Outliers: Identifying The Ingredients For Success

Rob: 00:00:00

It might be worth each of us just briefly saying two or three

Rob: 00:00:04

standout points that stood out.

Rob: 00:00:05

For me, the first time around, I vividly remember the 10, 000

Rob: 00:00:09

hours, the importance of luck and the hockey and soccer examples.

Rob: 00:00:14

But rereading it I was surprised at how much I missed the first time.

Rob: 00:00:19

I'd probably noticed it, but for me, it was why the violence of

Rob: 00:00:23

America and Appalachian states, is it Appalachia, wherever it is, and

Rob: 00:00:27

about how that comes back from the borderlands of England and Scotland

Rob: 00:00:30

and Ireland, and how the fertility of the land creates a culture of honor.

Rob: 00:00:37

I thought was really interesting about the paddy fields and the culture of

Rob: 00:00:39

Chinese, and how that played into maths.

Rob: 00:00:43

But the other part was, which I had, I've read in other places is about

Rob: 00:00:48

the power dominance of airline pilots and why there's airline crashes

Rob: 00:00:52

because of the power distance index.

Rob: 00:00:55

So those were the three keys this time.

Rob: 00:00:58

Neil, as it's your first read through what things stood out to you?

Neil: 00:01:01

I did think actually, the, because I knew the book through the

Neil: 00:01:05

10, 000 hours, maybe because I read Eduardo's review, I'm not sure.

Neil: 00:01:10

But I think for me, at a sort of macro level, it was, there was, it

Neil: 00:01:15

was really quite powerful around the attitude and culture and

Neil: 00:01:18

how those things come together.

Neil: 00:01:20

So that Asians being good at maths storyline.

Neil: 00:01:24

I think, when you dig into that and seeing just the importance of attitude,

Neil: 00:01:29

I thought was really compelling.

Neil: 00:01:31

More broadly, the sort of cultural, experiences that people have.

Neil: 00:01:36

Whether it's that sort of ethos of hard work or actually privilege and opportunity

Neil: 00:01:43

as you're growing up and just having an advantage that others don't have.

Neil: 00:01:47

I think that there's sort of two sides to that coin, I think.

Neil: 00:01:49

So attitude and then cultural reference and privilege,

Eduardo: 00:01:53

for me guys, it has always been a little bit the tale of what you

Eduardo: 00:01:58

can control and what you can't control this book, you have the lucky element,

Eduardo: 00:02:03

and it's given so many examples.

Eduardo: 00:02:07

You guys mentioned a few, the one with Oppenheimer is also brilliant in which

Eduardo: 00:02:12

shows how two people undergoing the same thing, more or less at the same time

Eduardo: 00:02:16

in not so distant places experience, trajectory is so different just because

Eduardo: 00:02:22

of the context that they were set up in.

Eduardo: 00:02:24

And at the same time, a reinforcement that yes, that is that much that's

Eduardo: 00:02:30

luck and that's how it's going to roll.

Eduardo: 00:02:32

But what is that you can do about it.

Eduardo: 00:02:34

And that's where the 10, 000 hours come from and so on to

Eduardo: 00:02:38

the point that is in the book.

Eduardo: 00:02:40

Passage that I noted down to talk to you guys today.

Eduardo: 00:02:43

Let me just find it here.

Eduardo: 00:02:45

It's about a math Olympics.

Eduardo: 00:02:47

So what he says is you imagine that every year there was a math Olympics in some

Eduardo: 00:02:52

fabulous city in the world and every country in the world sent their 10, 000

Eduardo: 00:02:58

fast eight graders and the point of The evaluations, the research that they did

Eduardo: 00:03:04

was that you could anticipate the results without asking a single question of math

Eduardo: 00:03:11

to any of the students by simply looking from a cultural perspective, what is

Eduardo: 00:03:17

the emphasis of hard work and effort?

Eduardo: 00:03:21

How powerful is that?

Rob: 00:03:22

Yeah,

Eduardo: 00:03:23

absolutely.

Saurabh: 00:03:23

Absolutely.

Neil: 00:03:24

Yeah, I think that aligns to my that sort of there's an attitude point

Neil: 00:03:28

isn't there's a mindset point to that.

Neil: 00:03:30

It's just something that, arguably is in your gift.

Neil: 00:03:34

But how did that mindset come about?

Neil: 00:03:36

Cultural upbringing and cultural history have shaped how people think.

Neil: 00:03:42

It's really fascinating how they interact, I think.

Eduardo: 00:03:45

At the same time, I think this is the point that he tries

Eduardo: 00:03:48

to make, this is still something.

Eduardo: 00:03:50

You can change, right?

Eduardo: 00:03:51

We can change.

Eduardo: 00:03:52

It's not immutable.

Eduardo: 00:03:53

And it's actually not that hard when you think about it.

Saurabh: 00:03:57

Yeah.

Saurabh: 00:03:58

I think the same example, like the Korean air example, it actually shows that as

Saurabh: 00:04:03

well, that there are ingrained biases.

Saurabh: 00:04:05

But once we start working on those biases, it does not take much time to, improve

Saurabh: 00:04:09

the culture and bring the things back.

Saurabh: 00:04:12

Yeah.

Saurabh: 00:04:12

So like for me the most, I have also noted down seven,

Saurabh: 00:04:16

eight key points from the book.

Saurabh: 00:04:17

So one of the things is obviously the 10, 000 hours, so I was just reading

Saurabh: 00:04:21

around this 10, 000 hours, they like, from where did this research come from?

Saurabh: 00:04:25

So it actually started in 1960s, mid sixties, and it was studying the

Saurabh: 00:04:29

chess players or the grandmasters.

Saurabh: 00:04:31

So there was a study of grandmasters and what the study showed is it took

Saurabh: 00:04:36

the grandmasters anything between 11, 500 hours to 40, 000, 35, 40, 000 hours

Saurabh: 00:04:43

to master all the scenarios in chess.

Saurabh: 00:04:45

And it's also to discuss about what are closed loops and what are open loops.

Saurabh: 00:04:51

So like tennis is an open loop game that you, yes, you can practice a forehand.

Saurabh: 00:04:56

You can practice a backhand, but at the same time, like Rafael Nadal says, that

Saurabh: 00:05:00

each of the shots that you hit each shot is different because it's an open loop.

Saurabh: 00:05:05

All the moves you cannot master.

Saurabh: 00:05:07

On the other hand, chess is a closed loop game.

Saurabh: 00:05:09

There are only a huge amount of scenarios, but it's a closed loop game.

Saurabh: 00:05:14

There are only so many moves that you can make.

Saurabh: 00:05:16

So once you put yourself in that position and you keep on playing

Saurabh: 00:05:20

those moves, you master those moves.

Saurabh: 00:05:22

And that is called the process of chunking.

Saurabh: 00:05:24

So you are able to chunk the information in a certain, amount of

Saurabh: 00:05:29

you are able to see the scenario and you can bring that information back.

Saurabh: 00:05:32

So that is chunking.

Saurabh: 00:05:33

So this was the study done in 1960s.

Saurabh: 00:05:36

And later in 1980s, there was another study which sort of brought

Saurabh: 00:05:40

this, the current version of 10, 000 hours that we speak off.

Saurabh: 00:05:43

This was a study done in 1985, which said that with deliberate practice,

Saurabh: 00:05:48

a 10, 000 hours of practice, you can reach the, higher levels of

Saurabh: 00:05:52

professional expertise in any field.

Saurabh: 00:05:55

So that was the study.

Saurabh: 00:05:57

And Malcolm Gladwell bases whatever he's written in the book based on

Saurabh: 00:06:01

that second study, and it misses on a lot of points from the first study.

Saurabh: 00:06:05

So that was the first thing that, that I studied deeply.

Saurabh: 00:06:07

I was also researching for my book.

Saurabh: 00:06:10

So certain points I tried to pick up from that.

Saurabh: 00:06:13

Again the very fact that outlier, the general definition of Outlier.

Saurabh: 00:06:18

So how would we define an outlier?

Saurabh: 00:06:20

Outlier is someone who's exceptionally good at something.

Saurabh: 00:06:23

So that, exceptionally like 99 percentile plus, that is what we'll call Outlier.

Saurabh: 00:06:28

Talent matters a lot is something that I circled back onto, the more I read

Saurabh: 00:06:34

outliers and studied, researched around it, the more evidence I found that outlier

Saurabh: 00:06:39

is yes, definitely hard work, deliberate practice, all that is important.

Saurabh: 00:06:43

But a lot of natural factors also play into, especially in the field of sports.

Saurabh: 00:06:48

In case of basketball, he gave the example of basketball that,

Saurabh: 00:06:51

height is a very important factor.

Saurabh: 00:06:53

But at the same time, you will see that the cultural aspects

Saurabh: 00:06:56

of how our DNA is made up.

Saurabh: 00:06:58

For example, Ethiopians are very good at running long distance running.

Saurabh: 00:07:01

That's more to do with their DNA, their genetics, same with Jamaicans

Saurabh: 00:07:05

being very good at, short sprints.

