Comments on: Good Things are Worth Waiting For http://myownpirateradio.com/2006/04/03/good-things-are-worth-waiting-for/ Intermittent broadcasts from Oshoma Momoh Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:53:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.3 By: Jerry King http://myownpirateradio.com/2006/04/03/good-things-are-worth-waiting-for/#comment-161 Jerry King Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:56:52 +0000 http://myownpirateradio.com/2006/04/03/good-things-are-worth-waiting-for/#comment-161 Osh, interesting piece on Gladwell’s observations and thanks for providing the video stream. I really like Gladwell because I see in him that rare ability to discern interesting and often controversial phenomena from the most commonplace of events or things. If Tom Friedman is right and we're heading towards a world where value is increasingly going to be created horizontally--by how we connect and collaborate across departments and companies--that skill will be important. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Gladwell embodies "Saper Vedere", the ability to know how to see, and his writings are a warning against intellectual laziness and groupthink. While I recognize his strength as an agent provocateur, one particularly skilled at providing a clever turn of phrase, I have to admit that I find it challenging as a practitioner to make use of his insights. Gladwell’s observations can be a challenge to operationalize. Take, for example, the idea of practicing patience while waiting for creative fruit to bear . As he himself responds during the Q & A session, one ideally wants to end up with a portfolio: be it of talent, rock bands, start-up companies, stock investments, etc. combining near-, mid- and long term projects and payoffs. In reality however, I believe we mostly hope for near term projects and payoffs and grudgingly accept the outcome that some will inevitably bleed into mid- and long-term payoffs. However, we rarely overtly set out to embrace long-term payoffs because of the difficulty in being able to differentiate long term hopefuls from long term failures. That differentiation is key and I feel no closer to knowing how to do it better post viewing this Gladwell video than I was before. For more on your call for patience “And good things - some of which may take a long, long time to develop - are worth waiting for.”, see Samuelson, Judith and Preisser, Claire, A Critical Mass For the Long Term, in “Breakthrough Ideas for 2006,” Harvard Business Review, February 2006, pg. 62. Osh, interesting piece on Gladwell’s observations and thanks for providing the video stream. I really like Gladwell because I see in him that rare ability to discern interesting and often controversial phenomena from the most commonplace of events or things. If Tom Friedman is right and we’re heading towards a world where value is increasingly going to be created horizontally–by how we connect and collaborate across departments and companies–that skill will be important. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Gladwell embodies “Saper Vedere”, the ability to know how to see, and his writings are a warning against intellectual laziness and groupthink.

While I recognize his strength as an agent provocateur, one particularly skilled at providing a clever turn of phrase, I have to admit that I find it challenging as a practitioner to make use of his insights. Gladwell’s observations can be a challenge to operationalize. Take, for example, the idea of practicing patience while waiting for creative fruit to bear . As he himself responds during the Q & A session, one ideally wants to end up with a portfolio: be it of talent, rock bands, start-up companies, stock investments, etc. combining near-, mid- and long term projects and payoffs. In reality however, I believe we mostly hope for near term projects and payoffs and grudgingly accept the outcome that some will inevitably bleed into mid- and long-term payoffs. However, we rarely overtly set out to embrace long-term payoffs because of the difficulty in being able to differentiate long term hopefuls from long term failures. That differentiation is key and I feel no closer to knowing how to do it better post viewing this Gladwell video than I was before.

For more on your call for patience “And good things - some of which may take a long, long time to develop - are worth waiting for.”, see Samuelson, Judith and Preisser, Claire, A Critical Mass For the Long Term, in “Breakthrough Ideas for 2006,” Harvard Business Review, February 2006, pg. 62.

]]> By: My Own Pirate Radio » Malcolm Gladwell’s Rotman talk available online http://myownpirateradio.com/2006/04/03/good-things-are-worth-waiting-for/#comment-159 My Own Pirate Radio » Malcolm Gladwell’s Rotman talk available online Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:36:56 +0000 http://myownpirateradio.com/2006/04/03/good-things-are-worth-waiting-for/#comment-159 [...] There is now a video availalable of the talk Malcolm Gladwell presented at Rotman earlier this week. I blogged about the talk here. Other Rotman talks including one by Jack Welch are here. [...] […] There is now a video availalable of the talk Malcolm Gladwell presented at Rotman earlier this week. I blogged about the talk here. Other Rotman talks including one by Jack Welch are here. […]

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