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Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
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Sales rank 1,651
Customers rating (based on 86 reviews)
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Expanding on a landmark cover story in Fortune, a top journalist debunks the myths of exceptional performance. One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called “What It Takes to Be Great.” Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field--from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch--are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades. And not just plain old hard work, like your grandmother might have advocated, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness. Now Colvin has expanded his article with much more scientific background and real-world examples. He shows that the skills of business—negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest—obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort. Even the hardest decisions and interactions can be systematically improved. This new mind-set, combined with Colvin’s practical advice, will change the way you think about your job and career—and will inspire you to achieve more in all you do.
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| Publisher | Portfolio Hardcover | | Release date | 10/2008 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $25.95 | | Our price | $17.13 (you save 33.99%) | | Used price | from $9.49 |
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 Anyone can become better
Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
Review by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD.
The question Colvin chases in this book is, "What does great performance require?" This is what one reviewer said of this book: "...Colvin does make a powerful case that hard MINDFUL work can make up for what you might lack in the genes department and leaves little excuse, except laziness and self choice, for not being the person you want to be and for that alone its worth reading." Colvin's final paragraph of the book reads: "[The evidence] shows that the price of top-level achievement is extraordinarily high. Perhaps it's inevitable that not many people will choose to pay it. But the evidence shows also that by understanding how a few become great, anyone can become better. Above all, what the evidence shouts most loudly is striking, liberating news; that great performance is not reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone." Colvin offers 10 pages of notes. A music teacher reviewed the book and said this: "A must read for parents AND students or anyone who wants the truth told about how to be excellent in any field!! WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL!! Buy this book!!!" Colvin and Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, make the same point (and use much of the same evidence) "That it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a master in any field."
Geared towards a business audience, but worthy...
If you're interested in the research and want a pretty easy read, I'd recommend Colvin's book, Talent is Overrated.Most of the relevant research on excellence was covered and he explained it in terms that didn't immediately put the reader to sleep. His examples from the real world were varied and interesting, and although they were leaned towards business heavyweights, there were examples from comedian Chris Rock, football player Jerry Rice and golfer Tiger Woods. One the things about this book I most appreciated is that Colvin was able to speak directly with Professor K. Anders Ericsson, one of the leaders in the research on excellence for the last 30 years.
Colvin's strength in writing about the business world is also a source of one of the book's weaknesses. The text is specifically geared towards a business audience, likely by design, because it's an audience that almost guarantees robust sales for a book, and with Colvin's notoriety in this realm, it's no surprise that this was a specific strategy. Nothing wrong with this, of course, but I found many of the attempts to connect the literature on excellence to the business world to be strained and the connections themselves tenuous at best.
This relates to another shortcoming of the book, which is that it's long on theory and short on practice, as many books about a topic this complex tend to be. We hear a lot about what excellence is, and get anecdotes and vignettes that help us imagine how excellence is embodied in the world, but when the rubber hits the road, when we need to know what to do if we want excellence for our very own, we don't get much help. Colvin makes many vaguely helpful suggestions, but most are general and abstract and not particularly helpful. It felt like some adult telling a kid, "Just do your best." Good advice, but not very specific.
The final slice of meat in this criticism sandwich is that we never hear an alternative viewpoint about the "talent" concept in the expertise literature. If you're out to prove a belief and are using research to back it up, you should also provide the research that points to the alternative hypothesis, namely that innate ability (talent) does matter. One key piece of writing on this is by Simonton in his piece (in a book edited by Ericsson) entitled "The Hidden Cost of Expertise." The Road To Excellence: the Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games, or The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology). The fact that this opposing viewpoint was omitted entirely is perhaps the most significant criticism of the book.
I would have liked to have seen more of his references throughout the book. Granted, this wasn't a piece of scholarly work in which every reference must be catalogued and clearly cited, so it might be a little unfair to demand this, but for those who want to either read the source material or want to learn more about a particular topic and/or ancecdote, there were many gaps.
Finally, I found I struggled with the tone of the book from the moment I read the sub-title: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. This implies an exclusionary bent, which seems to say that experts are somehow fundamentally different from the rest of us, and much of the writing throughout reinforces this approach. It's my firm belief, which is supported by some of the same research in addition to other research, that experts are normal, everyday people who simply have spent the time and energy in ways that earn them the title of expert. There is no separation involved other than the behavior that anyone can learn to do. The trick is always finding the passion that will sustain the behavior.
If you're interested in expertise, this book does a fairly decent job of reporting on the research and Colvin brings in a wide array of examples from the real world, from disciplines other than business. The writing style is journalistic, so it's clear and concise and "just the facts, ma'am," so don't expect to be captivated by this writing as you might with Malcolm Gladwell, who has written a vaguely similar, though more entertaining book, Outliers: The Story of Success.
***
This is a fascinating book and I learned a lot. But one "danger" of preaching the years-of-discipline doctrine is it is sometimes adopted in fields where it isn't needed. A companion book could be about fields people might want to pursue if they don't have the time nor the inclination to expend years of discipline mastering a skill. A friend once took an acting class from a noted TV director, who said, "How many hours a day would you spend if you wanted to master the violin? Well you must expend the same hours mastering acting." But Tatum O'Neal and Anna Paquin each won Academy Awards for acting at age 10 and neither had acted at all before giving those performances! So that acting teacher was full of it. I recently heard Dean Jones give a talk (he starred in many Disney films) and he was originally a song and dance man, and employed by a studio as such. He was not at all trained as an actor. The studio told him one day to go to So-and-So sound stage to co-star in a film with Jimmy Cagney. He was panicked, and told Cagney as much. "Mr. Cagney, I've never acted before. I'm a song and dance man. I've wanted to train as an actor, and I plan on taking acting lessons some day, but right now I have no acting training and I don't want to be your co-star because I don't feel I'm qualified." Cagney looked at Jones and said, "Kid, for the last 20 years I've just hit my mark and remembered my lines. If you do the same, you'll do fine." And Jones took Cagney's advice, and did absolutely fine, and went on to have a successful film acting career. If Jones had read this book first, he might have pulled out and dedicated years to training as an actor...and have passed up a wonderful opportunity and been totally wasting his time.
 Best I have read this year!
Talent is overrated is an extremely motivational book that makes suggestions on how to become a star in your own right. Unlike other Amazon reviews I have read, this book does not suggest you will become a star reciever or NBA player if you practice. In fact, this book specifically says it will not do that for you. It uses stories of superstars like Tiger Woods, Chris Rock and others to illustrate that they have spent years perfecting their skill. They were not born superstars but have practiced deliberately and that practice has lead them to stardom. This book encourages you to commit to what you do, use deliberate practice, and you will become better in the future. Yes it sounds simple but the book inspires you to take the next step.
It is a great read and I would recommend this to everyone.
Great book!
Easy to read and filled with great case studies to show that deliberate practice can produce great results. Helps motivate us to work harder and achieve!
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