I recently finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This current best seller is written by author of The Tipping Point and Blink. It’s a short read that is, in my opinion, worth the effort.  The central theme is success . Outliers, for the purposes of this book, are people who have achieved exceptional results in their professional pursuits compared to those who have perhaps underperformed.   There were a couple of notions that I found especially useful.  Gladwell claims that there is plenty of evidence suggesting that it takes 10,000 hours to master a profession. Based on a 2000 work year that adds up to about 5 years. He looks to the life works of masters like Mozart and Gates to demonstrate this time line. He concludes that intelligence, to a degree, plays a roll in the success, in that a minimum standard is required.  More importantly, demographics, timing and perhaps luck are the key contributors.

There is a Darwinian notion here for me. Outcomes are, to an extent, predetermined. Outliers appear continually and their impassioned exploits are rejected or rewarded based on things that are largely out of their control.  Demographics,  perhaps like natural selection, decide the timing for these mutations.  Gladwell concludes that the individual player has less to do with the outcome than we might give credit for… so I think I’ll wait for the unifying theory.

These notions can be considered when looking at our new generation of leaders.  The Jones Generation refers to that portion of the  population born between 1955 and 1964. They are the lost generation, sandwiched between Boomers and Gen Xs. President Obama and Prime Minister Harper are part of Gen Jones.  This generation had the shared experience of starting their careers in the recession of the early eighties. There  is a certain shared frustration as a result of  high expectations for success meeting 20% interest rates.  The view is that their older boomer brothers and sisters had an easier road.  Apparently, once they did manage to get a toehold on careers and families, the Joneses turned into perhaps  the greatest consumer generation of all time. It seems that as leaders the Joneses should remember some of the lessons of the early eighties. Tough times require a willingness to compete. Perhaps 10,000 hours working through a previous recession will serve as great training for this current group of leaders to succeed in the task at hand.