Notes on: The Talent Code
What would you do if you knew you could master any skill?
For Daniel Coyle, author of the Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. a skill is the cellular insulation of neural circuits that grows in response to deep practice. The book is based on new scientific research on a particular neural insulator called myelin which he describes as the holy grail of skill acquisition.
Every skill is a neural circuit. Weather it is playing the violin, drawing, or playing soccer. All of these are nothing more than chains of nerve fibers carrying an electrical signal. The role of myelin is to wrap and insulate these chains making them stronger and faster in the process. The more developed a skill the better the insulation of the chain of nerves. And to develop a skill there are three steps that we need to go through: deep practice, motivation and master coaching.
Motivation and master coaching
Motivation and master coaching are the prerequisites to developing world class skill. Motivation is about having the energy, passion and commitment to pursue the perfection of a skill over a long period of time (about 10,000 hours to be precise). Master coaching refers to having the correct mentor, one that is focused on creating an environment of development and learning. One that pursues perfection as a goal and is constantly pushing you to improve giving you constant and relentless feedback. A coach that keeps you in a state of deep practice.
Deep Practice as a goal
For me the most important learning lesson of the book (and the one most applicable to the development and learning of new skills) is the definition of deep practice. Deep practice is a special more than just repetition. To engage in deep practice you must follow three steps:
- First look at the task as a whole trying to understand the objective and result. Next, you must divide the task into its smallest possible chunks and practice and master these separately. Then, link them together in progressively larger groupings. A third step is to play with time, first slowing the action down and then speeding it up. Slowing down helps you to attend more closely to errors, creating a higher degree of precision.
- Next, Deep Practice requires repetition, but a repetition that is focused on operating on the edge of your competence. Purposely making mistakes and struggling as you hone a specific skill.
- Last, deep practice requires you to create feedback loops where you can evaluate your performance learn from it and try it again.
Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals. The story of skill and talent is the story of myelin.
Applying these, practice becomes a productive skill building exercise, or as Coyle argues ripe for myelin creation. To build and retain a skill continued deep practice is required with an optimal time investment of between three and five hours a day.
A Gazelle CEO as a talent creator
A great Gazelle CEO creates an organization that builds and improves talent in the organization. With this simple formula: deep practice, ignition and master coaching a Gazelle CEO can focus on creating the infrastructure and processes that will help develop and grow the talent in the organization.
