What it takes to become great - at a personal level
Fortune magazine on 30 October 2006 carried a highly interesting article What It Takes To Be Great by Geoffrey Colvin. The first line read: "Research now shows that natural TALENT IS IRRELEVANT to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work."
Furthermore "...you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don't exist. You are not born a CEO or investor or chess grand master. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not any hard work, but work of a particular type that's demanding and painful." "The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what researchers call "deliberate practice"."
The article offered the following Perfect Practice tip sheet:
- "Approach each critical task with an explicit goal of getting much better at it.
- As you do the task, focus on what's happening and why you're doing it the way you are.
- After the task, get feedback on your performance from multiple sources. Make changes to your behaviour as necessary.
- Continually build mental models of your situation - your industry, your company, your career. Enlarge the models to encompass more factors.
- Do these steps regularly, not sporadically. Occasional practice does not work."
My comment: These findings tie in perfectly with the Collins theory of "disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action".
Great companies are created by great people.
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Last modified: 24-06-2009