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Adam Grant organizational psychologist
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here at Wharton delighted to interview
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Malcolm Gladwell my favorite author
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malcome welcome thank you uh welcome too
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yeah so let's let's start talking about
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your latest Blockbuster David and
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Goliath give us the the core message and
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idea for you well it's just an
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examination of um of the idea of
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Advantage um and particularly looking at
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when we when we see asymmetrical
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conflict
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conflicts between one very large and one
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not so large party um how do we account
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for the unusual numbers of successes
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that underdogs have in those situations
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and that sort of the book s of takes off
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from there to try and figure out whether
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our assumptions about what makes for an
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advantage are accurate could we just be
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wrong about who the has the advantage in
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the first place so we've labeled
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somebody an underdog in fact they're not
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or is it more complicated than that well
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I mean I the the opening Story chapter
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in the book is about the
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actual uh retelling of the biblical
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story of David and Goliath and there
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it's very clear David is not in any
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sense the underdog properly understood
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once he has decided to change the rules
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of the conflict the sling in his hand is
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of is such a devastating weapon that no
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contemporary Observer of that battle
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would have thought David was a long shot
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they would have once they realized he
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was winding up with his sling um they
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would have realized that that he was he
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had he had all of the cards um so there
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is some of that that we're we're misled
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by the narrowness of our assumptions
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about um what constitutes an advantage
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in a given situation and that that plays
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out in a wide range of circumstances in
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the book so talk to us a little bit
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about desirable difficulties yeah so I
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there's this that's a notion taken
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straight from the psychological
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literature from the work of borks at
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UCLA and they were interested that in
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the context of learning theory about it
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is not always the case that if I make
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the task of of learning something easier
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for you that your uh performance will
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improve there are sometimes cases where
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your performance will improve if I make
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the task of learning more difficult for
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you not always but they're what they do
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is they draw a line
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between uh uh difficulties that are
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ultimately desirable those that are not
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and so I sort of play with that idea in
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a number of contexts and sort of figure
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out are there cases when having dyslexia
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is a desirable difficulty that is to say
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where you end up being better off than
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you were before and the answer is there
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is a small number of
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cases um where it's plainly the case
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that or at least according to those who
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have dyslexia and who have achieved
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enormous success particularly
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entrepreneurs are those that's the group
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that's most interesting here we see so
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many entrepreneurs who have dyslexia
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and when you talk to them they will tell
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you they succeeded not in spite of their
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dis disability but because of it and so
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for them they view their disability as
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desirable um ultimately and that's
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interesting um and that is a very that
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suggests that there are uh profoundly
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there's a that the distribution of
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responses to uh an obstacle are B
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profoundly bodal and I think we spend we
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we pretend they're not
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um similarly I look at uh the this weird
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association between very successful
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people and having lost a parent fact of
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having lost a parent in childhood not a
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desirable difficulty uh for some for
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some small number of people parental
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loss appears to be ultimately a
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desirable difficulty um
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again not a large number but um it's
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sort of a that there does seem to be a
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class of of uh a class of obstacles that
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for some people for whatever reason have
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a uh uh uh have an advantageous outcome
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where do you draw the line so what what
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is it that differentiates people who end
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up on one side of the distribution
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versus those For Whom the obstacle is
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just
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insurmountable uh I think it's you can't
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draw a bright line um it's not really a
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perfect I mean we can speculate for