Saurabh: 00:07:08

Because they, in the past, they were slaves who ran away, from

Saurabh: 00:07:12

Africa and they reached Jamaica.

Saurabh: 00:07:14

So just the fact that they are survivors and they all were in a, small space.

Saurabh: 00:07:19

So that over time played into their DNA and they are the ones who are the

Saurabh: 00:07:24

best at running short distance running.

Saurabh: 00:07:27

So that's the genetic plays a very important role was again, that as

Saurabh: 00:07:31

something found out, coming back to outliers, another very important

Saurabh: 00:07:34

fact that Gladwell talks about, is the importance of, birth date.

Saurabh: 00:07:37

that January, February, March, if you are born in that first

Saurabh: 00:07:41

quarter of then it plays.

Saurabh: 00:07:43

So I also did some of my study and the example that he gives of

Saurabh: 00:07:47

Canadian hockey team, junior hockey team, that is the case even now.

Saurabh: 00:07:50

So just today morning, I was just going through it.

Saurabh: 00:07:54

So I found, yes, that rule does hold even now in the junior hockey team.

Saurabh: 00:07:58

The rule still holds.

Saurabh: 00:07:59

So most of the people who are in the junior hockey team, they are still

Saurabh: 00:08:03

January, February, March, two in the first six months of the, the birth date.

Saurabh: 00:08:09

So that's something that I think is a very unique, thing that I learned from

Saurabh: 00:08:13

this book specifically, if I, try to find out apart from the 10, 000 hour rule.

Saurabh: 00:08:17

This was another very unique thing that I found that, the very fact that initial,

Saurabh: 00:08:22

advantage that you get plays so much into what you turn out to be later.

Saurabh: 00:08:27

Yeah, those were two, three points that I just wanted to make.

Eduardo: 00:08:30

I do have a follow up question for you but maybe for all of us.

Eduardo: 00:08:35

Yeah, because you made that or you shared the outlier being somebody

Eduardo: 00:08:41

exceptionally good at something, right?

Eduardo: 00:08:44

And then we talked about, sports examples and I think when it comes to sports

Eduardo: 00:08:49

is it's so easy to observe, right?

Eduardo: 00:08:51

If you see Cristiano Ronaldo playing football and then after him, you

Eduardo: 00:08:55

see me you, you're getting what the gap is and the difference, right?

Eduardo: 00:09:00

But when it comes to the business world a lot of so called outliers, and I,

Eduardo: 00:09:07

let's go back to the book the example of Bill Gates and Bezos and so on.

Eduardo: 00:09:12

They are not necessarily exceptionally good at something, but they rather

Eduardo: 00:09:18

got exceptionally good results with something that they did.

Eduardo: 00:09:23

What is the difference for you guys and how do you feel about it?

Saurabh: 00:09:26

Yeah, I think a very important part in the book that Gladwell also talks

Saurabh: 00:09:31

about is practical intelligence, that practical intelligence, that emotional

Saurabh: 00:09:34

intelligence, that social intelligence that a person has, it's obviously a

Saurabh: 00:09:38

combination of what you are good at.

Saurabh: 00:09:40

Say, for example, Bill Gates was obviously very good at programming, maybe in the

Saurabh: 00:09:43

99th percentile, but it was just not that, it was to do with the timing.

Saurabh: 00:09:48

When he was born, it talks about 1954 to 1956, between that period,

Saurabh: 00:09:53

there are 12 people in the top 75 richest people in the world.

Saurabh: 00:09:57

Who are in that category.

Saurabh: 00:09:59

So when you are born, the other part being obviously the social intelligence, how

Saurabh: 00:10:03

emotionally intelligent you are, how you can get things done, all those factors,

Saurabh: 00:10:07

and obviously you are good at something.

Saurabh: 00:10:08

So a combination of these factors, and obviously the very fact of

Saurabh: 00:10:12

deliberate practice that you are getting that time to practice.

Saurabh: 00:10:15

A certain skillset because of your family background and everything.

Saurabh: 00:10:19

So all of it, cultural aspects, all these things put together is what,

Saurabh: 00:10:23

at least in my understanding of the book and what, we also see observed

Saurabh: 00:10:27

that's what brings in success.

Rob: 00:10:29

In terms of business, it it is all of those things, but for the real outliers,

Rob: 00:10:33

like the Bill Gates, the Warren Buffett, the people like that, it's, I think

Rob: 00:10:38

it's more about luck as in, they could have, Bill Gates could have channeled,

Rob: 00:10:43

all of his efforts into something else.

Rob: 00:10:45

He'd have been a huge success.

Rob: 00:10:46

He would have been successful or whatever, but that the amount of money

Rob: 00:10:51

that he made happened because it was the operating system that he was able

Rob: 00:10:55

to hold ransom over even till today.

Rob: 00:10:58

Anything else, he could have had the same intelligence, he could have built the same

Rob: 00:11:01

product, but the timing would have meant that it wouldn't have had the same return.

Rob: 00:11:08

Jeff Bezos also isn't it between him and Elon Musk now is the richest man.

Rob: 00:11:12

It was the timing of, someone who had the courage and the clarity.

Rob: 00:11:18

To make such an audacious attempt that he did with Amazon.

Rob: 00:11:22

Is Elon Musk a Anomaly in that respect, because he's done it in different

Rob: 00:11:27

industries where he's being someone who's provoked the change rather than,

Eduardo: 00:11:33

But it's another good example that supports your theory, right?

Eduardo: 00:11:37

Because he came with money.

Eduardo: 00:11:39

Had he not came with money he is a brilliant individual.

Eduardo: 00:11:43

I have read about him and from him and heard the level of detail that he can

Eduardo: 00:11:48

get through several different fields it's nothing but impressive and yet we know

Eduardo: 00:11:54

there are people like that out there.

Eduardo: 00:11:57

With no access, leading to anywhere, or sometimes even leading to frustration

Eduardo: 00:12:02

because they can't get the kind of life they expect to because of fulfillment

Eduardo: 00:12:07

of entitlement or something like that.

Eduardo: 00:12:09

And when it comes to Musk just because he could start from somewhere

Eduardo: 00:12:14

else and he could start building.

Eduardo: 00:12:17

His legacy already from early age with his own thoughts and investments and business

Eduardo: 00:12:23

ideas not having to depend on others to do that for him or, that, that made such

Eduardo: 00:12:28

a difference for a person with his kind of soft skills, if we can put it like that.

Neil: 00:12:33

Yeah.

Neil: 00:12:34

Yeah.

Neil: 00:12:35

For me, so one of the key things about the book for me was, it wasn't

Neil: 00:12:39

necessarily any one of the things that he talked about, but the combination.

Neil: 00:12:44

If we look at that in a sort of holistic way, you start to see, because when

Neil: 00:12:49

I think about your original question around business, Eduardo, What I was

Neil: 00:12:53

thinking of reading the book actually was when I've been in organizations

Neil: 00:12:58

and fast stream programs for developing leaders, through graduation programs,

Neil: 00:13:04

in the UK, quite a lot of Oxford or Cambridge graduates are moved around

Neil: 00:13:09

quickly and they get the exposure and the experience and they get to the top

Neil: 00:13:12

and that's focused on one dimension.

Neil: 00:13:15

Of course, they're getting the opportunity, the mentoring

Neil: 00:13:19

and the coaching and all those things that go around it through

Neil: 00:13:23

the opportunity that they had.

Neil: 00:13:25

How did they get to university?

Neil: 00:13:28

It's a combination of factors, I'm sure.

Neil: 00:13:30

And you start to unpick these things and you start to see.

Neil: 00:13:34

Actually, the privilege, and I don't mean that in a, a sort of economic

Neil: 00:13:39

sense, but in a general sense, the opportunity, I suppose people have

Neil: 00:13:43

had to develop in their early careers.

Neil: 00:13:45

But what what I think about people like Richard Branson, probably

Neil: 00:13:49

Elon Musk, and others is I sense a willingness to break the mold.

Neil: 00:13:56

To think a bit differently.

Neil: 00:13:57

So Amazon goes online with books in a way no other organization had done.

Neil: 00:14:03

Books are easy to sell online.

Neil: 00:14:05

There's an opportunity that was spotted that other people weren't seeing.

Neil: 00:14:09

So they are early adopters if you like, or they are, breaking the mold

Neil: 00:14:14

in terms of traditional thinking.

Neil: 00:14:16

That's something I really admire just thinking about things in

Neil: 00:14:19

different ways, making opportunities.

Neil: 00:14:23

But, there's a separate question around.

Neil: 00:14:24

How did people end up like that?

Neil: 00:14:26

How did Richard Branson end up the way he did?

Rob: 00:14:29

I think that's really interesting.

Rob: 00:14:31

There's something also that comes to mind, in also in the link that Saurabh shared.

Rob: 00:14:35

I don't know if you saw that, but he talked about disadvantages

Rob: 00:14:38

that become advantages, and how Sir Richard Branson was dyslexic.

Rob: 00:14:43

And he says there's four skills.

Rob: 00:14:46

It teaches you to problem solve.

Rob: 00:14:47

It teaches you to ask for help.

Rob: 00:14:50

It teaches you to delegate to others.

