I recently finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He’s the same guy that gave us “The Tipping Point” back in 2000.

The book breaks up into 3 points each one of which builds on the next but it was the first point that for me made me sit up in my seat, gaze up at the overly bright Cypriot sky and think “Holy shit” (I love those moments). Here’s the insight…

There is a magic number of hours that you have to spend improving yourself at something in order to be “World Class” at it. 10,000 hours. For example, among pianists graduating from music school, the ones who would get the best venues, jobs, ect, were the ones who had done at least 10,000 total hours of practice. The merely good ones were the ones that had done 8,000 hours and the also-rans destined for teaching music in high-school had done 4,000. That’s amazing. The difference between world class and merely good in this case was 20% more practice. But that 20% extra is A LOT when you’re talking about this many hours. The book uses this and other findings to once and for all dispel the myth of “innate” genius.

While reading through the book the question in the back of my mind was how on earth you would apply this to Leadership development? I mean, what do you classify as “doing leadership”? Very tough question. Leadership is, after all, a subject made up of many other subjects and there are many things leaders do but it’s very hard to nail it down. Very hard to point at someone and say “Look! He’s doing leadership!”. So what are the things that make up leadership?

• Vision
• Aligning People to that vision in the form of one on one or team building

I can think of two activities that fit both of these things very well.

The first is public speaking.

The second is coaching.

I would also include research and study into the subject in the form of books, seminars and audio courses (don’t think you’d be able to get away with just doing theoretical stuff). I’d say that, in total, I’ve put around 600 hours into my leadership development effort thus far. That was in the last year so at this rate I would pass the 10,000 hour mark in 16 years… Mmmmmmmmmmm.

This really hit home to me just what a commitment it is to want to be world class at something.

Now, the book sheds a lot of light on the nature of real genius and about how circumstances shape success but it also throws an interesting spanner in the works of the specialist vs generalist debate by showing that the debate is actually pretty null.

Let’s take Picasso as our example. Most people will have heard of the much quoted story of Picasso sitting in a cafe and being approached by a woman who was thrilled to meet the famous painter.

Woman: “Oh you simply MUST paint me”

Picasso: Sure thing dude. (Can’t remember the exact wording here)

Picasso pulls out a paintbrush and paints her in a single stroke

Woman: “My God! It’s perfect!”….. “How much do I owe you?”

Picasso: “$10,000″

Woman: * shocked* “But it only took you a few seconds!”

Picasso: “Madam, it took me my whole life”

Now we’ll all admit that Picasso was a genius and he certainly did put in his 10,000 hours but so what? So do many other painters all around the world, almost all of whom are penniless and unknowns. What makes the difference? Why is it that we all have heard of Picasso and why is it that his artwork sells for such huge sums even during his own lifetime? Something very rare in the art world.

I believe it lies in the mixing of specialism and generalism. As well as being a very good painter Picasso was also a very good businessman. Did he spend as much time on his business skills as his painting? Probably not but he did not neglect those skills either. Nor the people skills that are required to know how to persuade, cajole and sell both himself and his ideas.

My thinking is that becoming a very successful person requires that you be both a specialist AND a generalist.

• Focus most of your time on your 10,000 hour passion.
• Build your tugboat skills on the side.
• Eventually your tugboat skills will start to approach 10,000 hours too.

Therein lies true genius.

- James