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example if you look at the class of of
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dyslexics who end up as successful
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entrepreneurs they obviously have
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certain things in common they are they
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tend to be highly
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intelligent um in the I interviewed
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maybe a dozen of them and in every case
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almost every
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case uh the successful dyslexic had one
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family member who uh always believed in
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them so if you maybe one way of saying
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is okay so
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if if you if one of the if your only
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obstacle is dyslexia then it could be
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desirable but if we say so a child who
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grows up in a low income neighborhood
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who has a average IQ who has a uh
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troubled family life and has dyslexia
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it's not going to be desirable you've
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got too many obstacles to deal with but
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if we start limiting the number of
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obstacles then maybe it's different so
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that's one idea that perhaps it's the
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just a kind of sheer
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um another has to do with attitude I
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mean for whatever reason some people
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choose to interpret their circumstances
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differently um there was a when I was in
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one of the chapters I would interview
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this it's all about a a famous
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oncologist named am frar who has a
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dezian childhood and then goes on to
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achieve enormous things as an oncologist
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and there was a moment in my
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conversation with him when he describes
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this just horrendous childhood and so he
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says he says so there I am am I'm 16
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years old and I'm wildly optimistic and
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you realize it was a complete uncor but
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not for him so he was just someone who
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for whatever reason you know he was
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orphaned he was grow up in poverty on
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the streets he was you know the whole
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thing is just but he was just like he
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just thought that was an occasion to
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look on the bright side so where does
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that come from I have no idea well and I
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think one of the ways that you bring
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that to light is is to invoke this
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personality trait of disagreeableness
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something with which I struggle and I
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know you have commented is not your
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Forte as well how does that figure into
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the story well it's the it's this idea
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it's a wonderful psychologist at UFT who
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had University of Toronto called Jordan
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Peterson who had a long conversation
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with about this who sort of says if you
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look at the Big Five personality traits
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he thinks that entrepreneurs are
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characterized by openness which is
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obvious creativity conscientiousness
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again obvious diligence but he thinks
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that that that they are disagreeable
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that is to say they are not people who
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require the social approval of their
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peers in order to um and I think he
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makes a very compelling argument and I I
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I sort of I agree with that topology
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erotically erotically yeah um that there
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is something uh that if you're going to
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do something truly Innovative you have
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to be someone who doesn't
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value uh social approval you can't need
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social approval to go forward otherwise
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how would you ever do the thing you're
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doing right and I'm you know I was I
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give the story example in my book of
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ingar comprad the founder of Ikea one of
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the great entrepreneurs of the 20th
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century who does you know he at a
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crucial point in building Ikea in the
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middle of the Cold War he starts
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Outsourcing to Poland which is just like
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an unthinkable act in 1961 it's like
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building a it would be like Outsourcing
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to North Korea to day you would have to
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have you know so much audacity to do
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that and you could imagine imagine if
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the head of Walmart said we're we're
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going to start uh sourcing from North
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Korea it would just be a you know well
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that's what you you have to be comprad
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who by the way is dyslexic is just one
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of those people who' like it just
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doesn't bother him I mean he he wasn't
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someone to or if he lost sleep about it
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he was more concerned about the health
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of his company than he was about his
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public reputation mhm and that to be
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able to do that is not easy at all and I
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think I see that trait though time and
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time again in in
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innovators so we've talked a little bit
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then about some of the advantages of
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disadvantages let's let's flip this to
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the other side so a couple years ago
