Why are some people so much better than everyone else in a given field?

What makes a Usain Bolt or Steve Jobs so successful? Is it nature or nurture? Outliers by Malcom Gladwell seeks to answer these question.

An Outlier is an anomoly.

Most people think of the average as the mean. But most science (at least social science) tracks the mid point. Otherwise the data will be skewed by Outliers.

That is, those that fall so far behind, or ahead that they skew the mean.

Gladwell focused on those people who achieved outlandish success. Like Bill Gates, The Beatles and Robert Oppenheimer. To try to understand the ingredients of success.

Our book club chose it as our first book to read and review.

Here's my conversation with:

Eduardo Dos Santos Silva

Neil Hamilton

Saurabh Debnath

It might be worth each of us just briefly saying two or three

standout points that stood out.

For me, the first time around, I vividly remember the 10, 000

hours, the importance of luck and the hockey and soccer examples.

But rereading it I was surprised at how much I missed the first time.

I'd probably noticed it, but for me, it was why the violence of

America and Appalachian states, is it Appalachia, wherever it is, and

about how that comes back from the borderlands of England and Scotland

and Ireland, and how the fertility of the land creates a culture of honor.

I thought was really interesting about the paddy fields and the culture of

Chinese, and how that played into maths.

But the other part was, which I had, I've read in other places is about

the power dominance of airline pilots and why there's airline crashes

because of the power distance index.

So those were the three keys this time.

Neil, as it's your first read through what things stood out to you?

I did think actually, the, because I knew the book through the

10, 000 hours, maybe because I read Eduardo's review, I'm not sure.

But I think for me, at a sort of macro level, it was, there was, it

was really quite powerful around the attitude and culture and

how those things come together.

So that Asians being good at maths storyline.

I think, when you dig into that and seeing just the importance of attitude,

I thought was really compelling.

More broadly, the sort of cultural, experiences that people have.

Whether it's that sort of ethos of hard work or actually privilege and opportunity

as you're growing up and just having an advantage that others don't have.

I think that there's sort of two sides to that coin, I think.

So attitude and then cultural reference and privilege,

for me guys, it has always been a little bit the tale of what you

can control and what you can't control this book, you have the lucky element,

and it's given so many examples.

You guys mentioned a few, the one with Oppenheimer is also brilliant in which

shows how two people undergoing the same thing, more or less at the same time

in not so distant places experience, trajectory is so different just because

of the context that they were set up in.

And at the same time, a reinforcement that yes, that is that much that's

luck and that's how it's going to roll.

But what is that you can do about it.

And that's where the 10, 000 hours come from and so on to

the point that is in the book.

Passage that I noted down to talk to you guys today.

Let me just find it here.

It's about a math Olympics.

So what he says is you imagine that every year there was a math Olympics in some

fabulous city in the world and every country in the world sent their 10, 000

fast eight graders and the point of The evaluations, the research that they did

was that you could anticipate the results without asking a single question of math

to any of the students by simply looking from a cultural perspective, what is

the emphasis of hard work and effort?

How powerful is that?

Yeah,

absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think that aligns to my that sort of there's an attitude point

isn't there's a mindset point to that.

It's just something that, arguably is in your gift.

But how did that mindset come about?

Cultural upbringing and cultural history have shaped how people think.

It's really fascinating how they interact, I think.

At the same time, I think this is the point that he tries

to make, this is still something.

You can change, right?

We can change.

It's not immutable.

And it's actually not that hard when you think about it.

Yeah.

I think the same example, like the Korean air example, it actually shows that as

well, that there are ingrained biases.

But once we start working on those biases, it does not take much time to, improve

the culture and bring the things back.

Yeah.

So like for me the most, I have also noted down seven,

eight key points from the book.

So one of the things is obviously the 10, 000 hours, so I was just reading

around this 10, 000 hours, they like, from where did this research come from?

So it actually started in 1960s, mid sixties, and it was studying the

chess players or the grandmasters.

So there was a study of grandmasters and what the study showed is it took

the grandmasters anything between 11, 500 hours to 40, 000, 35, 40, 000 hours

to master all the scenarios in chess.

And it's also to discuss about what are closed loops and what are open loops.

So like tennis is an open loop game that you, yes, you can practice a forehand.

You can practice a backhand, but at the same time, like Rafael Nadal says, that

each of the shots that you hit each shot is different because it's an open loop.

All the moves you cannot master.

On the other hand, chess is a closed loop game.

There are only a huge amount of scenarios, but it's a closed loop game.

There are only so many moves that you can make.

So once you put yourself in that position and you keep on playing

those moves, you master those moves.

And that is called the process of chunking.

So you are able to chunk the information in a certain, amount of

you are able to see the scenario and you can bring that information back.

So that is chunking.

So this was the study done in 1960s.

And later in 1980s, there was another study which sort of brought

this, the current version of 10, 000 hours that we speak off.

This was a study done in 1985, which said that with deliberate practice,

a 10, 000 hours of practice, you can reach the, higher levels of

professional expertise in any field.

So that was the study.

And Malcolm Gladwell bases whatever he's written in the book based on

that second study, and it misses on a lot of points from the first study.

So that was the first thing that, that I studied deeply.

I was also researching for my book.

So certain points I tried to pick up from that.

Again the very fact that outlier, the general definition of Outlier.

So how would we define an outlier?

Outlier is someone who's exceptionally good at something.

So that, exceptionally like 99 percentile plus, that is what we'll call Outlier.

