Malcolm Gladwell on why we squander talent

Poptech has a video of Malcolm Gladwell discussing some of the ideas in his new book Outliers. (Thanks, Garr !) He discusses how we are very poor at capitalizing on human potential, and what the barriers are to getting all people to achieve their best.





There are barriers to human capitalization common to most business.

Lack of Diversity

There is a lot of research showing that diverse organizations outperform non-diverse ones (thanks, Penelope ). Why is this? Think about it from the negative. The opposite of diversity is promoting and hiring people who are just like ourselves: similar background, experience, and ways of thinking about things. Non-diverse businesses miss out on a wider range of perspective and creativity. It is natural to gravitate to people who our like us, but if we don't keep that tendency in check we squander the potential of many or our employees, and the organization suffers as a result.

Arrogance

The best ideas often come from the people doing the work. It makes sense that folks who actually interact with the customer or assemble the product might have some good ideas about improving the customer experience or the manufacturing process. But organizations with rigid hierarchies only listen to the engineers and MBAs, completely squandering the intelligence and creativity of the folks closest to the customer. The best business listen to emplyees at all levels of the org chart.


What are some of the barriers to human capitalization in your organization?