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Barry Schwarz and I sort of noticed as
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we looked across lots of different
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studies that in almost every domain we
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could find there was too much of a good
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thing yeah that everything that we
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thought might be valuable whether it's
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practice or generosity or you know
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pretty much any virtue sort of if you
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got too much of it turn negative how
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does that figure into the story of David
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and Goliath well that you know that
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paper you guys wrote was uh hugely I
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gave you a little shout out in the book
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it was hugely little shout out thank you
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no it was hugely influential my thinking
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I read that paper and I was like it's
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such a kind of it's one of those it's
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it's the it's the best kind of insight
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it is the most obvious it's the thing
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your mom told you right which is there's
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such a thing of too much of a good thing
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right but it's also the thing that we
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cannot wrap our minds around it's just
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there seems to be we can we understand
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linear relationships we understand
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diminishing marginal returns we cannot
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understand the idea of the inverted U
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that the same thing that's positive at
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one level can turn negative at the other
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with hugely deletar consequences I think
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um and I think that's the mistake that
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people in positions of privilege make
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it's what Dooms the favorite is the
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favorite assumes that they can extend
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their advantages indefinitely that if
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what makes me better than you at the
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beginning is that I have more resources
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that if I keep spending resources I'll
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always be ahead of you and it's just not
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true you know General Motors is not a
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better company a more Nimble Innovative
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company when it's the biggest when it's
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you know at the height of its of its
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size and dominance in the 1970s it's in
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fact in profound decline Microsoft is
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not more Innovative today than it was
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when it was a fraction of its size um
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there are numerous um the American
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Healthcare System is not better than
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other Healthcare Systems in the world by
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virtue of the fact that we spend 50%
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more per patient in fact it's I think
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you can almost very clearly make the
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argument our Healthcare System is as bad
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as it is because we spend so much money
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um so there's a I don't know it's a sort
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of um I once I gave a talk once at
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Columbia psychology department when I
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was writing my book in which I presented
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the and I asked the audience since they
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were all psychologist said give me
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reasons why we struggle with the
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inverted you like and it's it's very
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that would gave me like so people just
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emailed them in I got like 50 of them
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but it's a really you know is it because
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on some evolutionary level for most of
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our history there was because we never
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could get too much of a good thing we
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never got to that part of the curve if
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you're living on the Savannah and
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there's a drought every three months
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there's no such thing as too much food
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right so maybe that's just so baked into
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our system um that maximizing Surplus is
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the only way to get through life um that
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when you're in a world where all of a
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sudden Surplus is um not just attainable
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but Surplus in in the Western World
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Surplus is a condition of our life um
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that we're just woefully unequipped on
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some level for uh dealing with that it's
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interesting though because we we're in
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the Observer position we have a
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different reaction so we don't want to
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be the underdog necessarily but we love
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to root for the underdog dog yeah why
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well I think this is paradoxical for the
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following reason um I understand on one
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level why and that is
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because
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uh it is a way in which it's a version
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of the of the just World hypothesis it
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is that the world seems more just to us
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if material advantage does not um
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automatically translate to um dominance
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right so we need the belief that those
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without obvious resources can win in
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order for the world to seem fair for the
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rest for those of us who most of us
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since most of us are not in position to
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power for those of us who are not
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position of power to feel we have a
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chance right so there's that but the
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Paradox is of course this is slightly
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tongue and cheek it's why I don't cheer