Rob: 00:14:52

And one of I'm not sure if you remember.

Rob: 00:14:54

The other part of it.

Rob: 00:14:55

which particularly comes to mind is someone like Elon Musk or

Rob: 00:15:01

even just Bezos or someone who is that outlier is partly an outlier

Rob: 00:15:06

because of their internal demons.

Rob: 00:15:07

So when you look at Elon Musk, he's very driven by a father, abusive

Rob: 00:15:14

never been accepted, always constantly having a need to prove himself.

Rob: 00:15:19

Yeah.

Rob: 00:15:19

So when you look at someone who's got hundreds of billions,

Rob: 00:15:23

and yet they're still.

Rob: 00:15:24

pushing themselves to the point, I think most people are a little bit more balanced

Rob: 00:15:28

and, it takes often for the super rich.

Rob: 00:15:32

It needs someone that like often they need to prove themselves to their dad

Rob: 00:15:35

or mom, or there's some sense that they felt that they weren't good enough

Rob: 00:15:40

and they had to prove themselves.

Rob: 00:15:42

And I think that isn't really covered.

Rob: 00:15:44

I don't think, but I think that may be.

Rob: 00:15:46

Part of when you look at business or things that are of a status or even

Rob: 00:15:50

for sports like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Rob: 00:15:52

Now I think Messi is the better, and Messi from what I can understand is

Rob: 00:15:57

it did it from love, he just loves, he'll be all the time with a ball.

Rob: 00:16:01

Even now as an adult, when they're sharing a hotel room, he's got

Rob: 00:16:05

two footballs, one on each foot where he's keeping them both up.

Rob: 00:16:08

Whereas Ronaldo is someone who's driven to prove himself.

Neil: 00:16:12

I was reflecting on with the book was we often frame it in

Neil: 00:16:16

the context of success and outlier as someone who's successful.

Neil: 00:16:19

What is success actually?

Neil: 00:16:21

And, and I know from reading all your posts that there's

Neil: 00:16:24

something here about happiness and sometimes taking a step back.

Neil: 00:16:28

and not driving yourself to that kind of degree is successful for the individual.

Neil: 00:16:33

I was struck by the swimming in the Olympics last night.

Neil: 00:16:37

I got, I think his name's Peaty, one of the UK swimmers that's

Neil: 00:16:40

won a number of golds in the past and was highly anticipated to win

Neil: 00:16:45

gold at breaststroke last night.

Neil: 00:16:47

When he finished, he was absolutely elated.

Neil: 00:16:50

He came second, by the way.

Neil: 00:16:51

About two hundredths of a second difference between him and second

Neil: 00:16:55

place, and it was joint second.

Neil: 00:16:56

He was absolutely elated, just so happy.

Neil: 00:16:59

He was expected to win, and people wondered if he'd feel downhearted,

Neil: 00:17:04

but the point was that he felt happy in himself that he'd dealt with the

Neil: 00:17:08

demons that he had over 18 months or something, and was proud of his efforts.

Neil: 00:17:14

He didn't win.

Neil: 00:17:15

He wasn't one of those people you might then look to.

Neil: 00:17:18

He's got six medals or something from three Olympics.

Neil: 00:17:20

But it wasn't winning for him.

Neil: 00:17:22

It was that journey.

Neil: 00:17:23

It was the drive and being true to himself.

Neil: 00:17:26

And I really admired that.

Neil: 00:17:28

But it was a, it made me think of the book actually because

Neil: 00:17:30

what means do we measure success?

Neil: 00:17:32

I don't know.

Neil: 00:17:33

What do you think?

Neil: 00:17:34

Yeah,

Rob: 00:17:36

That's a great point because when we're looking at outliers,

Rob: 00:17:38

we're not looking at happiness.

Rob: 00:17:39

We're not looking at balanced, stable people.

Rob: 00:17:43

When you look at Elon Musk, he's got lots of children, there

Rob: 00:17:46

isn't that kind of family life.

Rob: 00:17:48

When we're looking at outliers, we're looking at someone who's sacrificed

Rob: 00:17:51

everything else in life for that aspect.

Rob: 00:17:54

Yeah.

Eduardo: 00:17:54

I was probably going to add just the same, Rob.

Eduardo: 00:17:57

I think when we discuss and when we read the book the outliers definition is an

Eduardo: 00:18:01

outside in, kind of definition, right?

Eduardo: 00:18:04

So it's the others defining one person as an Outlier.

Eduardo: 00:18:08

And we know that this is such a half true because all these others don't know

Eduardo: 00:18:13

what is really going on, with the self.

Eduardo: 00:18:16

The story of Steve Jobs and especially of the dying of Steve Jobs tells

Eduardo: 00:18:21

a little bit about that, right?

Eduardo: 00:18:22

The amount of regret that he shared as he was coming to was his final days.

Eduardo: 00:18:28

And he's a very celebrated Outlier.

Eduardo: 00:18:31

. So what does that mean?

Eduardo: 00:18:32

Yeah.

Eduardo: 00:18:33

Yeah.

Neil: 00:18:33

It's interesting because the story of the tailor.

Neil: 00:18:36

I think it was.

Neil: 00:18:37

That was another thing that resonated with me.

Neil: 00:18:39

So the I think it was a Jewish immigrant that went to to America and started

Neil: 00:18:45

in looking to find a niche, and there was a reference to that, I think,

Neil: 00:18:49

towards the end of the book that talked about how, in comparison to say

Neil: 00:18:53

somebody in a, working in a field, for example, where, they pick the produce

Neil: 00:18:57

and then it disappears somewhere and that's the last they see of it.

Neil: 00:19:00

Actually the value of him developing his own business, where it was complex,

Neil: 00:19:06

it was long hours, it was hard work.

Neil: 00:19:09

But when he got home to his family, he felt proud about what he was doing.

Neil: 00:19:13

He embraced the complexity.

Neil: 00:19:15

He got real joy and value.

Neil: 00:19:18

out of the fact he could see, if you like, the end to end, the full

Neil: 00:19:21

picture of what he's doing, from spotting an opportunity to, selling

Neil: 00:19:26

to customers that are coming back.

Neil: 00:19:28

And that sort of, it made me think of Alive at Work, actually, if you've

Neil: 00:19:31

read that by Daniel Cable, I think, and it talks about that need, alive

Neil: 00:19:37

at work that need to have purpose and challenge and, all those the sort of

Neil: 00:19:43

complexity can make work interesting.

Neil: 00:19:45

Seeing the big picture of what you're achieving and the rewards of that.

Neil: 00:19:48

That was a nice sort of different story to many of the others, I thought.

Saurabh: 00:19:53

Yeah.

Saurabh: 00:19:53

And even, when we were talking about, Outliers, like Elon Musk and Steve

Saurabh: 00:19:57

Jobs, the very fact that they are driven internally to that extent,

Saurabh: 00:20:01

like they have everything and still.

Saurabh: 00:20:04

They are able to push themselves comes from a dream.

Saurabh: 00:20:07

They have a vision, they have a dream, and they are trying to achieve that.

Saurabh: 00:20:11

It's generally not numbers driven.

Saurabh: 00:20:12

It is dream driven is what, even in case of Jeff Bezos, like 20 years

Saurabh: 00:20:18

without profit, just to follow a dream, or Elon Musk, the dream to go

Saurabh: 00:20:22

to say, Mars and have a colony there.

Saurabh: 00:20:24

Such a dream, something which is like beyond yourself, to leave a legacy or

Saurabh: 00:20:28

something, even in case of Ronaldo and Messi, they've achieved everything.

Saurabh: 00:20:32

So what is driving them?

Saurabh: 00:20:34

Is it to leave a legacy?

Saurabh: 00:20:35

I'm not very sure about it.

Saurabh: 00:20:37

That's the only reason they have some kind of a, their own dreams, whatever that is.

Saurabh: 00:20:41

I think that is a very huge factor, especially in case of

Saurabh: 00:20:44

such outliers who have given up everything just to pursue that.

Saurabh: 00:20:48

Case of, even in tennis, we see like players like Nadal, where they can hardly

Saurabh: 00:20:53

move and they are still pushing their bodies to the, great test hardships

Saurabh: 00:20:57

just to, and they're not enjoying it.

Saurabh: 00:20:59

It's not as if that they're enjoying getting up with the

Saurabh: 00:21:02

knees swollen and everything.

Saurabh: 00:21:03

And every time just to play, they have to take injections and get

Saurabh: 00:21:06

those shots to keep on playing.

Saurabh: 00:21:08

So what is that is pushing them still?

Saurabh: 00:21:10

If it is just not the love for game, then what it is.

Saurabh: 00:21:13

It is that challenge, that sense of self worth and self identity

Saurabh: 00:21:17

they also derive from that.

Saurabh: 00:21:18

So yeah, a lot of things I feel come into picture with that.

Eduardo: 00:21:22

I was reading about Cristiano Ronaldo, that one of the areas he has

Eduardo: 00:21:26

been investing the most over the last two, three years is on himself on

Eduardo: 00:21:30

trying to identify what is his vision going further, because what happens

Eduardo: 00:21:35

with a lot of athletes sportsmen is that they have a shelf life, right?

