Talent is Overrated
by Geoff Colvin
It’s true that we have a general perception that to be successful in life you have to be very “talented” or very “intelligent” from birth. This book is against this perception.
I would like to point out that this book actually tried to break a taboo and was successful, at least in my eyes. I would like to talk about some of the explanations, researches and my conclusions in the book regarding this perception. But of course, my advice is to read the whole book.
Many of us work incredibly long hours at work. Occasionally, we sacrifice our private life. According to most studies, our job is our real priority in our lives. The result is often a mediocre pay and a mediocre title. There is a lot of research on this subject, and the conclusion from most of them is that no matter how senior you are in your job, you usually don’t show extraordinary success. More experienced doctors also get lower results in tests that measure their medical knowledge than less experienced doctors.
It is common belief that people with great achievements have innate talents. There is no specific explanation for these achievements, they just exist. Because these people have the necessary competencies from birth. The innate talent perspective is the opposite of the just play perspective and is a more radical approach. It gains more acceptance and also explains why great performances are so rare. If we simply attribute great performances to innate talent, we accept from the start that no work will get us where we want to be. But acquiring great skills is mostly in our hands.
In today’s world, the limited resource is not money, but human talent. In recent years, important examples have emerged. Let’s take Microsoft. Microsoft, with a financial capital of 30 billion dollars, made a profit of 221 billion dollars. In contrast, P&G, one of the most well-run and admirable firms, made $126 billion in profits with $83 billion in financial capital. As a more stark example, Google made $124 billion in profits with just $5 billion in financial capital. It seems clear that Google and Microsoft perfectly understand that success comes from human resources. In fact, Bill Gates states that if the twenty smartest employees leave, there will be no company left. It is even claimed that the company’s most important competence is not software, but recruitment.
Millions of people in developing countries now compete for jobs with their peers in all countries around the world. The main reason for this is that most of the work done is now information-based and does not require physical relocation. Coordination of the global supply chain is now very fast and processing and transporting information around the world has become very costly. This further fuels competition and requires us to pursue more knowledge.
So what do we actually mean when we say someone is smart? In recent years, IQ has become an important tool for measuring intelligence. People with high IQs are considered to be very intelligent and talented. There may be some truth to a certain basis. But it is not correct to think of high IQ as the only criteria of intelligence and ability. Moreover, even if we describe people with high IQs as intelligent, it is not possible to directly qualify them as successful. We come across too many examples where people with low IQs are much more successful in life. While IQ measures general intelligence, it does not measure many other criteria for success. For example, critical thinking ability, which is the cornerstone of success in the business world today, cannot be measured by the IQ test. There is another test called Emotional Intelligence that, when used with IQ, we get a more accurate result in measuring a person’s intelligence. The mentioned test is mostly used to measure how emotionally strong a person is, how self-sufficient he is, or how strong social characteristics he exhibits.
So basically what is the source of success? Here lies the most important thing we will learn in the book. I want to address only a small part of the answer. Great achievements are reserved in how the efforts we have shown in this way are tailored to the needs and how effectively the time is used. For this, we must first determine what our main need is and where our focus should be. While determining this, we need to analyze our past experiences, current conditions, what our needs, wishes and goals are, and what we should prioritize while realizing them.
Of course, this answer is not entirely sufficient, I recommend you to read the book to reach a broader and more effective conclusion. I believe you will read it with interest and it will add a lot to you.
Happy reading already :)
