe that the world's best performers are different than us.

And that perhaps unfortunately is true. However, you might be surprised

at exactly how they are different and what truly accounts for their

success. Conventional wisdom would explain that the super-human

performers came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what they

ended up doing and that they had the good fortune to discover their gift

early in life. But as Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor at Large with Fortune

Magazine puts forth in his ground-breaking new book, Talent is

Overrated, it turns out that "great performance is in our hands far more

than most of us ever suspected."

In my mind, Talent is Overrated has the three key elements that make a

business book great: 1) It poses one important and specific question, 2)

The question is answered authoritatively, with both facts and compelling

examples and 3) The answer is counterintuitive. Put any of the best

business books through this sieve -- Good to Great, In Search of

Excellence, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and The Tipping

Point -- and they will pass this tripartite test.

*Summary of the Book's Key Points:*

Contrary to popular belief, what makes certain people great is not

inborn talent. Rather, it is something called "deliberate practice," a

sustained, often life-long, period of purposeful effort designed to

improve performance in a specific domain. This turns out to be just as

true in business as it is in sports, music, medicine, chess, science,

and mathematics.

Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements: It is an

activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a

teacher's help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is

continuously available; and it's highly demanding mentally. It is far

different than the general notion of "practice makes perfect." Instead

of repeating a task over and over again in your comfort zone, deliberate

practice requires that you identify certain sharply defined elements of

performance that need to be advanced and then work intently on them.

Once a highly specific capability is improved, whether it's mastering a

passage from a demanding music composition, delivering an investment

recommendation in a staff meeting, or answering a key question in a job

interview, then it's on to the next step. Top performers get the help of

coaches or mentors to select and design the best practice activity,

repeat them to a stultifying degree, adjust their techniques based on

objective feedback, and concentrate so intensely on their efforts that

it strains their mental abilities.

If you are motivated to achieve, the fact that deliberate practice is

extremely difficult is actually good news. Why? Most people don't do it

or stick with it, so your commitment to do so will distinguish you. What

makes deliberate practice so powerful is that it pushes you beyond what

you can currently do and enables you perceive more, to know more, and to

remember more than most other people.

Excellent performers perceive more by developing better and faster

understanding of what they see. This is evidenced by the best typists

seeing more words on a page than others and expert radiologists

detecting subtle but life-threatening issues from x-ray readings that

elude medical residents. Highly trained pilots are twice as good as new

pilots at sorting through the cacophony of air traffic control; and in

business and finance, the best performers understand the significance of

particular information and data that average performers don't even notice.

Great performers in every realm also recall more. Jack Nicklaus could

reportedly remember every shot he had hit in every tournament. The best

direct marketers remember the results of every campaign and which

specific variables caused the largest movements in response rates.

At the extreme, the effects of deliberate practice actually change the

body and the brain. Endurance runners for example have larger than

average hearts. But they weren't born that way; their hearts grew only

after years of training. When they stop training their hearts revert

toward normal size. When kids start practicing a musical instrument,

their brains develop differently. Brain regions that hear tones and

control fingers garner more territory. London taxi drivers, who train

rigorously for two years on average, have been found to have larger

areas of the brain where spatial navigation is governed. It is

significant that the process by which the brain changes is very slow and

requires many years of intensive work. Activities need to be replicated

thousands and in some cases millions of times for the "rewiring" of the

brain to take effect.

The fact is that great performers are different from everybody else. But

the key points to recognize are, one that they didn't start out that

way, and two, that the transformations didn't happen by themselves.

*Colvin Speaks *

In my interview with Colvin, he said "The heart of the matter is that

this is demanding stuff. To excel, you have to pursue these activities

at length and with intensity." He added that it's difficult to sustain

the effort in something if you're continually doing a cost-benefit

analysis. "You need to look deeply into yourself and select something

you will find rewarding for its own sake to which to devote yourself."

Of course, it's relatively straightforward to do this if you have a deep

passion for an activity; but how do you discover it when it's not

obvious? "You may not have the passion a priori," Colvin said, "but as

you pursue an endeavour with focus it will often develop."

I asked Colvin how he is personally applying the principles from the

book. In his work, which involves writing and speaking, Colvin is

thinking much more specifically about the core elements of great

performance and how each can be improved. For example, he cites the use

of story in his articles. "It's much more effective to show rather than

to tell the reader something important. I now review my writing and ask

myself, ‘Am I telling or showing? How can I show more?'" He is also

seeking feedback of editors and mentors much more than he has in the

past. He advises you to find someone in your organization that you

respect and know well enough to solicit genuine feedback and then focus

on improving that which is most important.

Outside of work Colvin is applying his learning in an entirely different

way - moving away from great performance. "I've changed my outlook when

I play golf," he said. "I now understand the reality of where excellence

comes from and know that I will never be world-class (he's a

single-digit handicap). I can stop deluding myself which is actually

quite liberating and have much more fun out there."

The implications of Talent is Overrated are important and actionable.

For your career, the principles are essential because the standards of

performance in business will continue to rise relentlessly driven by the

power of information technology and the fact that you may well be

competing in (and for!) your job with other workers around the world.

Beyond your career, however, the book is incredibly exciting if your

life is your work. It will show you how to maximize what you've got and

what you can accomplish. There are also profound insights about how

parents can create a home environment that encourages children to excel

and about how great performance can be achieved and sustained late into

life.

Colvin brings to life deliberate practice with a wide array of examples.

He takes the reader deeply behind the common knowledge of how Tiger

Woods, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Bobby Fischer and other "child

prodigies" really became great. We see the true genius behind other

renowned performers, such as Chris Rock as a stand-up comedian, Jerry

Rice as the best receiver in NFL history, and Benjamin Franklin as an

essayist. Colvin also convincingly draws on in-depth research on large

groups of violinists, mathematicians, and other groups of anonymous high

achievers. In fact, much of Colvin's research underpinning is drawn from

the leading expert on great performance, Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, a

professor at Florida State University, whose work over the past thirty

years has set the standard in the field.

If you are motivated to devote yourself to becoming a great performer at

work or in an avocation, Talent is Overrated will show you how to focus

on an area and develop and pursue a disciplined regimen of deliberate

practice. Doing this over the long term will lead you further than you

may have ever hoped or dreamed.