Eduardo: 00:21:40

So it gets to 30, 40, 50, depending on the sport and that's a cut you don't

Eduardo: 00:21:46

play it like he used to play anymore.

Eduardo: 00:21:48

So you can still contribute to the sport.

Eduardo: 00:21:50

You can do something else.

Eduardo: 00:21:51

You can completely change your life, especially if you have that kind of money.

Eduardo: 00:21:55

But that's a big question because you had that vision at the beginning when in this

Eduardo: 00:22:00

case, when he started Playing football all the stories associated with his father how

Eduardo: 00:22:05

he wanted to break free from that past and how he wanted to prove, himself to your

Eduardo: 00:22:12

point, okay, now he's done, but he's 40.

Eduardo: 00:22:14

He has another 40 years to live.

Eduardo: 00:22:16

If not 60, what do you do then?

Eduardo: 00:22:18

And that the person is different when the person is still willing to invest

Eduardo: 00:22:23

in himself to figure out what that is.

Eduardo: 00:22:26

Despite of having everything

Rob: 00:22:27

Going back to like when we talk about the richest person, I think it's

Rob: 00:22:31

interesting like every year apart from I think one year is like carlos slim

Rob: 00:22:36

from mexico Was on the richest list.

Rob: 00:22:38

But it's always from the united states.

Rob: 00:22:41

No one is coming the richest from Cambodia or Ethiopia.

Rob: 00:22:45

So you've already given that chance, just by the country.

Rob: 00:22:49

And then I think it's interesting that there's a reason for a culture.

Rob: 00:22:52

So Egypt was perhaps the first great civilization because of the

Rob: 00:22:58

Nile, because it had fertile soil.

Rob: 00:23:00

Here the UK has been quite quite a powerful nation because, we

Rob: 00:23:05

have such fertile lands, that's why we were raided so much.

Rob: 00:23:08

And then we've had the Vikings, the Romans, the, Normans.

Rob: 00:23:12

Everyone has invaded us.

Rob: 00:23:14

So we've gained, all different attributes.

Rob: 00:23:18

We've had that diversity of knowledge, diversity of input.

Rob: 00:23:21

So when we look at countries, they're geographic advantages.

Rob: 00:23:25

America has this great land with every potential.

Rob: 00:23:29

It's got every kind of climate within it.

Rob: 00:23:31

It's got the English, it's got the Italians, it's got the Irish, it's

Rob: 00:23:34

got the Jewish, it's got every kind of nationality, so it's come together.

Rob: 00:23:40

Knowing all of those things, all of that inside knowledge of

Rob: 00:23:44

all of those different areas.

Rob: 00:23:46

So there's certain reasons that we might not recognize.

Rob: 00:23:50

I think that's, what's interesting to me about outliers is, I

Rob: 00:23:53

remember is Jeb Bush, his dad and his brother were US presidents.

Rob: 00:23:58

He's come from a family with money.

Rob: 00:24:01

He's grown up with privilege and he says, I'm a self made man.

Rob: 00:24:04

Your dad was the American president.

Rob: 00:24:06

Your brother is the American president.

Rob: 00:24:08

You got millions.

Rob: 00:24:09

How can you be self made?

Rob: 00:24:11

You're in a country that gives you every privilege, every advantage.

Rob: 00:24:15

And you're claiming it's all my own work.

Rob: 00:24:17

One way I like to look at it is if I had the same genetics, the same

Rob: 00:24:22

upbringing, the same experiences, the same culture, I would think the same as you.

Rob: 00:24:26

And I think there's, that's the appreciation that Outliers,

Rob: 00:24:29

has given to me really.

Rob: 00:24:31

Yeah.

Rob: 00:24:31

Yeah.

Neil: 00:24:32

That's interesting, and the States in particular, because I

Neil: 00:24:35

always tend to think the States is great at seizing, generally speaking,

Neil: 00:24:38

great at seizing opportunity.

Neil: 00:24:40

Actually when you think about it, when everyone emigrated to the States, whether

Neil: 00:24:46

from Ireland or elsewhere, they're giving everything up, aren't they?

Neil: 00:24:49

They're taking a leap of faith.

Neil: 00:24:51

They're seeking something different, something new, prepared to explore

Neil: 00:24:56

and, and have that courage to do and if you build a country around that kind

Neil: 00:25:01

of attitude from different people all coming together and that entrepreneurial

Neil: 00:25:05

spirit like the tailor, no wonder the opportunities are seized and so on.

Neil: 00:25:11

So I think it's that, for me, there's, it comes back to that sort of cultural point

Neil: 00:25:15

of having, grown up in an environment like that, you've seen what your parents have

Neil: 00:25:19

done or you've seen what your community does and you just naturally follow that.

Rob: 00:25:25

It's interesting because here in the UK, we've just had an election.

Rob: 00:25:28

And the UK, the last few years we've left Europe.

Rob: 00:25:32

Immigration has been a big thing.

Rob: 00:25:34

Reform party is growing and there's a movement of that in across Europe.

Rob: 00:25:39

I think and Trump also was like, we're going to have quotas and that.

Rob: 00:25:43

And yet it's proven that economies grow through immigration.

Rob: 00:25:47

There's this common sense idea that, oh, if we keep our jobs, but it

Rob: 00:25:51

doesn't recognize the impact of that immigration mindset and the fact that

Rob: 00:25:58

when you have immigrants, mostly you're getting the most ambitious people.

Rob: 00:26:03

Whereas, the argument here is in the UK, it's Oh, will

Rob: 00:26:07

there be more jobs for British?

Rob: 00:26:08

We can't keep, employing other people.

Rob: 00:26:10

Because we left Brexit.

Rob: 00:26:12

We lost a lot of.

Rob: 00:26:13

carers and people from the NHS and there's an English mentality

Rob: 00:26:17

that I don't do that work.

Rob: 00:26:18

As I can get more off benefits than doing that.

Rob: 00:26:20

So it's that appreciation of, again, diversity.

Eduardo: 00:26:24

Yeah, I could tell you a number of stories from Brazil.

Eduardo: 00:26:28

One of our national products is coffee very well known worldwide.

Eduardo: 00:26:33

And it wouldn't have come to be if it weren't for immigrants.

Eduardo: 00:26:38

This is part of the process by which outliers are developed.

Eduardo: 00:26:43

I think it's also much related because it's the kind of movement

Eduardo: 00:26:47

that creates additional movement.

Eduardo: 00:26:49

And that's why people are sometimes against it or not comfortable with

Eduardo: 00:26:54

it because that implies that they in their countries doing whatever they

Eduardo: 00:26:58

were doing will have to move as well.

Eduardo: 00:27:00

That, that creates the discomfort, but at the same time that it creates

Eduardo: 00:27:05

comfort, it creates the opportunity.

Eduardo: 00:27:06

Yeah.

Saurabh: 00:27:07

I have a very similar example like when India was

Saurabh: 00:27:10

partitioning a partitioning like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all

Saurabh: 00:27:12

these three countries were formed.

Saurabh: 00:27:14

For a lot of people from Bangladesh, the now present Bangladesh, they came

Saurabh: 00:27:18

to West Bengal, which is adjacent state to, where Bangladesh is.

Saurabh: 00:27:23

So people who had left everything in there, Bangladesh side of a place and

Saurabh: 00:27:28

had come to West Bengal, they are now the richest people in West Bengal.

Saurabh: 00:27:33

The reason, because since they came from there and they had nothing.

Saurabh: 00:27:36

The kind of upbringing, the kind of culture that, they were exposed to

Saurabh: 00:27:41

the kind of difficulties, the kind of struggles they had to go through

Saurabh: 00:27:44

was much greater than the people of West Bengal at that point of time.

Saurabh: 00:27:48

So that's one of the reason why most of the people in West Bengal

Saurabh: 00:27:51

right now are all from, they had, they have come from East Bengal.

Saurabh: 00:27:55

That is the other part, which is now Bangalore.

Saurabh: 00:27:57

So yeah, and these are the kind of examples, like even in Delhi, the

Saurabh: 00:28:01

place I am in, you will see most of the people are the same ones

Saurabh: 00:28:05

who have come from that partition.

Saurabh: 00:28:07

1947, the partition happened.

Saurabh: 00:28:09

And now most of the businessmen and everyone in Delhi, they're

Saurabh: 00:28:12

all from the East Pakistan.

Saurabh: 00:28:14

That is the Pakistan from Pakistan side, who had migrated back to India in 1947.

Saurabh: 00:28:20

They are the ones who are the most successful businessmen.

Saurabh: 00:28:22

Again, the same case, because they had to go through that struggle

Saurabh: 00:28:26

and all those, cultural aspects of extreme difficulty and having to earn

Saurabh: 00:28:31

it that hard work and that culture.

Saurabh: 00:28:33

Of that struggle is what has made them more successful at present.

Saurabh: 00:28:38

Yeah, but very similar parallel examples across, I can see.

Saurabh: 00:28:41

It

Eduardo: 00:28:42

brings what you said and what Rob said together, doesn't it?