Talent matters a lot is something that I circled back onto, the more I read

outliers and studied, researched around it, the more evidence I found that outlier

is yes, definitely hard work, deliberate practice, all that is important.

But a lot of natural factors also play into, especially in the field of sports.

In case of basketball, he gave the example of basketball that,

height is a very important factor.

But at the same time, you will see that the cultural aspects

of how our DNA is made up.

For example, Ethiopians are very good at running long distance running.

That's more to do with their DNA, their genetics, same with Jamaicans

being very good at, short sprints.

Because they, in the past, they were slaves who ran away, from

Africa and they reached Jamaica.

So just the fact that they are survivors and they all were in a, small space.

So that over time played into their DNA and they are the ones who are the

best at running short distance running.

So that's the genetic plays a very important role was again, that as

something found out, coming back to outliers, another very important

fact that Gladwell talks about, is the importance of, birth date.

that January, February, March, if you are born in that first

quarter of then it plays.

So I also did some of my study and the example that he gives of

Canadian hockey team, junior hockey team, that is the case even now.

So just today morning, I was just going through it.

So I found, yes, that rule does hold even now in the junior hockey team.

The rule still holds.

So most of the people who are in the junior hockey team, they are still

January, February, March, two in the first six months of the, the birth date.

So that's something that I think is a very unique, thing that I learned from

this book specifically, if I, try to find out apart from the 10, 000 hour rule.

This was another very unique thing that I found that, the very fact that initial,

advantage that you get plays so much into what you turn out to be later.

Yeah, those were two, three points that I just wanted to make.

I do have a follow up question for you but maybe for all of us.

Yeah, because you made that or you shared the outlier being somebody

exceptionally good at something, right?

And then we talked about, sports examples and I think when it comes to sports

is it's so easy to observe, right?

If you see Cristiano Ronaldo playing football and then after him, you

see me you, you're getting what the gap is and the difference, right?

But when it comes to the business world a lot of so called outliers, and I,

let's go back to the book the example of Bill Gates and Bezos and so on.

They are not necessarily exceptionally good at something, but they rather

got exceptionally good results with something that they did.

What is the difference for you guys and how do you feel about it?

Yeah, I think a very important part in the book that Gladwell also talks

about is practical intelligence, that practical intelligence, that emotional

intelligence, that social intelligence that a person has, it's obviously a

combination of what you are good at.

Say, for example, Bill Gates was obviously very good at programming, maybe in the

99th percentile, but it was just not that, it was to do with the timing.

When he was born, it talks about 1954 to 1956, between that period,

there are 12 people in the top 75 richest people in the world.

Who are in that category.

So when you are born, the other part being obviously the social intelligence, how

emotionally intelligent you are, how you can get things done, all those factors,

and obviously you are good at something.

So a combination of these factors, and obviously the very fact of

deliberate practice that you are getting that time to practice.

A certain skillset because of your family background and everything.

So all of it, cultural aspects, all these things put together is what,

at least in my understanding of the book and what, we also see observed

that's what brings in success.

In terms of business, it it is all of those things, but for the real outliers,

like the Bill Gates, the Warren Buffett, the people like that, it's, I think

it's more about luck as in, they could have, Bill Gates could have channeled,

all of his efforts into something else.

He'd have been a huge success.

He would have been successful or whatever, but that the amount of money

that he made happened because it was the operating system that he was able

to hold ransom over even till today.

Anything else, he could have had the same intelligence, he could have built the same

product, but the timing would have meant that it wouldn't have had the same return.

Jeff Bezos also isn't it between him and Elon Musk now is the richest man.

It was the timing of, someone who had the courage and the clarity.

To make such an audacious attempt that he did with Amazon.

Is Elon Musk a Anomaly in that respect, because he's done it in different

industries where he's being someone who's provoked the change rather than,

But it's another good example that supports your theory, right?

Because he came with money.

Had he not came with money he is a brilliant individual.

I have read about him and from him and heard the level of detail that he can

get through several different fields it's nothing but impressive and yet we know

there are people like that out there.

With no access, leading to anywhere, or sometimes even leading to frustration

because they can't get the kind of life they expect to because of fulfillment

of entitlement or something like that.

And when it comes to Musk just because he could start from somewhere

else and he could start building.

His legacy already from early age with his own thoughts and investments and business

ideas not having to depend on others to do that for him or, that, that made such

a difference for a person with his kind of soft skills, if we can put it like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For me, so one of the key things about the book for me was, it wasn't

necessarily any one of the things that he talked about, but the combination.

If we look at that in a sort of holistic way, you start to see, because when

I think about your original question around business, Eduardo, What I was

thinking of reading the book actually was when I've been in organizations

and fast stream programs for developing leaders, through graduation programs,

in the UK, quite a lot of Oxford or Cambridge graduates are moved around

quickly and they get the exposure and the experience and they get to the top

and that's focused on one dimension.

Of course, they're getting the opportunity, the mentoring

and the coaching and all those things that go around it through

the opportunity that they had.

How did they get to university?

It's a combination of factors, I'm sure.

And you start to unpick these things and you start to see.

Actually, the privilege, and I don't mean that in a, a sort of economic

sense, but in a general sense, the opportunity, I suppose people have

had to develop in their early careers.

But what what I think about people like Richard Branson, probably

Elon Musk, and others is I sense a willingness to break the mold.

To think a bit differently.

So Amazon goes online with books in a way no other organization had done.

Books are easy to sell online.

There's an opportunity that was spotted that other people weren't seeing.