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for the underdog and that is that uh in
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a contest between a favorite and an
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underdog the if the underdog loses the
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underdog feels very little um distressed
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because they expected to lose if the
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favorite loses he feels a great deal of
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distress because every expectation said
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he was supposed to win the empathetic
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position then as an observer is to cheer
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for the favorite right because if your
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if your job as an as as a empathic human
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being is to want to minimize human
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Suffering The Suffering comes when the
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favorite wi loses right so I I remember
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as a kid watching in sports you know I I
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remember it was one of the Olympic Games
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and I was cheering for a I'm a big track
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person for an athlete who was one of my
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favorites who was favorite to win and he
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lost and I realized in that moment that
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the pain he felt was so much greater
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than the pain that you know that the
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those who never thought they were going
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to win would have felt had they lost
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that there was no from then on I felt I
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have no choice as a human being but to
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root for the for the favorite there's
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something to that actually
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it is weird because rooting for the
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underdog requires that we um be
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indifferent to the emotional distress of
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the person who expected to win
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potentially or is it that we expect the
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joy to the underdog and those rooting to
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outweigh the distress to the favorite
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well yes so this is interesting this
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gives you an insight into my psychology
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I'm far more distress avoidant than I am
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Joy uh seeking so bad is really stronger
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than good for you as it so often is and
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psychology yeah the I I'm the fact that
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the underdog is Happy means very little
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to me next to the distress of the of the
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favorite okay but you're right you're
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right you could have a completely
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actually it's so weird I had never even
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framed it that way that's how distress
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distress oriented I am well let's build
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on that distress then and say you know I
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one of the things that was striking to
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me about David and Goliath is the
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courage it took to in some ways
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challenge one of the core messages of of
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outliers where you know I walked away
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from outliers with this deep distress is
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a good word for it around how these
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early advantages that just could come
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even from a birthday just build on
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themselves and accumulate and create
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this massively unfair set of
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circumstances yeah and then here you
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come in with David and Goliath and say
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wait a minute what you thought was an
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advantage is actually a disadvantage in
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vice versa how do you think about the
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reconciliation of those two well I don't
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worry too much uh about there is some
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sense in which uh davidl is an addendum
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to outliers it simply says let's let's
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uh complicate our understanding of
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Advantage there is some sense in which
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David and is a rebuke a mild rebuke to
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some of the more sweeping conclusions of
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outliers I'm fine with that I sort of
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think um you know no book is the last
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word on any subject and then and I you
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know uh you should as a writer at least
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partially contradict yourself um on a
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routine basis if you're G to remain
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interesting um you know you've got to
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like uh I mean you think there's a great
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moment in um you know when dick
00:16:06
nisbit he makes a turn in his career as
00:16:08
a psychologist where he goes from
00:16:11
remember he thinks the fundamental
00:16:12
attribution era in the beginning is
00:16:13
fundamental yeah and then he realizes
00:16:15
actually no it's cultural and he do and
00:16:18
he puts that and it doesn't refute the
00:16:21
fundamental attribution ER it deepens
00:16:22
our understanding of it to say oh
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actually it has roots in Western culture
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but you see a very different and
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actually then he writes that book about
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East West which is incredibly
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fascinating so he gets two great books
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out of going back and going over and
00:16:38
correcting his earlier position that to
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me
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is uh the model for how um you ought to
00:16:45
behave in the intellectual World which
00:16:47
is I think you should always double back
00:16:49
and say well no wait a minute this is
00:16:51
more complicated here we can kind of and
00:16:54
contradiction is too strong a word it's
00:16:56
but you should you should be constant
00:16:59
revising your conclusions I think I
00:17:02
think that's that's a mark of of an
00:17:03
intellectual to to constantly be asking
00:17:05
the questions as opposed to just fixing
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on an answer um it's it's interesting
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though because as as a social scientist
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and as a writer and very much inspired
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by your work I've been waiting for
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somebody to go around and do the the
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story of how Malcolm Gladwell generates
