THE TRIANGLE OF GROWTH -- TEACHING SMART PEOPLE HOW TO LEARN!

THE TRIANGLE OF GROWTH – TEACHING SMART PEOPLE HOW TO LEARN

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 17, 2009

Reference: I posted the following note on Lou Schuler’s blog, “10,000 Hours? Really?” It was a reaction to Malcolm Gladwell’s book on the same subject. Many people have responded to my note.

DR. FISHER'S COMMENT:

I've just returned from a cruise in Alaska, and posted my observation of that cruise on my website ("Fat Nation, White Noise, Sloppy Language, and Other Observations). I referred in that piece to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, which I found intriguing, not so much for what it purports to advocate, but for the readiness with which readers are inclined to buy into his provocative premise -- 10,000 hours.

In high school I was mainly a four-sport jock, making all-state along the way, also finishing in the top ten percent of my class, but hardly a brain. The valedictorian flattered me by asking that I be his roommate in college. We took all the same college prep courses together so I agreed but had the feeling he would embarrass me to smithereens with his scholarship. It didn't happen. He was pre-med and I was a chem major, with a bent towards literature.

What I learned from that association was just how hard he worked. I worked hard but my God he was a machine. We were both in the top 3 percent of our class – I know that because of my draft board status, which was published – with him having an outstanding career in medicine and me having a similar career as an international corporate executive. Was either of us “outliers”? I don’t think so.

Years later – now retired in my mid-thirties – I decided to get a Ph.D. in organization-industrial psychology to better understand corpocracy, which gave me fits.

Without preliminary preparation, which differed with one of your contributors, I walked in and took my GRE examination at the age of 38 or sixteen years since college, and managed to score well enough to be accepted into the graduate program at a Florida state university.

Two of my professors, knowing my background, asked me where I took my prep course for the GRE. One of the professors said he had taken the exam “three times,” scoring higher each time after assiduously studying in a GRE review course. Neither of these professors believed I could make an acceptable score without such preparation, finding it incredulous that I didn’t know such courses existed. Were they “outliers”?

The comment about coaching resonates with me. When I was a sophomore in college, there was a core course, “Modern Literature, Greeks and the Bible” I was required to take. I liked to read but I wasn’t much into literature. My background was more oral history, as my family and clan was Irish American, a subculture that would have trouble putting 10,000 hours together collectively into anything. No “outliers” here.

Anyway, I had to take a make up examination of James Joyce’s biographical novel, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” My professor chose to make it an oral examination, and was asking me questions, when I stopped him. “May I tell you what the book meant to me?” He agreed.

When I finished, he said, “You understand Joyce, how do you explain that?” I answered, “I am Joyce,” as my Irish Catholic life was consistent with the authors. He asked me my major. I told him. He asked me what I was doing in science. I told him I was good at it.

After a long pause, studying me, he said he wanted to recommend me for the Honors Program, which had an international reputation. He said it was based on this oral exam, and my naïve, open but cutting essays on such writers as Dostoyevsky, whom I had never heard of before this class, but whom I loved.

I went home and told my Irish Roman Catholic railroad brakeman father what my professor recommended. “Can I ask you a question?” my da said, “you’re not a goddamn fag are you?”

On his trains, he saw guys reading books like I was reading, unkempt and disheveled hanging on each other, and assumed that was my future. I stayed in chemistry.

Years later, now in my fifties, still with the writing bug, I retired once again and wrote mainly books based on the changing nature of work, workers, the workplace and management, many times 10,000 hours, I would imagine, more as an avocation than vocation, returning pretty much to where my sophomore professor said I should be when I was twenty-years-old.

The irony is that I’ve written some cutting edge books (e.g.. Work Without Managers 1990), but cannot say I’m a successful writer. I think “success” is exaggerated, and the idea of “outliers,” although appealing, is a bit meaningless. I would imagine there are far more people that fit my description than Gladwell's typology.

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

A READER'S RESPONSE

At 37 years old, I've figured that I have lived roughly 324120 hours, so 10000 hours would only be 1/30th of my life and that I've had about 32 bouts of 10000 hours. My question to myself is, how come I'm only good at whatever I do, and not great.

Perhaps the "correct type of practice" that Gladwell mentions is the key. When I played guitar in my teens I noodled a lot without really learning anything new--I probably hit close to 5000 hours, but really only 1000 were used to improve. The rest was self-indulgent repetition. I could say the same for my running career, my triathlon experiences, chess, jazz piano playing, my years as an English major, and even my career as a teacher. I notice a quick peak where I get better than 80% of my colleagues/peers, but then can never seem to get through the last 20%.

My flaw is the plateau effect that comes from slipping into complacency. As I look back at everything that I became good at, but not great at, I see a pattern of becoming tired, frustrated, and easily distracted. Or probably more importantly, I just want to move on to something else.

So at what I hope is at least the mid-point, (and hopefully less than a mid-point), in my life, the question becomes do I now take 10000 hours and learn to do something really well, or do I accept that the time to do this is now behind me.

P.S. I come from a Catholic background and Joyce came easy to me as well. I could also say the same for Mark Twain because I grew up in Missouri and New Orleans.

SUGGESTED READING

CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992) has a chapter on “Selling and the Power of an Open Mind.” In that chapter is the power of the plateau, which I call the “plateau of failure” after a surfeit of success. The person feels stuck, and like the writer above, cannot get beyond the 80 percent of where they are to where they hope to be. They are on this plateau, which might also be called the “curve of playing it safe.” What they have forgotten or refuse to face is that what has gotten them to where they are is a simple formula:

PAIN + RISK = GROWTH

They have not perceived the nature of success, which is “the triangle of growth.” Everyone experiences it. We have a spurt of success, and then we reach a plateau. Most people reach this first plateau and coast the rest of their lives. If this sounds cruel, I rest it on more than fifty years of observation and experience as a salesman, educator, executive and consultant. It is easier to complain than contribute – Dilbert repeats this often. It is easier to say, “I had no good teachers” than to be the best teacher you know.

We in the West have misconstrued "failure." It is a plateau that everyone encounters. Those willing to keep growing encounter it many times. Paradoxically, it is on the "plateau of failure" where all learning takes place.

You may not like Sonia Sotomayor or Barak Obama, but I guarantee they have run into many plateaus and have endured the pain and taken the risks to continue to grow.

If you have not read "Confident Selling for the 90s," I suggest you find a copy. The pages 91 through 97 in this book could be the most important words you ever read.

Always be well,

Jim

PS "Confident Selling for the 90s" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and its message is as relevant today as it was then as it has become increasingly difficult to move off these plateaus.