So they are early adopters if you like, or they are, breaking the mold

in terms of traditional thinking.

That's something I really admire just thinking about things in

different ways, making opportunities.

But, there's a separate question around.

How did people end up like that?

How did Richard Branson end up the way he did?

I think that's really interesting.

There's something also that comes to mind, in also in the link that Saurabh shared.

I don't know if you saw that, but he talked about disadvantages

that become advantages, and how Sir Richard Branson was dyslexic.

And he says there's four skills.

It teaches you to problem solve.

It teaches you to ask for help.

It teaches you to delegate to others.

And one of I'm not sure if you remember.

The other part of it.

which particularly comes to mind is someone like Elon Musk or

even just Bezos or someone who is that outlier is partly an outlier

because of their internal demons.

So when you look at Elon Musk, he's very driven by a father, abusive

never been accepted, always constantly having a need to prove himself.

Yeah.

So when you look at someone who's got hundreds of billions,

and yet they're still.

pushing themselves to the point, I think most people are a little bit more balanced

and, it takes often for the super rich.

It needs someone that like often they need to prove themselves to their dad

or mom, or there's some sense that they felt that they weren't good enough

and they had to prove themselves.

And I think that isn't really covered.

I don't think, but I think that may be.

Part of when you look at business or things that are of a status or even

for sports like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Now I think Messi is the better, and Messi from what I can understand is

it did it from love, he just loves, he'll be all the time with a ball.

Even now as an adult, when they're sharing a hotel room, he's got

two footballs, one on each foot where he's keeping them both up.

Whereas Ronaldo is someone who's driven to prove himself.

I was reflecting on with the book was we often frame it in

the context of success and outlier as someone who's successful.

What is success actually?

And, and I know from reading all your posts that there's

something here about happiness and sometimes taking a step back.

and not driving yourself to that kind of degree is successful for the individual.

I was struck by the swimming in the Olympics last night.

I got, I think his name's Peaty, one of the UK swimmers that's

won a number of golds in the past and was highly anticipated to win

gold at breaststroke last night.

When he finished, he was absolutely elated.

He came second, by the way.

About two hundredths of a second difference between him and second

place, and it was joint second.

He was absolutely elated, just so happy.

He was expected to win, and people wondered if he'd feel downhearted,

but the point was that he felt happy in himself that he'd dealt with the

demons that he had over 18 months or something, and was proud of his efforts.

He didn't win.

He wasn't one of those people you might then look to.

He's got six medals or something from three Olympics.

But it wasn't winning for him.

It was that journey.

It was the drive and being true to himself.

And I really admired that.

But it was a, it made me think of the book actually because

what means do we measure success?

I don't know.

What do you think?

Yeah,

That's a great point because when we're looking at outliers,

we're not looking at happiness.

We're not looking at balanced, stable people.

When you look at Elon Musk, he's got lots of children, there

isn't that kind of family life.

When we're looking at outliers, we're looking at someone who's sacrificed

everything else in life for that aspect.

Yeah.

I was probably going to add just the same, Rob.

I think when we discuss and when we read the book the outliers definition is an

outside in, kind of definition, right?

So it's the others defining one person as an Outlier.

And we know that this is such a half true because all these others don't know

what is really going on, with the self.

The story of Steve Jobs and especially of the dying of Steve Jobs tells

a little bit about that, right?

The amount of regret that he shared as he was coming to was his final days.

And he's a very celebrated Outlier.

. So what does that mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's interesting because the story of the tailor.

I think it was.

That was another thing that resonated with me.

So the I think it was a Jewish immigrant that went to to America and started

in looking to find a niche, and there was a reference to that, I think,

towards the end of the book that talked about how, in comparison to say

somebody in a, working in a field, for example, where, they pick the produce

and then it disappears somewhere and that's the last they see of it.

Actually the value of him developing his own business, where it was complex,

it was long hours, it was hard work.

But when he got home to his family, he felt proud about what he was doing.

He embraced the complexity.

He got real joy and value.

out of the fact he could see, if you like, the end to end, the full

picture of what he's doing, from spotting an opportunity to, selling

to customers that are coming back.

And that sort of, it made me think of Alive at Work, actually, if you've

read that by Daniel Cable, I think, and it talks about that need, alive

at work that need to have purpose and challenge and, all those the sort of

complexity can make work interesting.

Seeing the big picture of what you're achieving and the rewards of that.

That was a nice sort of different story to many of the others, I thought.

Yeah.

And even, when we were talking about, Outliers, like Elon Musk and Steve

Jobs, the very fact that they are driven internally to that extent,

like they have everything and still.

They are able to push themselves comes from a dream.

They have a vision, they have a dream, and they are trying to achieve that.

It's generally not numbers driven.

It is dream driven is what, even in case of Jeff Bezos, like 20 years

without profit, just to follow a dream, or Elon Musk, the dream to go

to say, Mars and have a colony there.

Such a dream, something which is like beyond yourself, to leave a legacy or

something, even in case of Ronaldo and Messi, they've achieved everything.

So what is driving them?

Is it to leave a legacy?

I'm not very sure about it.

That's the only reason they have some kind of a, their own dreams, whatever that is.

I think that is a very huge factor, especially in case of

such outliers who have given up everything just to pursue that.

Case of, even in tennis, we see like players like Nadal, where they can hardly

move and they are still pushing their bodies to the, great test hardships

just to, and they're not enjoying it.

It's not as if that they're enjoying getting up with the

knees swollen and everything.

And every time just to play, they have to take injections and get

those shots to keep on playing.