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his ideas and I'm curious if someone
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were to follow you from the Inception to
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you know sort of picking a story or
00:17:25
identifying a study to the full book
00:17:28
what what happens along the way well I
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don't really know I mean sometimes I
00:17:35
start uh you know there are about five
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or six times a year I go to the NYU
00:17:41
library and I spend a couple
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days
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um just browsing is too mild a term but
00:17:49
wandering around going through millions
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of journals in the most sort of
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serendipitous way I can just to kind of
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see what's out there and see if I can
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stumble on something without without a
00:18:00
clear goal or Direction just no goal
00:18:02
whatsoever so there's that I do as a
00:18:05
regular basis and then I I do a fair
00:18:09
amount of speaking and I always try and
00:18:11
have conversations with people well
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outside my world so today I gave a talk
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this morning um and in Philadelphia and
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I was talking to a guy one of the guys
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there was runs a uh medical devices
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company very very small one and so I
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started talking to him about because
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I've always had this idea of head that
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it would be really really fun to write
00:18:30
to compare the way uh dogs are treated
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with the way humans are treated in it
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because they're not that
00:18:40
dissimilar um as problems for medical
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science but if the but the the the
00:18:47
systems that surround doggy Healthcare
00:18:49
and human Healthcare are profoundly
00:18:51
different right so you know uh the same
00:18:55
devices are used in various you know hip
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B PL so they're not same but analogist
00:19:00
devices um only you do a complex knee
00:19:04
surgery on your dog at $7,000 and you do
00:19:06
it on a human being it's 100 now is a
00:19:09
human really uh 15 times more complex
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than a dog when it comes to no so
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there's something but anyway this I sort
00:19:15
of had this vague thought and then I met
00:19:17
this guy and so I started asking about
00:19:19
this and he sort of started riffing on
00:19:21
it and gave me his card now that's sort
00:19:22
of how it works you know what I mean
00:19:23
like you take advantage of a little
00:19:25
thought you had in your head and when
00:19:27
you meet someone by accident who happens
00:19:29
to have specialized knowledge you make
00:19:31
sure you get his card so that's sort of
00:19:34
the it's it's fascinating to think about
00:19:37
it being so nonlinear right no it's
00:19:40
different from although I suspect a lot
00:19:41
of academic work is um I think it it uh
00:19:46
that that the it's not the nonlinearity
00:19:49
and the Serendipity of it is what uh
00:19:51
makes it fun and it if it's too
00:19:54
organized it it could fall flat on the
00:19:57
page I think my books to feel like there
00:19:59
is a random element in my books I mean
00:20:01
there's supposed to be kind of like
00:20:03
these kind of accidental wanderings
00:20:05
through the world um there's not
00:20:07
supposed to be a grand plan and if there
00:20:09
did I think it would feel a little less
00:20:12
um uh would it would lose some of the
00:20:15
books would Lop some of their life so I
00:20:18
guess to to spin off of that then one
00:20:20
one of the other things that's that's
00:20:21
always interesting is you know you've
00:20:22
done five books now what has changed
00:20:25
about the way that you think about the
00:20:26
world and particularly since this is a
00:20:28
Wharton conversation about the world of
00:20:30
of work and leadership in
00:20:32
organizations I guess I have more
00:20:34
respect for the diversity
00:20:39
of I realize now that an effective
00:20:43
leader or manager can come in a
00:20:45
virtually infinite number of
00:20:47
forms um I have way more respect for the
00:20:51
kind of heterogeneity of
00:20:53
Excellence um and that's a took a long
00:20:57
time to because it's so tempting
00:20:59
to try and paint a very specific picture
00:21:03
of what you think um effective say
00:21:05
leadership is or what an effective
00:21:07
organization looks like and now i' you
00:21:09
know I've sort of the older I get and
00:21:11
the more I sort of see I realize no they
00:21:14
come in they have some high performers
00:21:18
of one sort or another have certain
00:21:20
things in common but they're almost more
00:21:22
distinguished by what they don't have in
00:21:24
common than what they do and it's
00:21:27
understanding fit to me as a much more
00:21:29
important issue than
00:21:31
defining um than defining the
00:21:34
characteristics of Excellence is
00:21:35
understanding the combination of
00:21:37
individual and organization and what um
00:21:41
and why at different points in your life
00:21:43
cycle you might want a very very
00:21:45
different kind of person um it's funny
00:21:47
how the in the be the purest example of
00:21:51
this is in
00:21:53
sports where uh the notion of fit
00:21:58
between the athletes that you have and
00:22:00
the coach that you hire is only
00:22:02
occasionally considered in you know and
00:22:05
I you'll always read that they they'll
00:22:08
say you know they brought in such and
00:22:10
such a coach whose plotting style is ill
00:22:13
suited to the athletes that he has and
00:22:15
then you wonder so then why did they
00:22:16
bring in a coach thought about it why
00:22:19
are you why why do a plotting style if
00:22:21
no one on your team wants to play the
00:22:23
plotting style so there is this kind of
00:22:25
it's interesting how hard that notion is
00:22:27
to maybe it's because it's just it
00:22:29
renders the task of defining what you
00:22:31
want uh a lot more complicated and we
00:22:34
we'd rather not deal with that I suppose
00:22:36
I think that that's one of the the
00:22:37
fundamental contributions that you've
00:22:39
made to the world is to take people who
00:22:40
have very simple ideas and get them to
00:22:42
complicate them and question them and
00:22:44
turn them upside down yeah uh to close
00:22:46
on this one what idea have you put out
00:22:48
into the world that you think has been
00:22:49
most misunderstood that you would like
00:22:51
to set the record straight on well there
00:22:54
quite a lot I get misunderstood a fair
00:22:57
amount um
00:22:59
uh that's an
00:23:01
interesting thought I am sometimes
00:23:04
accused the only the the thing that uh
00:23:08
uh that is said about my work that
00:23:11
irritates me the most is that I
00:23:13
cherry-pick and I don't think I do at
00:23:16
all um or at least I don't think I think
00:23:19
I do what everyone does when they
00:23:21
construct an argument which is we
00:23:22
require those who construct arguments to
00:23:25
do a reasonable survey of the literature
00:23:28
and and um choose
00:23:31
those uh choose that evidence that is
00:23:34
most relevant to their argument now that
00:23:36
doesn't mean that is in agreement with
00:23:37
their argument but rather it's relevant
00:23:39
to their argument you have to
00:23:41
sift and I think I sift like anyone else
00:23:44
sips but for some reason that's become a
00:23:47
kind of
00:23:48
um uh that's become a kind of cliche
00:23:51
about my work that I'm that I kind of um
00:23:54
simply zero in on things that Accord
00:23:57
with my my preconceptions and but I
00:24:01
don't think I do at all I think I I try
00:24:03
to be pretty good about um so there's
00:24:05
that and then there's people have
00:24:07
simplified the 10,000 hours thing
00:24:09
ridiculously I've never said that 10,000
00:24:12
hours was was sufficient to achieve
00:24:14
Mastery and that's been people have
00:24:17
caricatured that claim over and over
00:24:19
again to my
00:24:20
distress yeah I think certainly for me
00:24:23
it's it's an interesting example that
00:24:25
challenges us to think differently about
00:24:26
expertise and I think part of of what's
00:24:29
so exciting about David and Goliath is
00:24:31
it shows just how clearly you are
00:24:33
willing to say look you know there's one
00:24:35
side of our argument but wait there is
00:24:36
another side of an argument so uh I
00:24:39
think that's a that's a great case for
00:24:41
saying look the world is a lot messier
00:24:42
than we think it is yeah so thank you
00:24:45
for joining us today thank you
00:24:50
[Music]
00:24:57
Adam
00:24:58
[Music]
