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The Gladwell Trap
I recently bought a book that I was really excited about. It’s one of those books that’s created a lot of buzz and it was highly recommended by someone I respect. The author’s pedigree included Harvard, Stanford, McKinsey and a career as a successful entrepreneur and CEO.
Yet about halfway in I noticed that he was choosing facts to fit his story and ignoring critical truths that would indicate otherwise, much like Malcolm Gladwell’s often does in his books. Once I noticed a few of these glaring oversights I found myself not being able to fully trust anything the author wrote and set the book aside.
Stories are important and facts matter. When we begin to believe in false stories, we begin to make decisions based on them. When these decisions go awry, we’re likely to blame other factors, such as ourselves, those around us or other elements of context and not the false story. That’s how many businesses fail. They make decisions based on the wrong stories.
Don’t Believe Everything You Think
Go to just about any innovation conference and you will find some pundit on stage telling a story about a famous failure, usually Blockbuster, Kodak or Xerox. In each case, the reason given for the failure is colossal incompetence by senior management: Blockbuster didn’t recognize the Netflix threat. Kodak invented, but then…