So what is that is pushing them still?

If it is just not the love for game, then what it is.

It is that challenge, that sense of self worth and self identity

they also derive from that.

So yeah, a lot of things I feel come into picture with that.

I was reading about Cristiano Ronaldo, that one of the areas he has

been investing the most over the last two, three years is on himself on

trying to identify what is his vision going further, because what happens

with a lot of athletes sportsmen is that they have a shelf life, right?

So it gets to 30, 40, 50, depending on the sport and that's a cut you don't

play it like he used to play anymore.

So you can still contribute to the sport.

You can do something else.

You can completely change your life, especially if you have that kind of money.

But that's a big question because you had that vision at the beginning when in this

case, when he started Playing football all the stories associated with his father how

he wanted to break free from that past and how he wanted to prove, himself to your

point, okay, now he's done, but he's 40.

He has another 40 years to live.

If not 60, what do you do then?

And that the person is different when the person is still willing to invest

in himself to figure out what that is.

Despite of having everything

Going back to like when we talk about the richest person, I think it's

interesting like every year apart from I think one year is like carlos slim

from mexico Was on the richest list.

But it's always from the united states.

No one is coming the richest from Cambodia or Ethiopia.

So you've already given that chance, just by the country.

And then I think it's interesting that there's a reason for a culture.

So Egypt was perhaps the first great civilization because of the

Nile, because it had fertile soil.

Here the UK has been quite quite a powerful nation because, we

have such fertile lands, that's why we were raided so much.

And then we've had the Vikings, the Romans, the, Normans.

Everyone has invaded us.

So we've gained, all different attributes.

We've had that diversity of knowledge, diversity of input.

So when we look at countries, they're geographic advantages.

America has this great land with every potential.

It's got every kind of climate within it.

It's got the English, it's got the Italians, it's got the Irish, it's

got the Jewish, it's got every kind of nationality, so it's come together.

Knowing all of those things, all of that inside knowledge of

all of those different areas.

So there's certain reasons that we might not recognize.

I think that's, what's interesting to me about outliers is, I

remember is Jeb Bush, his dad and his brother were US presidents.

He's come from a family with money.

He's grown up with privilege and he says, I'm a self made man.

Your dad was the American president.

Your brother is the American president.

You got millions.

How can you be self made?

You're in a country that gives you every privilege, every advantage.

And you're claiming it's all my own work.

One way I like to look at it is if I had the same genetics, the same

upbringing, the same experiences, the same culture, I would think the same as you.

And I think there's, that's the appreciation that Outliers,

has given to me really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's interesting, and the States in particular, because I

always tend to think the States is great at seizing, generally speaking,

great at seizing opportunity.

Actually when you think about it, when everyone emigrated to the States, whether

from Ireland or elsewhere, they're giving everything up, aren't they?

They're taking a leap of faith.

They're seeking something different, something new, prepared to explore

and, and have that courage to do and if you build a country around that kind

of attitude from different people all coming together and that entrepreneurial

spirit like the tailor, no wonder the opportunities are seized and so on.

So I think it's that, for me, there's, it comes back to that sort of cultural point

of having, grown up in an environment like that, you've seen what your parents have

done or you've seen what your community does and you just naturally follow that.

It's interesting because here in the UK, we've just had an election.

And the UK, the last few years we've left Europe.

Immigration has been a big thing.

Reform party is growing and there's a movement of that in across Europe.

I think and Trump also was like, we're going to have quotas and that.

And yet it's proven that economies grow through immigration.

There's this common sense idea that, oh, if we keep our jobs, but it

doesn't recognize the impact of that immigration mindset and the fact that

when you have immigrants, mostly you're getting the most ambitious people.

Whereas, the argument here is in the UK, it's Oh, will

there be more jobs for British?

We can't keep, employing other people.

Because we left Brexit.

We lost a lot of.

carers and people from the NHS and there's an English mentality

that I don't do that work.

As I can get more off benefits than doing that.

So it's that appreciation of, again, diversity.

Yeah, I could tell you a number of stories from Brazil.

One of our national products is coffee very well known worldwide.

And it wouldn't have come to be if it weren't for immigrants.

This is part of the process by which outliers are developed.

I think it's also much related because it's the kind of movement

that creates additional movement.

And that's why people are sometimes against it or not comfortable with

it because that implies that they in their countries doing whatever they

were doing will have to move as well.

That, that creates the discomfort, but at the same time that it creates

comfort, it creates the opportunity.

Yeah.

I have a very similar example like when India was

partitioning a partitioning like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all

these three countries were formed.

For a lot of people from Bangladesh, the now present Bangladesh, they came

to West Bengal, which is adjacent state to, where Bangladesh is.

So people who had left everything in there, Bangladesh side of a place and

had come to West Bengal, they are now the richest people in West Bengal.

The reason, because since they came from there and they had nothing.

The kind of upbringing, the kind of culture that, they were exposed to

the kind of difficulties, the kind of struggles they had to go through

was much greater than the people of West Bengal at that point of time.

So that's one of the reason why most of the people in West Bengal

right now are all from, they had, they have come from East Bengal.

That is the other part, which is now Bangalore.

So yeah, and these are the kind of examples, like even in Delhi, the

place I am in, you will see most of the people are the same ones

who have come from that partition.

1947, the partition happened.

And now most of the businessmen and everyone in Delhi, they're

all from the East Pakistan.

That is the Pakistan from Pakistan side, who had migrated back to India in 1947.

They are the ones who are the most successful businessmen.