Eduardo: 00:28:46

Now that it's the vision but this vision is fueled by something else.

Eduardo: 00:28:51

And the way I think about it is you do have this models on where humans

Eduardo: 00:28:56

are driven by one of two things.

Eduardo: 00:28:59

Either love, you can get many names, passion and so on.

Eduardo: 00:29:03

And you create visions for that or fear.

Eduardo: 00:29:05

So you're either push through something or you pull from it.

Eduardo: 00:29:09

And that's how most people balance their lives somewhere, in the middle,

Eduardo: 00:29:14

most of the time especially if you're in a place with some stability,

Eduardo: 00:29:18

but when you go to extremes.

Eduardo: 00:29:20

Like when you're running from your country, for example, there is a

Eduardo: 00:29:23

tendency that you also be pushed to one of these extremes and of course.

Eduardo: 00:29:28

It's for me, even logical that if you're starting from scratch,

Eduardo: 00:29:32

you have nothing else to lose.

Eduardo: 00:29:34

That is no fear anymore.

Eduardo: 00:29:36

Nothing worse can happen at this point.

Eduardo: 00:29:39

It can only get better.

Eduardo: 00:29:40

And then you push for it and then you risk for it and you try hard.

Eduardo: 00:29:44

And then you put the 10, 000 hours or even 50, 000 hours and you put

Eduardo: 00:29:49

practice into practice until you excel.

Eduardo: 00:29:52

And then the whole theory of outliers makes sense at scale.

Rob: 00:29:56

What comes to mind then Eduardo, is that old saying

Rob: 00:30:02

of hard times make hard men.

Rob: 00:30:05

Hard men make good societies make, but basically, we get the riches, and

Rob: 00:30:10

then we make it comfortable for our children, and then our our children

Rob: 00:30:13

become soft, and then empires decline.

Rob: 00:30:16

A parallel book is The Psychology of Money.

Rob: 00:30:18

I don't know if you've read that Morgan Housel.

Rob: 00:30:21

And basically he says that generations have an attitude to

Rob: 00:30:24

money based on the circumstances.

Rob: 00:30:27

So those who grew up, in the twenties, witnessed the thirties depression.

Rob: 00:30:33

Those who grew up in the thirties witnessed the war of the forties,

Rob: 00:30:37

the, and then the sixties boom.

Rob: 00:30:40

Which kind of parallels with the right timings in outliers it just makes you

Rob: 00:30:45

appreciate how much is circumstance, there is, we can do what we can do.

Rob: 00:30:52

And then there's a certain amount that we need to let go of.

Rob: 00:30:54

I always think, I, I used to have something that I called the think

Rob: 00:30:57

free revolution is that I think we're trapped by three things, we're

Rob: 00:31:00

trapped by our emotional, reactions.

Rob: 00:31:03

So when we become overly emotional, we stop thinking.

Rob: 00:31:08

We're trapped by ignorance.

Rob: 00:31:10

And we're tracked by dogma.

Rob: 00:31:12

When we grow up, we learn certain lessons from events, from our culture.

Rob: 00:31:16

And it's about overcoming those biases of our culture, of our own

Rob: 00:31:21

experience, and of our own emotions.

Rob: 00:31:24

So I think there's something about becoming independent,

Rob: 00:31:26

becoming free of that.

Neil: 00:31:27

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

Neil: 00:31:29

And I gets back to some of the discussion earlier for me in if you become

Neil: 00:31:34

comfortable in that culture you're in and you're behaving as everyone

Neil: 00:31:37

else behaves, it takes somebody to.

Neil: 00:31:40

To break the mould, it takes somebody to think differently, doesn't it?

Neil: 00:31:43

And I think that comes from self reflection and curiosity.

Neil: 00:31:48

Asking yourself, is this really right?

Neil: 00:31:50

Does this serve a purpose now?

Neil: 00:31:53

If we ask that question more around immigration, Rob, that you were talking

Neil: 00:31:58

about earlier, Does it really serve the purpose for the, the likes of, some

Neil: 00:32:04

of the policies that are talked about?

Neil: 00:32:05

Without getting political, just asking that question I think soon leads you to

Neil: 00:32:10

this why have we got so many job vacancies in the National Health Service or so on?

Neil: 00:32:16

And I think it's that ability to stand back.

Neil: 00:32:18

And ask that question that, that can make a difference.

Neil: 00:32:22

It's one of the interesting things that I've been reflecting on after

Neil: 00:32:26

reading the book, not so much when I was reading it was this point.

Neil: 00:32:30

I watched the first 30 minutes of the video as well

Neil: 00:32:32

through that, that you shared.

Neil: 00:32:34

And this idea has really sees me around.

Neil: 00:32:38

capitalizing on talent.

Neil: 00:32:40

With all the things we're talking about, how do we improve the lives of others?

Neil: 00:32:46

And, actually the world writ large, how do we capitalize on the talent, the

Neil: 00:32:51

inherent talent that exists in everybody?

Neil: 00:32:54

That's much too difficult for my meager brain to work out, but it's

Neil: 00:32:58

an interesting question, isn't it?

Neil: 00:32:59

I don't know if anyone's got any views on that.

Eduardo: 00:33:03

You're just stimulating my thinking, and My reaction to it because

Eduardo: 00:33:07

again of the visions that we talked about I actually don't think a lot of

Eduardo: 00:33:11

this visionaries, this outliers were thinking about doing the greater good or

Eduardo: 00:33:17

anything like that, it's just that they naturally worked towards the benefit

Eduardo: 00:33:23

of others, but not that they were putting all their intention into it.

Eduardo: 00:33:28

Their intention was clearly something else.

Eduardo: 00:33:30

I will build the most exciting system in the world.

Eduardo: 00:33:34

I am going to have the highest volumes of financial transactions

Eduardo: 00:33:40

handled by my platform.

Eduardo: 00:33:42

I'm going to, win the all this football prizes one after the other over my

Eduardo: 00:33:48

entire career In the process of doing the things that they have sat themselves

Eduardo: 00:33:53

for though, they benefited all this.

Eduardo: 00:33:55

I feel that this is a big challenge.

Eduardo: 00:33:57

I have seen leaders trying to go through multiple different ways.

Eduardo: 00:34:02

Okay.

Eduardo: 00:34:03

Let me do what is best for the people.

Eduardo: 00:34:06

And usually people can feel that they are lacking something that is no real goal.

Eduardo: 00:34:11

And the goal Cannot be let's just do it for the people, you

Eduardo: 00:34:15

know that is missing substance

Neil: 00:34:17

Yeah.

Neil: 00:34:18

But in business, there was a quote, in the book that struck me about, I

Neil: 00:34:22

forgotten was it the Matthew effect?

Neil: 00:34:23

I think it was called that basically the rich get richer.

Neil: 00:34:26

And one of the other sort of things that sort of struck me about the book, and

Neil: 00:34:30

some of you talked a little bit about closed loops and open loops earlier, was

Neil: 00:34:33

this sense of the complexity of systems.

Neil: 00:34:37

And the reinforcing loop, so the rich are getting richer, the privileged are

Neil: 00:34:43

promoting their privilege, the sons or daughters of, presidents have a leg up.

Neil: 00:34:49

And this is a reinforcing loop.

Neil: 00:34:51

The more it continues, the more the privilege succeed because

Neil: 00:34:55

the more privilege there are who are giving them the leg up.

Neil: 00:34:59

Whether that's, because of the university you went to or anything else.

Neil: 00:35:03

And there's, it seems to me that cycle needs breaking.

Neil: 00:35:07

And Richard Branson with a dyslexic skill, should we say.

Neil: 00:35:12

Dyslexia at school is a fundamental, it feels to me, at least when I

Neil: 00:35:17

was at school, a disadvantage.

Neil: 00:35:18

It's very hard to to do well, when you've got a system that's built

Neil: 00:35:24

around cookie cutter type approaches.

Neil: 00:35:27

And again, it started to make me think how do you break that mold?

Neil: 00:35:30

How do you actually, change the system in a way that Equal opportunity is

Neil: 00:35:36

provided in ways that actually, I know it's slightly different for sports.

Neil: 00:35:41

I'm thinking about business in particular and, a certain business

Neil: 00:35:44

mentality drives you to the top and you want people in your image.

Neil: 00:35:48

So you promote people like you and, you've got a reinforcing

Neil: 00:35:52

loop that needs breaking.

Eduardo: 00:35:54

And it will break guys, because, I think it's just that we will probably

Eduardo: 00:35:59

not see it and at the same time we wanted to let's go back in history, not for

Eduardo: 00:36:05

much, let's go back for a hundred years and 200 years, then 300 years, the kind

Eduardo: 00:36:10

of enterprises that were successful.

Eduardo: 00:36:13

Each of the centuries were completely different from one another.

Eduardo: 00:36:16

Whenever they were more state sponsored or individually driven, or if they

Eduardo: 00:36:22

were based on, partnerships or not, or whenever the money was coming

Eduardo: 00:36:27

from whatever would be the kind of person that would be entitled to lead.

Eduardo: 00:36:31

This kind of business, it has been all completely different.

Eduardo: 00:36:34

And I.

