Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

by Geoff Colvin

If you can’t go to business school or take business classes, you can still apply the chess model ad hoc. For starters, many of the case studies used at famous business schools worldwide are for sale; you can buy them online and study them yourself. More generally, consciousness of the chess model changes the way you read the news or observe what happens in your own industry or the company where you work. The essence of the chess model is the question: What would you do? Each news event that you read about, each new development in your company or industry, is an opportunity for you to answer that question. Oil prices jump, consumer spending tanks, a rogue trader loses $7 billion, Apple introduces the iPhone—don’t just read the news, imagine how it might affect the business you’re in or want to be in, and answer the question: What would you do? Then comes a critically important step: Write your answer down and keep it. Remember, feedback is crucial to effective practice, and people have a tendency to misremember what they thought in the past; we almost always adjust our recollections flatteringly, in light of how events actually turned out. But there’s no escaping a written record. Comparing your own what-would-I-do with the results of what the protagonist really did is the only way this exercise can yield genuine learning, and that learning can be considerable.