Again, the same case, because they had to go through that struggle

and all those, cultural aspects of extreme difficulty and having to earn

it that hard work and that culture.

Of that struggle is what has made them more successful at present.

Yeah, but very similar parallel examples across, I can see.

It

brings what you said and what Rob said together, doesn't it?

Now that it's the vision but this vision is fueled by something else.

And the way I think about it is you do have this models on where humans

are driven by one of two things.

Either love, you can get many names, passion and so on.

And you create visions for that or fear.

So you're either push through something or you pull from it.

And that's how most people balance their lives somewhere, in the middle,

most of the time especially if you're in a place with some stability,

but when you go to extremes.

Like when you're running from your country, for example, there is a

tendency that you also be pushed to one of these extremes and of course.

It's for me, even logical that if you're starting from scratch,

you have nothing else to lose.

That is no fear anymore.

Nothing worse can happen at this point.

It can only get better.

And then you push for it and then you risk for it and you try hard.

And then you put the 10, 000 hours or even 50, 000 hours and you put

practice into practice until you excel.

And then the whole theory of outliers makes sense at scale.

What comes to mind then Eduardo, is that old saying

of hard times make hard men.

Hard men make good societies make, but basically, we get the riches, and

then we make it comfortable for our children, and then our our children

become soft, and then empires decline.

A parallel book is The Psychology of Money.

I don't know if you've read that Morgan Housel.

And basically he says that generations have an attitude to

money based on the circumstances.

So those who grew up, in the twenties, witnessed the thirties depression.

Those who grew up in the thirties witnessed the war of the forties,

the, and then the sixties boom.

Which kind of parallels with the right timings in outliers it just makes you

appreciate how much is circumstance, there is, we can do what we can do.

And then there's a certain amount that we need to let go of.

I always think, I, I used to have something that I called the think

free revolution is that I think we're trapped by three things, we're

trapped by our emotional, reactions.

So when we become overly emotional, we stop thinking.

We're trapped by ignorance.

And we're tracked by dogma.

When we grow up, we learn certain lessons from events, from our culture.

And it's about overcoming those biases of our culture, of our own

experience, and of our own emotions.

So I think there's something about becoming independent,

becoming free of that.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

And I gets back to some of the discussion earlier for me in if you become

comfortable in that culture you're in and you're behaving as everyone

else behaves, it takes somebody to.

To break the mould, it takes somebody to think differently, doesn't it?

And I think that comes from self reflection and curiosity.

Asking yourself, is this really right?

Does this serve a purpose now?

If we ask that question more around immigration, Rob, that you were talking

about earlier, Does it really serve the purpose for the, the likes of, some

of the policies that are talked about?

Without getting political, just asking that question I think soon leads you to

this why have we got so many job vacancies in the National Health Service or so on?

And I think it's that ability to stand back.

And ask that question that, that can make a difference.

It's one of the interesting things that I've been reflecting on after

reading the book, not so much when I was reading it was this point.

I watched the first 30 minutes of the video as well

through that, that you shared.

And this idea has really sees me around.

capitalizing on talent.

With all the things we're talking about, how do we improve the lives of others?

And, actually the world writ large, how do we capitalize on the talent, the

inherent talent that exists in everybody?

That's much too difficult for my meager brain to work out, but it's

an interesting question, isn't it?

I don't know if anyone's got any views on that.

You're just stimulating my thinking, and My reaction to it because

again of the visions that we talked about I actually don't think a lot of

this visionaries, this outliers were thinking about doing the greater good or

anything like that, it's just that they naturally worked towards the benefit

of others, but not that they were putting all their intention into it.

Their intention was clearly something else.

I will build the most exciting system in the world.

I am going to have the highest volumes of financial transactions

handled by my platform.

I'm going to, win the all this football prizes one after the other over my

entire career In the process of doing the things that they have sat themselves

for though, they benefited all this.

I feel that this is a big challenge.

I have seen leaders trying to go through multiple different ways.

Okay.

Let me do what is best for the people.

And usually people can feel that they are lacking something that is no real goal.

And the goal Cannot be let's just do it for the people, you

know that is missing substance

Yeah.

But in business, there was a quote, in the book that struck me about, I

forgotten was it the Matthew effect?

I think it was called that basically the rich get richer.

And one of the other sort of things that sort of struck me about the book, and

some of you talked a little bit about closed loops and open loops earlier, was

this sense of the complexity of systems.

And the reinforcing loop, so the rich are getting richer, the privileged are

promoting their privilege, the sons or daughters of, presidents have a leg up.

And this is a reinforcing loop.

The more it continues, the more the privilege succeed because

the more privilege there are who are giving them the leg up.

Whether that's, because of the university you went to or anything else.

And there's, it seems to me that cycle needs breaking.

And Richard Branson with a dyslexic skill, should we say.

Dyslexia at school is a fundamental, it feels to me, at least when I

was at school, a disadvantage.

It's very hard to to do well, when you've got a system that's built

around cookie cutter type approaches.

And again, it started to make me think how do you break that mold?

How do you actually, change the system in a way that Equal opportunity is

provided in ways that actually, I know it's slightly different for sports.

I'm thinking about business in particular and, a certain business

mentality drives you to the top and you want people in your image.

So you promote people like you and, you've got a reinforcing

loop that needs breaking.

And it will break guys, because, I think it's just that we will probably

not see it and at the same time we wanted to let's go back in history, not for

much, let's go back for a hundred years and 200 years, then 300 years, the kind

of enterprises that were successful.