Eduardo: 00:36:34

I feel sometimes that again, we get too attached to the current model

Eduardo: 00:36:39

that exists and that's okay because we live in the present, not in the past

Eduardo: 00:36:43

or in the future, but it's definitely not going to stay forever like it.

Saurabh: 00:36:48

I do think he read a book why nation Spain.

Saurabh: 00:36:50

Yeah.

Saurabh: 00:36:53

Which also actually talks about the wicked problem that, these systems

Saurabh: 00:36:57

present that the riches, the richer always, tend to get more and more

Saurabh: 00:37:01

rich and the poorer always get poorer.

Saurabh: 00:37:03

It's because.

Saurabh: 00:37:05

The systems are rigged, right?

Saurabh: 00:37:06

It's the lobbying.

Saurabh: 00:37:08

It takes place always on for the richer people, because they have more influence.

Saurabh: 00:37:13

So this is only going to rise in short.

Saurabh: 00:37:15

I'm just trying to, capture the essence of it, that the rich will

Saurabh: 00:37:18

always get richer because the systems are always rigged in favor of them.

Saurabh: 00:37:22

They have the most influence.

Saurabh: 00:37:23

So it has always happened in history.

Saurabh: 00:37:25

It's just that only when certain black Swan events have happened, like Talib

Saurabh: 00:37:30

talks about the black swan events.

Saurabh: 00:37:32

It's only because of certain black swan events that happen in some part point

Saurabh: 00:37:36

of the history that it gets shattered.

Saurabh: 00:37:39

For example, like when colonialism stopped, then that was a black

Saurabh: 00:37:43

swan event for that particular country in whichever country it was.

Saurabh: 00:37:47

So that pushed it to a part of growth or if some terrorist

Saurabh: 00:37:50

activity happens in certain country.

Saurabh: 00:37:52

And it is completely destroyed.

Saurabh: 00:37:54

Then a new system might come up or something of that sort.

Saurabh: 00:37:57

So that cycle of destruction and recreation, it's something

Saurabh: 00:38:00

which is a cycle, right?

Saurabh: 00:38:01

It keeps on going and coming.

Saurabh: 00:38:04

But within that, period of a cycle, it's always the rich getting richer

Saurabh: 00:38:08

and the poor getting poorer till the point of time when there is a

Saurabh: 00:38:11

revolution, like the things that happened in the French revolution and

Saurabh: 00:38:14

Renaissance movement and everything.

Saurabh: 00:38:16

That was a culmination of that.

Saurabh: 00:38:18

When the rich became so.

Saurabh: 00:38:19

rich, that the poor had nothing, and then the movement took place.

Saurabh: 00:38:23

So it's always like a cycle that all these systems and everything come into being,

Saurabh: 00:38:29

especially when it comes to democracy.

Saurabh: 00:38:31

I feel it's comparatively still, certain parity can be maintained

Saurabh: 00:38:35

with the checks and balances.

Saurabh: 00:38:36

But in most other say, what can you do in a North Korea?

Saurabh: 00:38:40

Nothing.

Saurabh: 00:38:41

So it always, again, depends on the system that you are playing in.

Saurabh: 00:38:44

So yeah, that one example that clearly came to me, the second one Eduardo, you

Saurabh: 00:38:49

mentioned that, they do it for themselves.

Saurabh: 00:38:51

Ronaldo would just to win the medals and everything.

Saurabh: 00:38:54

He's doing it for himself.

Saurabh: 00:38:55

And this is exactly what, the capitalism, the core definition of

Saurabh: 00:38:58

capitalism, when Adam Smith said the.

Saurabh: 00:39:00

Invisible hand is the invisible hand, which is guiding us

Saurabh: 00:39:04

towards, progress or anything.

Saurabh: 00:39:06

It's not just, the goals that we have.

Saurabh: 00:39:09

It's just that when we are achieving those goals, others are also getting

Saurabh: 00:39:12

benefited by it in some way or the other.

Saurabh: 00:39:14

That invisible hand comes into play.

Saurabh: 00:39:17

So yeah, these two points really, yeah.

Rob: 00:39:20

I think the capitalization, which I didn't really see so much in

Rob: 00:39:23

the book, but it was in the video.

Rob: 00:39:25

And I think that is a really interesting point is really like

Rob: 00:39:29

certain countries have certain sports.

Rob: 00:39:30

And so often there are whole groups that could be the next Messi or the next

Rob: 00:39:36

Nadal or whoever it is, but they never get access to achieve their potential.

Rob: 00:39:41

i'm thinking as you're talking about the gap.

Rob: 00:39:43

I worked for a while in a a school that was it was here in the Suburbs, but it was

Rob: 00:39:49

had the profile of an inner city school.

Rob: 00:39:50

It was the most underprivileged school.

Rob: 00:39:53

And there is a clear gap, and it's not just poverty.

Rob: 00:39:57

The study of intelligence is very contentious, and it's quite clear that

Rob: 00:40:00

the evidence is that most, if not at least half, most of intelligence is genetic, but

Rob: 00:40:06

because they're of a whole back history of eugenics and things that it isn't able

Rob: 00:40:11

to say, and there's someone Millers and Bernstein, I think it is, who did this

Rob: 00:40:16

study and they said, basically, there is a subset of every culture where it's

Rob: 00:40:20

a class of intelligence, and that all the money in health, all the money in

Rob: 00:40:24

social care, all the money in crime, all the money in welfare, all the money in

Rob: 00:40:29

education goes to a certain, Small amount.

Rob: 00:40:33

And when we looked at where part of my job was to Audit and make

Rob: 00:40:38

a make up where the money went.

Rob: 00:40:40

And a huge amount of the money went on a few families.

Rob: 00:40:43

There's like this estate and there's a few families that were intermingled

Rob: 00:40:47

and whatever but there are a few families that they would have 10

Rob: 00:40:50

kids And they would be on welfare.

Rob: 00:40:53

They would have health issues.

Rob: 00:40:55

Their health wasn't great.

Rob: 00:40:57

So they were the ones that were causing the trouble in the school.

Rob: 00:40:59

And because of that, they were managed and this is children that had maybe

Rob: 00:41:04

16 to 18, 000 a year spent on them.

Rob: 00:41:07

Based on the fact that they were unmanageable based on the fact that

Rob: 00:41:10

they couldn't sit and pay attention.

Rob: 00:41:12

They'd learned, often not to trust, never to tell the truth, because if

Rob: 00:41:16

they did they'd get hit or whatever.

Rob: 00:41:18

So there is this section and when you look at how schools judged good

Rob: 00:41:23

schools have good catchment areas.

Rob: 00:41:26

And this is part of what Gladwell outlined in the book is that they have, they're

Rob: 00:41:32

taught by parents that Give them time.

Rob: 00:41:34

They teach them to read.

Rob: 00:41:35

They spend time with them.

Rob: 00:41:37

When they help them, they make sure that they do their homework.

Rob: 00:41:40

They help them with their homework.

Rob: 00:41:41

They have all the resources they need to do their work.

Rob: 00:41:44

If they're struggling, they get tutors and they give them support.

Rob: 00:41:48

Whereas a child that has poverty, it's not just about the poverty

Rob: 00:41:52

of not having everything.

Rob: 00:41:54

It's about poverty of language.

Rob: 00:41:55

Even a brighter kid that comes from a less advantaged background,

Rob: 00:41:59

they'll often reach a stage where about year nine where they can read.

Rob: 00:42:04

And teachers think, Oh it isn't a problem with reading, but it's a problem with

Rob: 00:42:07

vocabulary is a problem where they don't understand the words because

Rob: 00:42:12

they haven't been exposed to them.

Rob: 00:42:13

So there's a poverty of language.

Rob: 00:42:15

There's a poverty of aspirations.

Rob: 00:42:16

They've never known to look outside of their own town.

Rob: 00:42:20

So they don't know what's possible.

Rob: 00:42:23

There's a poverty of books because they're not exposed to books.

Rob: 00:42:25

There's a poverty of network because they're not exposed to

Rob: 00:42:28

people who can give them support.

Rob: 00:42:30

They don't have any role models and there's a poverty of opportunities.

Rob: 00:42:34

So there is this, innate disadvantage, but then when you look at it, part

Rob: 00:42:40

of the human drive is for status, is that there's many studies that you

Rob: 00:42:44

could get more money, be comparatively less than someone else and we'll take

Rob: 00:42:48

less because it's not just about how much we get, it's about how much we

Rob: 00:42:52

get in comparison to everyone else.

Rob: 00:42:55

With our children, there's a love for our children and we want our

Rob: 00:42:59

children to have an advantage.

Rob: 00:43:00

We don't want them to have the same as everyone else.

Rob: 00:43:02

We want them to have an advantage.

Rob: 00:43:04

So those that have more are going to try, look to give their child the edge.

Rob: 00:43:11

And so there's something in that.

Rob: 00:43:12

The attempt of communists is to impose equality on everyone.

Rob: 00:43:16

That doesn't work because it works exactly against human nature.

Rob: 00:43:20

So there is this desire for us and our children to have an advantage over others,

Rob: 00:43:27

and I think that perpetuates that gap.

