Jim Collins v. Malcolm Gladwell on Success

After reading Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I've been thinking about their different views of how someone becomes successful.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell emphasizes the importance of luck to the success of many great people.  For instance, he describes how lucky Bill Gates was to have access to a computer at the University of Washington when he was in high school.  Computers were a rarity in those days.  Gladwell also informs us that the Beatles were lucky to be given the time to hone their craft for so many hours at clubs in Hamburg, Germany.  Performing 8-10 hours a day in Hamburg enabled the Beatles to get to the necessary 10,000 hours of practice necessary for excellence.

Gladwell raises a good point.  Gates, the Beatles and others had some very special opportunities afforded to them.  However, his analysis undervalues the efforts that these extraordinary individuals put in to achieve mastery in their fields.

Jim Collins does a good job of quantifying the importance of those efforts.  He calls it return on luck.  In studying how great companies flourish in uncertainty, Collins determined that great companies and their competitors both experienced good and bad luck.  One of the things that made the difference between them though is the efforts they took to take advantage of the good luck and minimize the damage from the bad luck.  Based on the "fanatic discipline" and "empirical creativity" of their leaders the top companies excelled in turbulent times.

You can see this in the example of Gates and the Beatles as well.  Gates took advantage of the availability of a computer at the University of Washington from 3 am to 6 am in the morning to practice programming.  That was fanatical.  Sure he was lucky to have that opportunity but no one else wanted to do that.  It was an enormous sacrifice and extremely disciplined.  We can't discount that.  The Beatles also worked exceptionally hard.  Bands weren't just lining up to play 8-10 hour gigs in Hamburg for several months straight, for meager compensation.  But they worked that hard because they felt they needed to in order to succeed.

Both authors have contributed much to this field.  I guess the lesson is we should be grateful for the opportunities that come our way and be prepared to take the most advantage of them that we can.