Each of the centuries were completely different from one another.

Whenever they were more state sponsored or individually driven, or if they

were based on, partnerships or not, or whenever the money was coming

from whatever would be the kind of person that would be entitled to lead.

This kind of business, it has been all completely different.

And I.

I feel sometimes that again, we get too attached to the current model

that exists and that's okay because we live in the present, not in the past

or in the future, but it's definitely not going to stay forever like it.

I do think he read a book why nation Spain.

Yeah.

Which also actually talks about the wicked problem that, these systems

present that the riches, the richer always, tend to get more and more

rich and the poorer always get poorer.

It's because.

The systems are rigged, right?

It's the lobbying.

It takes place always on for the richer people, because they have more influence.

So this is only going to rise in short.

I'm just trying to, capture the essence of it, that the rich will

always get richer because the systems are always rigged in favor of them.

They have the most influence.

So it has always happened in history.

It's just that only when certain black Swan events have happened, like Talib

talks about the black swan events.

It's only because of certain black swan events that happen in some part point

of the history that it gets shattered.

For example, like when colonialism stopped, then that was a black

swan event for that particular country in whichever country it was.

So that pushed it to a part of growth or if some terrorist

activity happens in certain country.

And it is completely destroyed.

Then a new system might come up or something of that sort.

So that cycle of destruction and recreation, it's something

which is a cycle, right?

It keeps on going and coming.

But within that, period of a cycle, it's always the rich getting richer

and the poor getting poorer till the point of time when there is a

revolution, like the things that happened in the French revolution and

Renaissance movement and everything.

That was a culmination of that.

When the rich became so.

rich, that the poor had nothing, and then the movement took place.

So it's always like a cycle that all these systems and everything come into being,

especially when it comes to democracy.

I feel it's comparatively still, certain parity can be maintained

with the checks and balances.

But in most other say, what can you do in a North Korea?

Nothing.

So it always, again, depends on the system that you are playing in.

So yeah, that one example that clearly came to me, the second one Eduardo, you

mentioned that, they do it for themselves.

Ronaldo would just to win the medals and everything.

He's doing it for himself.

And this is exactly what, the capitalism, the core definition of

capitalism, when Adam Smith said the.

Invisible hand is the invisible hand, which is guiding us

towards, progress or anything.

It's not just, the goals that we have.

It's just that when we are achieving those goals, others are also getting

benefited by it in some way or the other.

That invisible hand comes into play.

So yeah, these two points really, yeah.

I think the capitalization, which I didn't really see so much in

the book, but it was in the video.

And I think that is a really interesting point is really like

certain countries have certain sports.

And so often there are whole groups that could be the next Messi or the next

Nadal or whoever it is, but they never get access to achieve their potential.

i'm thinking as you're talking about the gap.

I worked for a while in a a school that was it was here in the Suburbs, but it was

had the profile of an inner city school.

It was the most underprivileged school.

And there is a clear gap, and it's not just poverty.

The study of intelligence is very contentious, and it's quite clear that

the evidence is that most, if not at least half, most of intelligence is genetic, but

because they're of a whole back history of eugenics and things that it isn't able

to say, and there's someone Millers and Bernstein, I think it is, who did this

study and they said, basically, there is a subset of every culture where it's

a class of intelligence, and that all the money in health, all the money in

social care, all the money in crime, all the money in welfare, all the money in

education goes to a certain, Small amount.

And when we looked at where part of my job was to Audit and make

a make up where the money went.

And a huge amount of the money went on a few families.

There's like this estate and there's a few families that were intermingled

and whatever but there are a few families that they would have 10

kids And they would be on welfare.

They would have health issues.

Their health wasn't great.

So they were the ones that were causing the trouble in the school.

And because of that, they were managed and this is children that had maybe

16 to 18, 000 a year spent on them.

Based on the fact that they were unmanageable based on the fact that

they couldn't sit and pay attention.

They'd learned, often not to trust, never to tell the truth, because if

they did they'd get hit or whatever.

So there is this section and when you look at how schools judged good

schools have good catchment areas.

And this is part of what Gladwell outlined in the book is that they have, they're

taught by parents that Give them time.

They teach them to read.

They spend time with them.

When they help them, they make sure that they do their homework.

They help them with their homework.

They have all the resources they need to do their work.

If they're struggling, they get tutors and they give them support.

Whereas a child that has poverty, it's not just about the poverty

of not having everything.

It's about poverty of language.

Even a brighter kid that comes from a less advantaged background,

they'll often reach a stage where about year nine where they can read.

And teachers think, Oh it isn't a problem with reading, but it's a problem with

vocabulary is a problem where they don't understand the words because

they haven't been exposed to them.

So there's a poverty of language.

There's a poverty of aspirations.

They've never known to look outside of their own town.

So they don't know what's possible.

There's a poverty of books because they're not exposed to books.

There's a poverty of network because they're not exposed to

people who can give them support.

They don't have any role models and there's a poverty of opportunities.

So there is this, innate disadvantage, but then when you look at it, part

of the human drive is for status, is that there's many studies that you

could get more money, be comparatively less than someone else and we'll take

less because it's not just about how much we get, it's about how much we

get in comparison to everyone else.

With our children, there's a love for our children and we want our

children to have an advantage.

We don't want them to have the same as everyone else.

We want them to have an advantage.

So those that have more are going to try, look to give their child the edge.

And so there's something in that.

The attempt of communists is to impose equality on everyone.

That doesn't work because it works exactly against human nature.

