This morning's NY Times contained another interesting insight from the authors of Freakonomics, Stephen J. Dubner and Steve D. Levitt. I love their stuff, and particularly this insight because it reinforces my previous post about developing talent.
They cite the work of Anders Ericsson, a 58-year-old psychology professor at Florida State University, whom they describe as "the ringleader of ... the Expert Performance Movement, a loose coalition of scholars trying to answer an important and seemingly primordial question: When someone is very good at a given thing, what is it that actually makes him good?"
Cliché #1: Nurture Dominates Nature
Next month, Ericsson and his colleagues will publish their findings in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," in which according to Dubner and Levitt, Ericsson makes a "rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born."
Cliché #2: Practice Makes Perfect
The corollary cliché, and one that we entrepreneurs ought to take seriously, Duber and Levitt continue, is that "yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true."
Cliché #3: Do What You Love
And here's the conclusion that I think is most instructive for aspiring entrepreneurs. My students in the entrepreneurship course I teach at Brown ask me constantly for career advice. What's the right path? Should I start something now or wait? And if I do wait, what's the killer job to train me to be a great entrepreneur? McKinsey, Goldman Sachs or that software startup?
My answer is always that it depends on a lot of things, but mostly on what you love to do. I absolutely loved being part of a startup even while still in college and continuing it for two years after until we sold it to Apple. And after I caught the entrepreneurial bug, with one exception -- my (in retrospect valuable) time I spent in brand management at Procter & Gamble -- I never looked back. In addition to lots of things I did not realize at the time I was learning about consumer marketing, the most important lesson that my experience at P&G taught me was to do what you love. Life is just too short to do anything else.
Dubner and Levitt in this morning's Times say it even more persuasively: "Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good."
As my previous post argues, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Roger Clemons, Jerry Rice, Bill Gates -- all top of their games -- got that way by being competitive enough to work their butts off in ways that would exploit the talent they were born with.
Duber and Levitt's article this morning adds the catalyst that makes these other elements relevant -- doing what you love.
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Great summary of the article, which is definitely worth a read because of its clever framing - why half of the world's great soccer players were born in January, February, or March.
I was talking about this yesterday with a very astute businessperson - a turnaround specialist - who noted that after years of trying to fit himself into existing models of how to do business, he recognized that his weird experience with turnarounds - getting fast cash from customers, reworking the strategy, and equipping the sales force to focus on likely sales through lead generation instead of cold calling - made him unique and extremely valuable.
The definition of practice was also telling - goal directed behavior with feedback. Very "Game of Business."
Clearly, most great teachers of entrepreneurship are born in the last 3 months of the year :)