Book review: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

Ever since the Missus got the Borders preferred card, we've been buying books like there's no tomorrow (unless tomorrow got further discount).

A friend once calculated that since the card costs $20 bucks per year and entitles you to a 10% discount, you'd have to spend more than $200 a year on books to "earn" back the cost of the card.

Well, I think I've hit it in the first two months of 2009.

Among the many books I've picked up at half price is a really interesting one from Malcom Gladwell. If you find his name somewhat familiar, it's because he also wrote "The Tipping Point" and "Blink", both best sellers on the NYT list (the only book list I reference).

Here's what it looks like:


If you liked books such as The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, The Undercover Economist, etc. You'll definitely find Outliers fascinating. I love how these authors put on their psuedo social-scientist hats and explain social phenomena.

That's the common thread among all these books: they see that something's different (phenomena), that it happens fairly frequently (trend), and they ask why?

We don't ask why enough.

Before I get too deep into that, here's a quick look at the book:

What I learnt from the book:

• The system is not a fair deck - e.g. In professional sports, where players get spotted when they're really young, the odds are stacked against you if you're born in the later half of the year. Reason given by Gladwell is that physical difference is magnified at that young age.
  

My take: Listen with a pinch of salt. Sometimes, these authors pick out the stats that best support their case. Look at the England U-21 team, that's a pretty good gauge don't you think?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_national_under-21_football_team

Let's break the first team's birth dates down:

Number born in first half: 7/19

pffffffffffft.

On a whim, I also checked out Singapore's football team.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_national_football_team

Number born in first half: 13/22

So, either Singapore's scouts are doing such an excellent job that they're snapping up talent once they hit the age-groups and grooming them for national glory...

or the theory's slightly wonky. (Granted, it's probably not representative, but still...)

• Your lot in life has been cast before (or more accurately, when) you were born. Being exceptionally talented means nothing if you are in a roomfull of exceptionally talented people. Take for example someone like Bill Gates in 1980 vs. the same dude in 2009 - he'd have to be waaaaay smarter to have the kind of success he did. Essentially, he was an expert when the revolution was just beginning.
  

My take: From a comms perspective, isn't it obvious that we should be stockpiling our digital arsenal now? Even the Singapore Government has gotten into the act of engaging its audience online - so what if it's just for show right now - and the demand for digital is only going to grow.

Having a solid 5 - 7 years of digital PR experience in a couple of year's time is gonna make some people very rich.

• 10,000 hours to master a skill/area of expertise. No way around it, he's just saying what we knew all along: the champions are those who wanted it more.

My take: If I work 8 hours a day, I'd have spent 8hours X 5working days X 48 working weeks = 1920 hours per year.

That means we need to spend at least 5 plus years in the industry - any industry with regular office hours - to even come close to being an "expert". That's not even discounting the days where you kinda zone out through the day. Damn.

Well, either that or spend way more time per day cramming those extra hours, haha.

• You only need to be smart enough. That's right. Gladwell points out that smarts/talents/aptitude/any other term for God-given gifts basically qualify you to be put in the elite brackets; having the highest IQ points does not make you the most successful or sought-after person around...though you could be, if you also had the good fortune of being born at the right time and the passion to spend 10,000 hours at it.

My take: In IQ/exam-crazy Singapore, it's hard to be a kid and not compare PSLE scores and feel kinda stupider if you have a lower score than your neighbour. So what if you scored 240 and your friend scored 241? Does that mean that he is 1/300 times smarter than you are? More successful than you're gonna be? Of course not. Right on, Gladwell.

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Obviously, I enjoyed the book tremendously. So let me know if you'd like to borrow it, I'll be happy to loan it to you. :)

Warning: Steep learning curve ahead

Apart from the boisterous (woah, how often do you get to use that? +10points!) colleagues and overall environment that make work fun, ever so often, you realise that you are in a damn good place to learn how to be an effective consultant.

Remember how our (or at least my) GP tutors used to hand our essays back with more red ink than blue? That's how some of my work has returned, but the key is in reacting positively.

Of course, this is easier said than done, especially when there was genuine effort that went into drafting (you see, should've expected changes to begin with!) the original version.

On hindsight, so many of the comments and changes passed by the more experienced members of the team were so obvious I felt like kicking myself.

Simple things like "Refrain from using jargon" and "So what does this mean?" are basic rules that effective communicators need to constantly remind themselves of.

So here's a list of 7 things to keep in mind when you're drafting anything as a comms person:

1. Keep it simple: Don't use jargon and don't tolerate the use of jargon. Jargon is evil.

2. Why am I reading this?: Pictures are cool and uncomplicated. Words are boring and need a reason for reading.

3. Is this really, absolutely necessary?: Less is more. Berevity wins almost all the time - especially when you don't have a lot of it to begin with. Don't include the "usuals" just to make something look professional; if you choose to, make sure to go through it to see if it makes sense to the person reading it for the first time.

