Why do some succeed and others don’t?
When we see the tallest tree in a forest, we know that it has come from a good
seed. But we must also take into account that it has been planted in good soil, and
that its leaves have been able to reach the sunlight unimpeded, that it was not
shadowed by some larger tree.
The tree’s good seed is its inherent ability, but the combination of its
circumstances have allowed it to achieve great heights.
While this story makes complete sense, as soon as we apply it to success it
becomes vastly more complicated. As a society we love success stories, we love
hearing about how people worked hard to make something out of nothing no
matter their background. We believe in the romantic notion of personal
explanations of success, the fairytales of how hard work pays off but success has to
be understood in a broader context. People don't succeed simply because of their
genetic talents- they succeed because of their family's support, their wealth or their
proximity to other talented people or a multitude of other factors that need to be
taken into account. In our society we like to focus on the individuals: when a
person succeeds we believe they did so thanks to their own hard work and
determination, but even if we don't like to admit it, nothing we do is ever done
alone or without the influence of others.
In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell perfectly sums this up by saying 'There is
something profoundly wrong with the way we look at success,We often attribute
success to a rare and triumphant collection of individual qualities—talent,
motivation, genius—when in fact, success stories feature people who are “the
beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural
legacies.”
The best way to understand why some people succeed and others fail is to look at
the capitalization of a given country, area or school for example.
Capitalization is basically what percentage of people who are capable of achieving
something achieve it.
Capitalization dismantles the idea that talent is enough to make you successful,
because if that were true arguably we would have thousands or even millions of
more successful people each year. There are several constraints on why people
succeed and one that is the most obvious but often underestimated is Poverty.
When we see the tallest tree in a forest, we know that it has come from a good
seed. But we must also take into account that it has been planted in good soil, and
that its leaves have been able to reach the sunlight unimpeded, that it was not
shadowed by some larger tree.
The tree’s good seed is its inherent ability, but the combination of its
circumstances have allowed it to achieve great heights.
While this story makes complete sense, as soon as we apply it to success it
becomes vastly more complicated. As a society we love success stories, we love
hearing about how people worked hard to make something out of nothing no
matter their background. We believe in the romantic notion of personal
explanations of success, the fairytales of how hard work pays off but success has to
be understood in a broader context. People don't succeed simply because of their
genetic talents- they succeed because of their family's support, their wealth or their
proximity to other talented people or a multitude of other factors that need to be
taken into account. In our society we like to focus on the individuals: when a
person succeeds we believe they did so thanks to their own hard work and
determination, but even if we don't like to admit it, nothing we do is ever done
alone or without the influence of others.
In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell perfectly sums this up by saying 'There is
something profoundly wrong with the way we look at success,We often attribute
success to a rare and triumphant collection of individual qualities—talent,
motivation, genius—when in fact, success stories feature people who are “the
beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural
legacies.”
The best way to understand why some people succeed and others fail is to look at
the capitalization of a given country, area or school for example.
Capitalization is basically what percentage of people who are capable of achieving
something achieve it.
Capitalization dismantles the idea that talent is enough to make you successful,
because if that were true arguably we would have thousands or even millions of
more successful people each year. There are several constraints on why people
succeed and one that is the most obvious but often underestimated is Poverty.