Eduardo: 00:43:29

And that happens even without much thinking, right on the book, one of

Eduardo: 00:43:34

the examples that he proposed is about the school break the vacation period mentions

Eduardo: 00:43:39

that, okay, underprivileged kids usually go break for vacation, and they pretty

Eduardo: 00:43:44

much do nothing over several weeks if it's new as it can be almost three months.

Eduardo: 00:43:50

Think about that.

Eduardo: 00:43:51

Richer kids or privileged kids usually have several opportunities off in

Eduardo: 00:43:57

reaching activities and experiences over the same period of time.

Eduardo: 00:44:02

So what happens is through the school year according to this.

Eduardo: 00:44:09

Poor kids could be even performing better than the richer kids, but when

Eduardo: 00:44:13

it gets to the break and when they return after months, they have lost all

Eduardo: 00:44:18

that and the richer kids compounded.

Eduardo: 00:44:21

Now, this doesn't happen once.

Eduardo: 00:44:23

It happens every year over 12, 15 years of educational development.

Eduardo: 00:44:29

What happens in a grade eight or nine, depending on the country, is that the

Eduardo: 00:44:34

gap is so significant to your point, Rob to vocabulary understanding and

Eduardo: 00:44:39

this kind of foundational things that you really need in order to continue

Eduardo: 00:44:43

to advance that, then to your point, Saurabh, the game became rigged.

Eduardo: 00:44:47

That is no chance anymore.

Eduardo: 00:44:49

There's always a chance, but it became so minimal.

Eduardo: 00:44:52

And when I think about myself or family here, what is that we do?

Eduardo: 00:44:56

It's again, some of it has an intention, but a lot of it doesn't.

Eduardo: 00:45:00

The fact that we have the books around us because we like reading and then the

Eduardo: 00:45:04

kids do it because they see that we do it that we go and visit the museum is because

Eduardo: 00:45:10

we like this kind of activities, right?

Eduardo: 00:45:12

Or that we get together with interesting families where kids are also interested

Eduardo: 00:45:18

in hobbies and things like that instead of doing nothing and watching TV the

Eduardo: 00:45:22

whole day, it's just part of our lives.

Eduardo: 00:45:25

And that's how the gap comes to be.

Rob: 00:45:27

I'm thinking back now, when I went to college, I went

Rob: 00:45:30

to college on Harrow and Hill.

Rob: 00:45:31

I would pass Harrow school.

Rob: 00:45:33

Harrow and Eaton are, two of the big old, big name boarding schools.

Rob: 00:45:39

We call it a public school, but it's actually a private school.

Rob: 00:45:41

And the advantage to going to Harrow and Eton or one of those schools

Rob: 00:45:46

is all of your classmates, there's studies of the cabinet, the British

Rob: 00:45:51

government was made up of, I can't remember, but it's an inordinate

Rob: 00:45:55

amount came from Harrow and Eton.

Rob: 00:45:57

They're not necessarily brighter, but all of their friends and all of their friends

Rob: 00:46:02

parents are already government ministers, their CEOs, their leaders of industry.

Rob: 00:46:07

So it's natural for them.

Rob: 00:46:09

It's like the thing they always say that you're the average of

Rob: 00:46:12

the five people you hang out with.

Rob: 00:46:13

And I remember there was a TV show.

Rob: 00:46:15

I don't know if you ever saw it, Neil, but it was Harrow school.

Rob: 00:46:18

And it showed, life in Harrow school.

Rob: 00:46:20

And it's like that they're exposed that they have every sport.

Rob: 00:46:23

They have every kind of, opportunity, it's natural for their parents

Rob: 00:46:27

to fly around the helicopters.

Rob: 00:46:29

They see so much culture.

Rob: 00:46:31

There's something wrong if they don't go to a good university.

Rob: 00:46:34

And then when they've gone to the university, they've got the grades, then,

Rob: 00:46:37

their dad knows someone, someone in the family, how he puts them in a start.

Rob: 00:46:42

They take this leadership role.

Rob: 00:46:43

They naturally grow up thinking I should be an MP or I should do

Rob: 00:46:46

something because there's a natural.

Rob: 00:46:48

emotional sense that you have authority, that you're entitled to

Neil: 00:46:52

it.

Neil: 00:46:53

That's really interesting that, that entitlement point, again, I think, and

Neil: 00:46:58

one of the things that struck me about the book, there was that passage about the

Neil: 00:47:02

study of flight and airlines and so on.

Neil: 00:47:05

And there was a quote, I wrote it down, or I paraphrased it, that said

Neil: 00:47:09

something like crashes are more likely when the captain is in the flying seat.

Neil: 00:47:13

And I was just reminded of that when you were talking, Rob, because when you

Neil: 00:47:17

have that sense of privilege, when you have that sense of what's the word I'm

Neil: 00:47:21

looking for expectation on you almost, that because you went to those schools,

Neil: 00:47:25

you ought to be in those positions, and therefore there's an expectation on you,

Neil: 00:47:30

from others, but also from yourself.

Neil: 00:47:33

You're creating an environment where, the opposite of that, of course, is if

Neil: 00:47:37

you go to a comprehensive, you don't have the expectation of rising to The sort of

Neil: 00:47:41

dizzy heights that that they might, and you get this sort of, what was it called?

Neil: 00:47:45

High, low power.

Neil: 00:47:47

They talked about it in country terms, don't they?

Neil: 00:47:49

But I think you could equally apply that, in the individual sort of sense

Neil: 00:47:54

that people that have an expectation of high power, ooze that, don't they?

Neil: 00:47:58

I think it comes across quite strongly.

Rob: 00:48:00

When I was in the school, there would be these kids that would be just, running

Rob: 00:48:03

wild and act, like acting the big kid.

Rob: 00:48:06

And then you'd say, Can you go to that class and get I'm not going to that class.

Rob: 00:48:10

There is a fear and if you think you know, like when I used to go past these kids

Rob: 00:48:14

from Harrow school and they're wearing their Uniform with a bowler hat and all

Rob: 00:48:18

of this kind of thing It's all they had their straw hats or whatever it was.

Rob: 00:48:23

A kid who's not been exposed to much, they see that and they see them, getting

Rob: 00:48:26

the helicopters and they just come back from a skiing trip and all of this stuff.

Rob: 00:48:30

And there's like a sense of, I'm not good enough.

Rob: 00:48:32

So there's a, this huge barrier that people have to get past to

Rob: 00:48:37

be able to function on that level.

Eduardo: 00:48:39

And at the same time, the envy that may be coming

Eduardo: 00:48:42

around together with it, right?

Eduardo: 00:48:44

Around, because it's easy to get attached to the outcomes, the

Eduardo: 00:48:47

results and overlook the process.

Eduardo: 00:48:51

I want what he has But I have no clue and I'm not willing to

Eduardo: 00:48:56

put in the effort that he had.

Eduardo: 00:48:58

So this is also a little bit of a curse of modern times where we have

Eduardo: 00:49:02

so much access to information and we see what everybody's doing, what they

Eduardo: 00:49:06

want us to see them doing and not necessarily how they're getting there.

Rob: 00:49:09

I think that's really important is that, that for me is the great

Rob: 00:49:13

message of outliers is, yeah.

Rob: 00:49:15

Is that it's the antidote to the great man theory that some

Rob: 00:49:19

people are just born better.

Rob: 00:49:20

This is what I love about it, is the leveler.

Rob: 00:49:22

It tells you exactly what it takes.

Saurabh: 00:49:25

Yeah, exactly.

Saurabh: 00:49:26

The part about motivation, so even if someone is having a much better

Saurabh: 00:49:30

bringing with all the advantages.

Saurabh: 00:49:31

At the same time, it also the comfort is also more in such cases, the

Saurabh: 00:49:36

motivation level might be slightly lower compared to someone who is

Saurabh: 00:49:40

coming from a disadvantage background.

Saurabh: 00:49:42

So how much does that level up?

Saurabh: 00:49:45

What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages do the level up to an

Saurabh: 00:49:48

extent is a question that, that comes to mind that especially in cases of

Saurabh: 00:49:53

what I see, like in India, most of the successful people of this generation.

Saurabh: 00:49:58

Have come from middle class backgrounds, not poor backgrounds,

Saurabh: 00:50:02

but not rich backgrounds.

Saurabh: 00:50:03

So they are at the middle class, lower middle class family people,

Saurabh: 00:50:07

they are doing much better in this generation just because they

Saurabh: 00:50:10

had to go through that hardship.

Saurabh: 00:50:12

They were not so disadvantaged that, they did not have any kind of means.

Saurabh: 00:50:16

Or nor were so advantaged or so rich that they were in comfort zone, that at least

Saurabh: 00:50:22

our money and everything is taken care of.

Saurabh: 00:50:23

So that's why the generation right now is of middle class generation.

Saurabh: 00:50:27

So that, how much does those advantages?

Saurabh: 00:50:30

Yes.

Saurabh: 00:50:31

One is like Eduardo, you were talking about the advantages that we

Saurabh: 00:50:34

are passing on to the kids through our actions through our interests

Saurabh: 00:50:37

and all that is a different thing.

