The Story of Success - Its beginning...and then conclusion.

Malcolm Gladwell's latest book offers great insight into the dynamics, subtleties and undercurrents that influence and somewhat induce exceptional achievements amongst humans.
Using historical data, and referencing a diverse range of vignettes and experiences over centuries, he carefully carves out a "cause and effect" correlation between a host of environmental, cultural, psycological and physical factors, and the corresponding 'output'.

In a few words, successful people don't get successful by accident! There's often a long chain of causatives and other events that may have been set in motion long before we came on board this plane called earth. While pondering over the possibility that my position in life today may have been conditioned (to a significant degree) by events that lie outside of my domain of influence and control, i began to realise that there's so much to be grateful for. (Where would i be today if i had been born in war torn societies like somalia, somewhere around the mid nineties?) I'd rather not imagine!

Days later, i read through Daniel Goleman's blog (As is my custom) in search of new updates on the social/emotional intelligence theme, and i hit a jackpot! He had just written a review on "Outliers - The Story of Success" and there it was. The missing piece of the puzzle in Gladwell's best seller.


Here's the rest of the "Story of Success"

by Daniel Goleman -

In his fascinating new book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell makes a strong case that people owe their success to a lot more than IQ. He reviews data and offers convincing cases to show that above an IQ in the neighborhood of 110-115, IQ fails as a predictor of success in a career. In other words, you need to be smart enough to handle the cognitive complexity of the information you need for a given role or job, be it engineering, law, medicine, or business. That’s the IQ around 115. But after reaching that threshold of “smart enough,” your intellect makes little difference.

That explains why, when Harvard’s Howard Gardner reviewed longitudinal data that follows people from their early years into their career, he concluded that IQ alone predicts just 6 to 10 percent of career success. That leaves lots of room for other factors, like luck and circumstance. Gladwell makes the case for these very factors, arguing that one’s cultural and family background offer habits and outlooks that, given fortunate historical circumstances, can make some people highly successful.
But there’s more to the story.
Gladwell illustrates the case for circumstance and luck with fascinating tidbits about success, like the fact that Bill Gates and Bill Joy, two titans of the computing industry, just happened to be lucky in getting access to some of the earliest computers around in a day when almost no one had even seen one – and then were able to practice thousands of hours writing computer code starting in their teen years, and so get a jump on the fledgling software industry.

Or the fact that an entire generation of Jewish immigrants around the turn of the century was able to bring business and craftsmen’s skills they had mastered in Europe into entrepreneurial success in America. Their industrious and enterprising habits then became a model that benefited their children, some of who were to become lawyers. Those who happened to be born around 1930 and had easy access to good schooling because their generation had relatively few children; on entering a career in law, many were turned down by the most prestigious law firms of their day, but then went on to become enormously successful because they were the first to get involved in litigation for corporate takeovers – a business those other, more haughty law firms disdained.

There’s little doubt that the mix of such lucky circumstance and personal backgrounds matter for success. But there’s more to the story. A maxim of social science tells us that in some respects, every person is like every other person, like some other people, and like no other person. Gladwell has unpacked the middle range of factors, the ways certain groups or cohorts experience unique circumstances that can, with a bit of circumstantial luck, make them hugely successful.

But here’s where the rest of the story starts. Gladwell says nothing about individual differences within those groups or cohorts – why only some in that fortunate group go on to great success. He does not raise the next set of questions like: Why didn’t all the members of the school club that gave the young Bill Gates that early access to a computer become billionaires like him? Or why didn’t all the Jewish lawyers born in 1930 become huge successes like the handful of cases Gladwell focuses on?

Here a good part of the answer no doubt can be found in which individuals among those groups has a higher level of competencies like adaptability and initiative, the drive to continually improve performance, and empathy skills like sensing how another person thinks or feels. Such abilities give a person the drive to achieve, the initiative and the interpersonal effectiveness that success in a field like software (drive and initiative) and law (add in interpersonal effectiveness) require.

A massive amount of data collected by companies on their own people suggests that such personal abilities are the secret ingredient in success over and above those Gladwell describes so ably. The data I’m referring to derives from “competence modeling,” in which companies systematically analyze the abilities found in their stars (those in the top ten percent of performance by whatever metric makes sense for that specific job or role) but not found in counterparts who are mediocre. A goodly amount of these abilities – like initiative, the drive to achieve, and empathy — are in the emotional intelligence domain. Competence studies show that the higher a person goes up the organizational ladder, the more prominent the role these personal abilities play in performance. In other words, the more successful someone is, the greater the contribution of this skill set to his or her triumph.