So there is this desire for us and our children to have an advantage over others,

and I think that perpetuates that gap.

And that happens even without much thinking, right on the book, one of

the examples that he proposed is about the school break the vacation period mentions

that, okay, underprivileged kids usually go break for vacation, and they pretty

much do nothing over several weeks if it's new as it can be almost three months.

Think about that.

Richer kids or privileged kids usually have several opportunities off in

reaching activities and experiences over the same period of time.

So what happens is through the school year according to this.

Poor kids could be even performing better than the richer kids, but when

it gets to the break and when they return after months, they have lost all

that and the richer kids compounded.

Now, this doesn't happen once.

It happens every year over 12, 15 years of educational development.

What happens in a grade eight or nine, depending on the country, is that the

gap is so significant to your point, Rob to vocabulary understanding and

this kind of foundational things that you really need in order to continue

to advance that, then to your point, Saurabh, the game became rigged.

That is no chance anymore.

There's always a chance, but it became so minimal.

And when I think about myself or family here, what is that we do?

It's again, some of it has an intention, but a lot of it doesn't.

The fact that we have the books around us because we like reading and then the

kids do it because they see that we do it that we go and visit the museum is because

we like this kind of activities, right?

Or that we get together with interesting families where kids are also interested

in hobbies and things like that instead of doing nothing and watching TV the

whole day, it's just part of our lives.

And that's how the gap comes to be.

I'm thinking back now, when I went to college, I went

to college on Harrow and Hill.

I would pass Harrow school.

Harrow and Eaton are, two of the big old, big name boarding schools.

We call it a public school, but it's actually a private school.

And the advantage to going to Harrow and Eton or one of those schools

is all of your classmates, there's studies of the cabinet, the British

government was made up of, I can't remember, but it's an inordinate

amount came from Harrow and Eton.

They're not necessarily brighter, but all of their friends and all of their friends

parents are already government ministers, their CEOs, their leaders of industry.

So it's natural for them.

It's like the thing they always say that you're the average of

the five people you hang out with.

And I remember there was a TV show.

I don't know if you ever saw it, Neil, but it was Harrow school.

And it showed, life in Harrow school.

And it's like that they're exposed that they have every sport.

They have every kind of, opportunity, it's natural for their parents

to fly around the helicopters.

They see so much culture.

There's something wrong if they don't go to a good university.

And then when they've gone to the university, they've got the grades, then,

their dad knows someone, someone in the family, how he puts them in a start.

They take this leadership role.

They naturally grow up thinking I should be an MP or I should do

something because there's a natural.

emotional sense that you have authority, that you're entitled to

it.

That's really interesting that, that entitlement point, again, I think, and

one of the things that struck me about the book, there was that passage about the

study of flight and airlines and so on.

And there was a quote, I wrote it down, or I paraphrased it, that said

something like crashes are more likely when the captain is in the flying seat.

And I was just reminded of that when you were talking, Rob, because when you

have that sense of privilege, when you have that sense of what's the word I'm

looking for expectation on you almost, that because you went to those schools,

you ought to be in those positions, and therefore there's an expectation on you,

from others, but also from yourself.

You're creating an environment where, the opposite of that, of course, is if

you go to a comprehensive, you don't have the expectation of rising to The sort of

dizzy heights that that they might, and you get this sort of, what was it called?

High, low power.

They talked about it in country terms, don't they?

But I think you could equally apply that, in the individual sort of sense

that people that have an expectation of high power, ooze that, don't they?

I think it comes across quite strongly.

When I was in the school, there would be these kids that would be just, running

wild and act, like acting the big kid.

And then you'd say, Can you go to that class and get I'm not going to that class.

There is a fear and if you think you know, like when I used to go past these kids

from Harrow school and they're wearing their Uniform with a bowler hat and all

of this kind of thing It's all they had their straw hats or whatever it was.

A kid who's not been exposed to much, they see that and they see them, getting

the helicopters and they just come back from a skiing trip and all of this stuff.

And there's like a sense of, I'm not good enough.

So there's a, this huge barrier that people have to get past to

be able to function on that level.

And at the same time, the envy that may be coming

around together with it, right?

Around, because it's easy to get attached to the outcomes, the

results and overlook the process.

I want what he has But I have no clue and I'm not willing to

put in the effort that he had.

So this is also a little bit of a curse of modern times where we have

so much access to information and we see what everybody's doing, what they

want us to see them doing and not necessarily how they're getting there.

I think that's really important is that, that for me is the great

message of outliers is, yeah.

Is that it's the antidote to the great man theory that some

people are just born better.

This is what I love about it, is the leveler.

It tells you exactly what it takes.

Yeah, exactly.

The part about motivation, so even if someone is having a much better

bringing with all the advantages.

At the same time, it also the comfort is also more in such cases, the

motivation level might be slightly lower compared to someone who is

coming from a disadvantage background.

So how much does that level up?

What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages do the level up to an

extent is a question that, that comes to mind that especially in cases of

what I see, like in India, most of the successful people of this generation.

Have come from middle class backgrounds, not poor backgrounds,

but not rich backgrounds.

So they are at the middle class, lower middle class family people,

they are doing much better in this generation just because they

had to go through that hardship.

They were not so disadvantaged that, they did not have any kind of means.

Or nor were so advantaged or so rich that they were in comfort zone, that at least

our money and everything is taken care of.

So that's why the generation right now is of middle class generation.

So that, how much does those advantages?

Yes.