Saurabh: 00:50:39

Again, those motivations probably is another topic of which is like very

Saurabh: 00:50:44

interesting, but at the same time, in general, when we're talking about a mass

Saurabh: 00:50:47

level, I feel some of it gets adjusted by itself, because the motivations.

Saurabh: 00:50:52

The human motivations are so varied and those disadvantaged kids might

Saurabh: 00:50:56

want to push even harder, which is actually preparing them for a

Saurabh: 00:51:00

better future in different ways.

Saurabh: 00:51:02

So yeah,

Rob: 00:51:03

That comes down to when they were talking about the Taylors and the Jewish

Rob: 00:51:06

families, I think that's generational.

Rob: 00:51:08

The parents tend to push.

Rob: 00:51:11

And I think, certainly academically perhaps in other ways.

Rob: 00:51:14

Here in the UK, Asian children and looking politically, we're getting

Rob: 00:51:19

more and more, Asian politicians.

Rob: 00:51:21

And, we've had Sunak as prime minister in the race now.

Rob: 00:51:24

And I think part of that is because traditionally or generally, it's

Rob: 00:51:30

that kind of Asian immigrants here who push their children more.

Rob: 00:51:34

That comes from, wanting your children to have a better life and there is much more

Rob: 00:51:39

ambition and focus on schoolwork than, I think, perhaps from native parents.

Rob: 00:51:45

They talked about that Jewish parents that they came over and

Rob: 00:51:48

they did what they could there.

Rob: 00:51:49

They were working on clothes or whatever.

Rob: 00:51:52

And then when you look at it, become, they become doctors, they

Rob: 00:51:54

become doctors and lawyers, and each generation raises their aspiration.

Eduardo: 00:52:00

And just like for many years Investment in

Eduardo: 00:52:03

education has been the thing.

Eduardo: 00:52:04

I won't be surprised if we get together again, the four of us in 100

Eduardo: 00:52:09

years, assuming that we are alive on.

Eduardo: 00:52:12

We realized that a lot of effort has been on entrepreneurship, I

Eduardo: 00:52:16

think, over the next 40 to 50 years.

Eduardo: 00:52:18

So we'll see a lot of parents supporting and pushing their

Eduardo: 00:52:23

kids into that segment of life.

Eduardo: 00:52:28

And in certain countries we are going to see that happening in politics, especially

Eduardo: 00:52:33

again when it comes to immigrants, because if you're lacking, then the space

Eduardo: 00:52:38

you feel that you have an opportunity to put your feet in as well, right?

Eduardo: 00:52:43

It's not completely at random.

Eduardo: 00:52:45

And I think this is something that outliers explains quite well.

Eduardo: 00:52:49

You can see in each of the stories he's telling, there was a context to it.

Eduardo: 00:52:53

And that context drove also a lot of vision and so on.

Rob: 00:52:59

Okay shall we round up, if we go round now having had the discussion,

Rob: 00:53:04

what is your main takeaway from outliers?

Rob: 00:53:08

So for me, I think it's the importance of I've always felt that there's a

Rob: 00:53:13

reason, there's a reason for everything.

Rob: 00:53:15

For me, It gives the reason for success.

Rob: 00:53:20

It gives the reason which is much deeper than we typically look for X equals Y.

Rob: 00:53:26

So this happens because they tried out because they're skilled, but

Rob: 00:53:29

there's a whole cultural importance.

Rob: 00:53:32

And there was a lot that I was reading about particularly the

Rob: 00:53:34

power dynamic, the power distance index, and cultural context.

Rob: 00:53:40

I think they're really applicable to companies.

Rob: 00:53:42

Within companies, they have their culture for a certain reason.

Rob: 00:53:45

And also the importance of psychological safety and how there is this

Rob: 00:53:51

automatic power distance effect.

Rob: 00:53:54

Often we assume a manager should just be able to just, people should work together.

Rob: 00:53:59

But actually in my work, I find there's a lot of forces working against that.

Rob: 00:54:04

People do work together for a short term goal, but then they fall out.

Rob: 00:54:08

And there's a lot of effort that needs to be to contradict the,

Rob: 00:54:12

natural, dynamics that create that.

Saurabh: 00:54:15

For me, the biggest takeaway definitely was Understanding how important

Saurabh: 00:54:20

deliberate practice is definitely the 10, 000 hours plus practice that you cannot

Saurabh: 00:54:26

achieve mastery just through talent.

Saurabh: 00:54:29

But at the same time, it also has brought up a lot of things about how

Saurabh: 00:54:33

that threshold limit of talent is also extremely important that just that if

Saurabh: 00:54:38

suppose no one has any specific talent on a specific subject or activity,

Saurabh: 00:54:44

that person, if he gives 10, 000 hours, probably he will not be an Outlier.

Saurabh: 00:54:48

You have to have a threshold limit of talent on a certain aspect or

Saurabh: 00:54:53

certain level of skill so that you have that inner motivation.

Saurabh: 00:54:56

And along with it, when you mix in deliberate practice.

Saurabh: 00:54:59

So deliberate practice on one end, high quality coaching at one end.

Saurabh: 00:55:03

And then also the level of talent that you already have.

Saurabh: 00:55:06

So those three is what I believe makes you an Outlier.

Saurabh: 00:55:09

Not that single thing of deliberate practice or just coaching or the skill.

Saurabh: 00:55:14

So it's a combination of these three factors that I

Saurabh: 00:55:17

believe what makes an Outlier.

Saurabh: 00:55:19

So very big takeaway for me that it's a combination and definitely culture.

Saurabh: 00:55:24

And you're bringing all those things definitely have a very big

Saurabh: 00:55:27

impact on it throughout lives,

Eduardo: 00:55:29

Individually, it's a humbling experience.

Eduardo: 00:55:31

So to accept that I was so much luck I had so much luck in order to get here

Eduardo: 00:55:37

and be with you guys today and talking about a book like that in the language

Eduardo: 00:55:41

that is not my native language using all this technology very comfortable

Eduardo: 00:55:46

room and everything like that.

Eduardo: 00:55:48

It's truly humbling.

Eduardo: 00:55:49

It was so much based out of luck.

Eduardo: 00:55:51

And at the same time that I don't have to let it define,

Eduardo: 00:55:56

what happens that, it's not.

Eduardo: 00:55:58

It's not destiny as such I have the power to take up in my hands and through

Eduardo: 00:56:04

deliberate practice, through knowing myself, understanding what are my

Eduardo: 00:56:09

strengths and then putting some tension behind it, achieve even more counting

Eduardo: 00:56:14

on the luck to keep playing on my side.

Eduardo: 00:56:18

And it's the two things put together that is going to shape my life

Eduardo: 00:56:22

over the next several years and in the more collective context.

Eduardo: 00:56:27

I think it's also a very good exercise reminding us of what may be behind

Eduardo: 00:56:34

somebody else's story, not to take anything positive or negative.

Eduardo: 00:56:38

For granted, and rather have a sort of curiosity, behind that to explore,

Eduardo: 00:56:44

to learn, to understand and again, to use that in the favor of others and of

Eduardo: 00:56:50

myself or my own personal development.

Rob: 00:56:52

It takes the ego out of it, isn't it?

Rob: 00:56:54

It's a bit of not being too proud, not being too hard on yourself in

Rob: 00:56:58

either way, but just recognizing what is you and what is the context,

Neil: 00:57:03

When we look at people who come across as successful, I think there's

Neil: 00:57:07

a temptation to either feel envy.

Neil: 00:57:10

Or admire people in a way that you somehow feel that isn't you.

Neil: 00:57:15

Actually that point Eduardo was just making about unpicking the

Neil: 00:57:18

story and the history behind that sort of demonstrates it.

Neil: 00:57:22

There's a whole host of things that are driving it.

Neil: 00:57:25

And that's probably not your story, or it might be, or it could be your story.

Neil: 00:57:30

And so when we look at others like that, not to feel envious

Neil: 00:57:33

because we don't understand the complexity of their whole story.

Neil: 00:57:38

We don't understand it.

Neil: 00:57:39

It's just, it could be luck, it could be anything.

Neil: 00:57:42

And so not to jump to conclusions about that, but in reflecting on

Neil: 00:57:46

yourself, recognizing you have your own story, but you can change it.

Neil: 00:57:51

Understanding the things that can lead to, greater things, in the different

Neil: 00:57:55

ways in which that can happen.

Neil: 00:57:57

Dedication community, all sorts of all sorts of things

Neil: 00:58:01

that are driving that success.

Neil: 00:58:03

I think if we can view that as a learning and growth

Neil: 00:58:06

opportunity, then that's also good.

Neil: 00:58:09

That also applies to other people.

Neil: 00:58:10

So we shouldn't be looking at others and thinking, yeah, they're not like

Neil: 00:58:14

me or they haven't got the background or they didn't go to the right

Neil: 00:58:17

school, but actually everyone has that potential that we can help them grow.

Rob: 00:58:22

Thank you.

Rob: 00:58:23

It's great to see how we all read the same book and yet we,

Rob: 00:58:27

we pick up different parts.