This is good news for anyone who would like to see success in life shared widely, rather than given to a lucky few who happen to be born into a fortunate, charmed set of circumstances. One way to give every child a greater chance for career success – and a good life in general – would be to have curricula in social and emotional learning (see http://www.casel.org/) a standard part of schooling. Data shows that children who are systematically taught social and emotional skills like how to manage their distressing emotions better, empathize and collaborate do better: have fewer problems like substance abuse and violence, like school more and pay more attention in class – and score significantly better (11%, on average) on academic achievement test scores.

The best news: the benefits are greatest in those schools where children need this boost the most, like those from the poorest families. That’s the rest of the story of success. END

Need i say more!? Thats the end of the story.

How Sustained Economic Progress Underscores Energy Innovation

We currently live in a world where prosperity/sophistication/affluence and poverty/destitution/inadequacy surprisingly co-exist. This isn’t an unusual state that our world is in, but what’s unusual is the staggering number of people that are in the former state, i.e. impoverished!

Dipal Barua, Managing Director of Grameen Shakti (and Deputy MD of Grameen Bank, i.e. right hand man to Muhammed Yunus, The Nobel Prize laureate) was awarded the Zayed Future Energy Prize ($1.5 million) for his pioneering work in facilitating the provision of solar powered lanterns to millions of homes that do not have access to electricity in Bangladesh, and empowering indigenous entrepreneurs to help service these same devices in these communities. This helped to radically cut-back the hazardous and hardly effective use of low intensity naked flames as light sources. Kids can now do their home-works at night; entrepreneurs can now work better after sunset and many other possibilities have become a reality.

World leaders have since realized the potential catastrophe that could result if the current state we are all in persists. Many of us would be surprised to learn that much more than a billion people have never experienced the joy of electricity, or the use of electrically powered devices; let’s not even begin to consider these colleagues of ours having access to the internet, or even making telephone calls.

On this premise, many nations (at least those that care to look, perceive, understand and act) have embarked on a host of empowerment/enlightenment/development programs aimed at mitigating, perhaps overturning these unacceptable conditions existing amongst humans with supposedly equal rights (at least that’s what we have inscribed on documents such as our Sovereign Constitutions, or the UNs “Universal Human Rights Declaration”)

A host of economic development and rural empowerment programs have been enacted by Development Strategists in National and Multilateral Development agencies and not-for-profits all around the globe and these are being implemented and monitored by experienced executionists. One of the core challenges we however face in our time, has been the unprecedented surge in human population. This essentially translates into much less accessibility to and availability of fixed resources per head. (Examples of relatively fixed resources are Water, Land, Air, and Subsurface Resources including metals and fossil fuels and some more). Hence, we are left with no option but to find ‘better’, i.e. ‘more efficient’ and ‘conservative’ ways of utilizing these limited resources fairly.

We humans are great learners, and have an extraordinary ability to adapt to changes that we recognize (or more accurately, changes that we choose to recognize). Take a peek at a city like London. The average apartment is so small (relatively), that a middle-class first time visitor (or immigrant) from Nigeria would begin to wonder whether the houses were built for high school students. But the reality is London has had to adapt to the surge in population, and by implication, such huge demand (and fixed supply) for real estate because of her esteemed status of “Leading Global Commercial Nerve Center”.

My focus here is on energy, and I want to point out that significant and sustained economic advancement would remain an elusive dream if we do not ensure that energy is reliably available, and not at a high cost to help power entrepreneurial and development activity. (‘High cost’ refers to whatever we have to pay for it, be it in strict economic terms, or in less definite terms such as the destruction of our ecological and environmental systems).

I’ll be swift to point out that renewable/alternative energy technologies are not designed to replace fossil fuels and other traditional sources we’ve been familiar with. Rather, the purpose of exploring and developing these technologies is to complement and expand /diversify our energy base. The pace of anticipated economic development that is required to bring out millions (perhaps billions) out of extreme poverty would create enormous increase in energy demand that legacy sources would certainly not be able to cope with.