One is like Eduardo, you were talking about the advantages that we

are passing on to the kids through our actions through our interests

and all that is a different thing.

Again, those motivations probably is another topic of which is like very

interesting, but at the same time, in general, when we're talking about a mass

level, I feel some of it gets adjusted by itself, because the motivations.

The human motivations are so varied and those disadvantaged kids might

want to push even harder, which is actually preparing them for a

better future in different ways.

So yeah,

That comes down to when they were talking about the Taylors and the Jewish

families, I think that's generational.

The parents tend to push.

And I think, certainly academically perhaps in other ways.

Here in the UK, Asian children and looking politically, we're getting

more and more, Asian politicians.

And, we've had Sunak as prime minister in the race now.

And I think part of that is because traditionally or generally, it's

that kind of Asian immigrants here who push their children more.

That comes from, wanting your children to have a better life and there is much more

ambition and focus on schoolwork than, I think, perhaps from native parents.

They talked about that Jewish parents that they came over and

they did what they could there.

They were working on clothes or whatever.

And then when you look at it, become, they become doctors, they

become doctors and lawyers, and each generation raises their aspiration.

And just like for many years Investment in

education has been the thing.

I won't be surprised if we get together again, the four of us in 100

years, assuming that we are alive on.

We realized that a lot of effort has been on entrepreneurship, I

think, over the next 40 to 50 years.

So we'll see a lot of parents supporting and pushing their

kids into that segment of life.

And in certain countries we are going to see that happening in politics, especially

again when it comes to immigrants, because if you're lacking, then the space

you feel that you have an opportunity to put your feet in as well, right?

It's not completely at random.

And I think this is something that outliers explains quite well.

You can see in each of the stories he's telling, there was a context to it.

And that context drove also a lot of vision and so on.

Okay shall we round up, if we go round now having had the discussion,

what is your main takeaway from outliers?

So for me, I think it's the importance of I've always felt that there's a

reason, there's a reason for everything.

For me, It gives the reason for success.

It gives the reason which is much deeper than we typically look for X equals Y.

So this happens because they tried out because they're skilled, but

there's a whole cultural importance.

And there was a lot that I was reading about particularly the

power dynamic, the power distance index, and cultural context.

I think they're really applicable to companies.

Within companies, they have their culture for a certain reason.

And also the importance of psychological safety and how there is this

automatic power distance effect.

Often we assume a manager should just be able to just, people should work together.

But actually in my work, I find there's a lot of forces working against that.

People do work together for a short term goal, but then they fall out.

And there's a lot of effort that needs to be to contradict the,

natural, dynamics that create that.

For me, the biggest takeaway definitely was Understanding how important

deliberate practice is definitely the 10, 000 hours plus practice that you cannot

achieve mastery just through talent.

But at the same time, it also has brought up a lot of things about how

that threshold limit of talent is also extremely important that just that if

suppose no one has any specific talent on a specific subject or activity,

that person, if he gives 10, 000 hours, probably he will not be an Outlier.

You have to have a threshold limit of talent on a certain aspect or

certain level of skill so that you have that inner motivation.

And along with it, when you mix in deliberate practice.

So deliberate practice on one end, high quality coaching at one end.

And then also the level of talent that you already have.

So those three is what I believe makes you an Outlier.

Not that single thing of deliberate practice or just coaching or the skill.

So it's a combination of these three factors that I

believe what makes an Outlier.

So very big takeaway for me that it's a combination and definitely culture.

And you're bringing all those things definitely have a very big

impact on it throughout lives,

Individually, it's a humbling experience.

So to accept that I was so much luck I had so much luck in order to get here

and be with you guys today and talking about a book like that in the language

that is not my native language using all this technology very comfortable

room and everything like that.

It's truly humbling.

It was so much based out of luck.

And at the same time that I don't have to let it define,

what happens that, it's not.

It's not destiny as such I have the power to take up in my hands and through

deliberate practice, through knowing myself, understanding what are my

strengths and then putting some tension behind it, achieve even more counting

on the luck to keep playing on my side.

And it's the two things put together that is going to shape my life

over the next several years and in the more collective context.

I think it's also a very good exercise reminding us of what may be behind

somebody else's story, not to take anything positive or negative.

For granted, and rather have a sort of curiosity, behind that to explore,

to learn, to understand and again, to use that in the favor of others and of

myself or my own personal development.

It takes the ego out of it, isn't it?

It's a bit of not being too proud, not being too hard on yourself in

either way, but just recognizing what is you and what is the context,

When we look at people who come across as successful, I think there's

a temptation to either feel envy.

Or admire people in a way that you somehow feel that isn't you.

Actually that point Eduardo was just making about unpicking the

story and the history behind that sort of demonstrates it.

There's a whole host of things that are driving it.

And that's probably not your story, or it might be, or it could be your story.

And so when we look at others like that, not to feel envious

because we don't understand the complexity of their whole story.

We don't understand it.

It's just, it could be luck, it could be anything.

And so not to jump to conclusions about that, but in reflecting on

yourself, recognizing you have your own story, but you can change it.

Understanding the things that can lead to, greater things, in the different

ways in which that can happen.

Dedication community, all sorts of all sorts of things

that are driving that success.

I think if we can view that as a learning and growth

opportunity, then that's also good.

That also applies to other people.

So we shouldn't be looking at others and thinking, yeah, they're not like

me or they haven't got the background or they didn't go to the right

school, but actually everyone has that potential that we can help them grow.

Thank you.

It's great to see how we all read the same book and yet we,

we pick up different parts.