4. And......then?: Take things through to their logical conclusion (and if that's what you don't want to communicate, fantastic - reposition the potential issue); show the reader that you have thought it through.

5. Context, context, context: Add value to whatever you are communicating by providing the reader with a benchmark, comparison or at the very least, a sense of the severity/impact of the information you have just shared. Best used together with rule 1.

6. Don't waffle: Nobody likes wafflers; not journalists, not PRs, not the man in the street - well, unless the ice cream man didn't show ;). Just say what you came to say and do it quickly and clearly. See rule 3.

7. (Specifically for PRs) Spokesperson vs. Answerperson: Every interaction with the media is an opportunity to deliver your key messages. Every interview is so carefully prepared by people like us precisely because it is not a chit chat session; it is an opportunity to ensure that your organisation's message is heard clearly.

So there you have it... I must say though, that this list looks awfully familiar to me. Seems like something Duffy would've covered during one of his lectures.

It's that familiar feeling isn't it? You know, the one you get when someone tells you "I told you so".

Yeap. Should've listened harder during his classes.

Somewhere past the halfway mark

So it's gonna be April, or, 2.5 months to the end of PI and I am feeling... ambivalent about the whole thing. It's been a good experience so far, and I'm thankful for the people I work with, who've made work that can be trivial at times, bearable. Ok, more than bearable.

Don't get me wrong, I do look forward to going back to school and hanging with you guys at the benches, doing projects that matter to people, etc etc. It's just... gah. It's just one more year left before work starts for real. And there's no more room for stupid mistakes (mistakes yes, but not stupid mistakes) or excuses and holidays and me-time.

The boss asked me today if I wanted to do PR when I grad (loaded question). And I said that I was still considering. Was I? I don't know. Perhaps it's just a reflex action I've developed to people asking me what I want to do when I graduate. Have I already made up my mind? Can I commit do doing work that probably won't mean anything to the average person? Wouldn't I really rather write for a living?

Truth be told, I love reporting. I love the feeling of being in the newsroom, so close to the buzz, with interesting and articulate colleagues. I love putting pen to paper and coming up with stories I know I can write. I love being good at what I do. I love having a job that affects the average Singaporean in the way high-handed gahmen agencies can only hope to emulate, using poorly thought out schemes and campaigns.

A scribe was what I decided I wanted to be when I was 15, and thought how cool a reporter's job would be. That never changed till early last year, and I'm not sure that part of me will ever go away.

PR's not bad, but it's not great. Can I still make a difference? Perhaps the only way to tell is to do a stint at a paper. Hmm. Maybe. Sigh.

On the crest of a new wave

No other industry is going to see as much revolutionary change as that of public relations in the coming years. And it's all because of you. Yes, you. Mr Blogger. Mr Blog Reader. Mr Anti-establishment-who-doesn't-trust-newspapers-anymore.

It's no longer going to be enough to stick five PR people in a media monitoring room every morning, flipping through major newspapers for news concerning their clients. Because the nature of news is that it deliberately excludes the personal voice, values conciseness and treasures timeliness.

Now, they are waking up to the fact that people want to hear the personal voice and not that of the establishment; that people want to read what they want to read; that people want to be more involved in the news than ever before.

And I'm glad that where I am, people are taking the initiative to remain on top of this wave. Because they can see beyond an extra hour of work or research today that will be invaluable tomorrow. Because they're curious. Because they like being on top. (or maybe because its the geek's default mentality to question)

What PR firms can do to stay ahead of the Web 2.0 wave, which has already claimed some victims, is to begin spreading their tentacles online, as well as off. Begin by monitoring sites with a direct influence on your client's audience. Follow up by making contact with these bloggers and influentials. Profile them. Treat them like journalists.

Because, like it or not (this is also for all the journos reading), the requirement to be a scribe fell astronomically when Web 2.0 came along. MrBrown is a better journalist than many ST journos, I reckon, because he gives his audience exactly what they want.

And what do they want? They want not only to be told the news, but for the journalist to make sense of the news for them. Critically, they want to be told the news, the unvarnished news. Non-edited, save for grammar, written as it is spoken, off-the-cuff and full of heart, the anti-thesis of news-writing, in summary.

Most of all, they crave for truth. Truth they now don't trust the major papers to report. Can it sometimes get out of hand? Yes. It can. But that is not the point of this entry.

The point is, that the job of a PR executive just got harder. Or, from a positive (some might say PR) perspective, challenging. It's no longer enough to understand the journalist. To think like a journalist. What goes into a story? How do I help him with his pitch? How can I help the client make his event more newsworthy? What is the return on investment for the client?

These are questions that have to be answered with the blogger in mind. Because blogging is here to stay. For us, it means re-interpreting what it means to be in PR. and at the top of the game.

The winds of change are blowing. Will you fly?

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Yes, I know that was a complete 180degree (thanks M.) deviation from the usual, but I was thinking while I was running. Yes. Two things you can't imagine me doing. Together.