Furthermore, even if additional reserves of legacy energy sources (such as coal, gas, crude-oil, bitumen and some more) are discovered in large enough quantities, and are exploited to keep up with rising demand, then we may end up sacrificing the critical life support systems of our planet altogether in the name of ‘economic growth’. Already, scientific data has provided more than enough evidence to support the proposition that human activities have exacerbated CO2 (and other GHG) concentrations in our atmosphere, resulting in a climate imbalance that threatens both aquatic and terrestrial life.

CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) technology, Geo-Thermal energy, CO2 reinjection into petroleum reserves for EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery), The CDM’s (Clean Development Mechanism) Emissions Trading (of Carbon credits using “Cap & Trade” to help orchestrate flow of funds from the culprits, i.e. industrialized economies, to developing economies and in the process cutting back net-global emissions), and the new-improved Nuclear Technology, have all proven to hold significant promise for clean energy. Japan for instance, derives about 30% of its energy needs from nuclear technology. Though Nuclear technology has been quite controversial (particularly with respect to dilemma of dealing with nuclear waste), we have to understand that just about only 10% of global nuclear waste is a product of the civilian applications of nuclear technology, and the technology has been greatly improved. (Please do not ask where the other 90% of nuclear-wastes came from). Also, Iceland has exploited geo-thermal energy to take care of more than half of her energy needs.

The readily and abundantly available energy of the Sun and Wind provide massive opportunities for even larger scale implementation than earlier mentioned sources. CSP (Concentrated Solar Panel) technology is being utilized for the MASDAR project (www.masdaruae.com) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. CSP is about seven times more efficient than traditional solar panels, and holds great promise for harnessing solar energy.

The path we face now is that of entire cities being powered by solar, wind and other forms of abundant, long-lasting renewable energy sources. Admittedly, many of these projects require enormous financial and human start-up capital (tell me which project doesn’t require that!), but once they are up, marginal costs of keeping them operational decline steeply. Worthy of note is that many rural areas, especially in the developing world currently do not even have the luxury of a nearby grid. Grid expansion projects require enormous capital, and are usually the exclusive domain of national governments. However, renewable energy technologies (such as solar and wind) do not have to be fed into a grid.

Independent projects could (and ought to) be implemented and replicated in several remote communities, implying partial elimination of grid expansion/distribution costs over large areas.

Efficiency is an absolutely important aspect of energy production, transmission and usage. A research conducted in a region of the United States showed that the average grid was about thirty years of age. This sounds more like a case of powering today’s economy with yesterday’s energy solutions. A lot of energy is actually wasted during transmission on in-efficient grids. (I wonder how much energy we lose on our poorly maintained grids in Nigeria, and Africa). Investing in grid-efficiency, and efficient usage of other energy sources have been proven to hold the potential for achieving 25% of the emission reduction targets that have been set for 2050 (i.e. returning global emissions to 1990 levels). We now have to think deeply when making choices about which cars to purchase (but this has little to do with my desire to purchase a BMW when the money comes – BMW has a technology that converts the heat energy generated when you apply your brakes to electricity, which is then harnessed for other uses in your car plus a low-resistance rolling technology that allows your wheels to roll with so much ease, reducing the energy needed to overcome gravity and friction. BMW ought to pay me for this!)

We need to be innovative. We need our economies to continue developing rapidly. We need energy, and more energy. We also need to take care of our planet (except someone has found another one). We need as many as possible to have fair access to 21^st century technologies and resources, powered by reliable and renewable energy sources. Who knows whether the next Nigerian Nobel laureate is playing around in some remote village, waiting to be a given a well deserved opportunity for self-expression?

“Outliers” – A book written by Malcolm Gladwell brilliantly ties success (what many call genius) to opportunities (Time and Chance). Take nothing away from successful people; they worked hard and were rewarded, but they were presented with opportunities at dead accurate times that many did not have. Indeed, to whom much has been given, much is expected. If we want ‘much’ to come out of our societies, then we must present ‘much’ to our citizens. I’m excited NNPC has partnered with Masdar (The Future Energy Company, whose parent is the famous Mubadala) in aligning Nigeria with the Clean Energy movement. Great things lie ahead.

Renewable energy provides great opportunities that must be embraced now, and I dare say is the FUTURE of ENERGY. Well done MASDAR!

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