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

by Geoff Colvin

Practice activities are worthless without useful feedback...

Excellent performers judge themselves differently from the way other people do. They’re more specific, just as they are when they set goals and strategies.

Any of those can make sense; the key, as in all deliberate practice, is to choose a comparison that stretches you just beyond your current limits.

Research confirms what common sense tells us, that too high a standard is discouraging and not very instructive, while too low a standard produces no advancement.

A critical part of self-evaluation is deciding what caused the errors.

Recall that the best performers have set highly specific, technique-based goals and strategies for themselves; they have thought through exactly how they intend to achieve what they want.

That is, their ideas for how to perform better next time are likely to work.

Most important, a mental model enables you to project what will happen next.

A mental model is never finished.

Great performers not only possess highly developed mental models, they are also always expanding

and revising thos...

Few do it well, and most don’t do it at all; the sooner you start, the better.

Understand that each person in the organization is not just doing a job, but is also being stretched and grown.

Find ways to develop leaders within their jobs.

Understand the critical roles of teachers and of feedback.

inspire.

Develop teams, not just individuals.

the best teams are composed of members who share a mental model—of the domain, and of how the team will be effective.

“Put the fish on the table,” he says. It’s smelly, and cleaning it is messy work, but you get a good meal in the end.

“Too much experience within a field may restrict creativity because you know so well how things should be done that you are unable to escape to come up with new ideas.”

“ten years of silence,”

If we’re looking for evidence that too much knowledge of the domain or familiarity with its problems might be a hindrance in creative achievement, we have not found it in the research. Instead, all evidence seems to point in the opposite direction.

The bigger picture is that the great innovators aren’t burdened by knowledge; they’re nourished by it. And they acquire it through a process we’ve seen before, involving many years of demanding deliberate practice activities.

“The idea of epiphany is a dreamer’s paradise where people want to believe that things are easier than they are.”

“all levels of creative performance follow a trajectory that starts with novel and personally meaningful interpretations (mini-c), which can then progress to interpersonally judged novel and meaningful contributions (little-c) and even develop into superior creative performance (Big-C).”

“Big-C performance is more likely influenced by intense deliberate practice within a particular domain than by some special, genetic endowment of a few individuals.”

Unsure where to go, they go nowhere.

What makes the biggest difference is the willingness to go through the demanding process of acquiring that knowledge over time.

“The clearest evidence of all demonstrates the connection between creative thinking and values broadly construed—a person’s commitments and aspirations. . . . Much more than we usually suppose, creating is an intentional endeavor.”

the power of deliberate practice extends very broadly through life.

work. Knowledge is the foundation of great performance, and in fields where important advances are being made continually, mastering the accumulated knowledge takes longer all the time.

No one becomes extraordinary on his or her own, and a striking feature in the lives of great performers is the valuable support they received at critical times in their development.

A stimulating environment was one with lots of opportunities to learn and high academic expectations. A supportive environment was one with well-defined rules and jobs, without much arguing over who had to do what, and in which family members could rely on one

another.

Where Does the Passion Come From?

Recognition that confirms competence turned out to be effective.