About Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

What makes high achievers different from you or me? Malcolm Gladwell answers that question with his book, Outliers. Many overachievers believe in one of the core concepts in the book: the “10,000-hour rule.” Gladwell suggests that to be the best at something, you need to study it for 10,000 hours. In this book, he finds the outliers—men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary.

Outliers is a good read because of Gladwell’s fascination with psychology, law, statistics, and sociology. His colorful writing provides a powerful and personal analysis of why some people become outliers and some don’t. Despite its quirky characters and lofty critiques, you’ll find echoes of your life in his writing.

Like Gladwell, at Cydcor, we encourage our employees and sales associates to set challenging goals that inspire achievement. We provide determined individuals opportunities to excel, work hard, and build successful careers.

Why Cydcor Reviews Recommends This Book:

Gladwell worked as a journalist at the Washington Post and as a writer for the New Yorker magazine. Instead of writing simple biographies of successful people, he investigates the communities where these exceptional people developed. He also examines the cultures that influenced them during their formative years and up to today.

Gladwell is passionate about social sciences and statistics. This interest led him to figure out why Canada’s star hockey players are consistently born in January, February, and March. But Gladwell isn’t just revealing cold facts and figures. He uses the book to examine his own life as an outlier.

Cydcor recommends this book because the author provides profoundly inspirational insights into how ordinary men and women achieve greatness. Gladwell suggests that everyone who is exceptional at something—like sales—has practiced for about 10,000 hours. Gladwell’s theory endorses Cydcor’s belief that professional achievement, recognition, and advancement is available for anyone who works hard and pursues each opportunity they find.

Our Favorite Part

Our favorite part of Outliers is Gladwell’s talent for revealing the unique twists and turns that influence someone’s life. For example, when Bill Gates was in the eighth grade, the mothers’ group at his school used the proceeds of their annual bake sale to purchase a personal computer for the students.

No software was available for the computer, so Gates learned how to program it by punching holes into computer cards—a very outdated practice today. After many hours of hard work, he got the computer to work. By the time he was a sophomore in high school, Gates had exhausted his school’s computer resources and sought further instruction at the University of Washington, where he met his future business partner, Paul Allen. Gates certainly had a gift for computing, but ultimately his achievements were powered by his 10,000 hours of hard work.

If we follow Gates’ example, if we pay attention and begin to see obstacles as opportunities, we will improve our chances for success.

As you read this book, you may remember the lessons you learned from teachers and mentors who taught you how to overcome obstacles. This book reminds us that the opportunity to succeed is always present; you just need to have a positive outlook and the determination to meet each challenge. You may not become a billionaire after reading Outliers, but your personal and professional life will become rich with possibility.

Who are the outliers that influenced your career path? Let us know about the men and women who inspire you to succeed. Share your ideas on Twitter and follow us @Cydcor.

We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.

This week Cydcor wanted to post a round-up of our favorite content on Cydcor Reviews, our book review site.  Recommended for team members by team members.

Linchpin was written by marketing expert Seth Godin, who believes that finding career success today depends on learning how to market one’s self.  Linchpins are an upcoming role in the world of tech, start-ups and the age of entrepreneurship.  The linchpins are those that come up with new solutions, break the mold, and foster creativity in companies.  Linchpin is about learning how to break out of the systemic roles traditionally in the workplace and implement new ideas where you work.  Often, the linchpins are the indispensable people in the background, empowering others, but staying out of the spotlight.  They often have a less specific role in the company, but rather focus on specific needs as the work scape morphs and changes.  Godin believes everyone has something brilliant to offer, and being able to harness that brilliance and bring it to the workplace can equal success and happiness.

The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell is an in depth look at how ideas get made into wildly popular companies, books or trends.  Everything from television shows to teen smoking, popularity of ideas is modeled like an epidemic.  There are carriers, those that evangelize the idea and get people excited about it.  Malcolm Gladwell explains that there are three types of people involved in spreading an idea: connectors, mavens and salespeople.  Connectors are people with a wide social network that are good at creating communities to rally for the concept.  Mavens are knowledgeable experts that enjoy educating the public on their area of expertise.  Salespeople are gifted at drumming up excitement for new things.

Lincoln by David Herbert covers the life of Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th president of the United States.  Lincoln was raised in rural Indiana in a poor household.  The book follows Lincoln’s perspective as he picked himself up through poverty and through political savvy made his way into prominence quickly.  The book examines his character, his key advisors, and reveals his human flaws as well as his greatness.  Biographies and autobiographies are excellent sources of inspiration for anyone looking to achieve professional goals. Lincoln is an especially beloved figure for Americans because he was raised in poverty and came from a disadvantage to well educated men raised in wealthy homes in cities.

Competitive Advantage is a model for creating and managing an enterprise successfully.  Porter offers tools for analysis that are taught in MBA programs around the country.  Michael Porter is a professor at Harvard Business School, and lectures and writes prolifically on managing a business.  Tactics such as the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis teaches critical thinking that is crucial to successfully leading a company.  Porter also discusses strategy at length, and helps businesses to either produce a scale economy or define a niche that will keep them profitable.

Onward is the story of how Starbucks Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz turned Starbucks around after a downturn in financial performance.  Schultz explains that while the recession definitely had an impact in the loss in profits for the massive international coffee and specialty company, the biggest factor was a shift in company culture.  Onward explains Shultz’ decision to return to the CEO position after a departure to implement a hands on strategy to bring his company to its most profitable year ever.  Between 2008 and 2011, Starbucks was able to find its way again and Schultz continues to lead it to record profits every year.

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Another great book, Cydcor reviews The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Description of this book: Gladwell, a journalist and writer for The New Yorker magazine, is known for his comprehensive examinations of how change or success happens.  The Tipping Point is an in depth look at how ideas get made into wildly popular companies, books or trends.  Everything from television shows to teen smoking, popularity of ideas is modeled like an epidemic.  There are carriers, those that evangelize the idea and get people excited about it.  Malcolm Gladwell explains that there are three types of people involved in spreading an idea: connectors, mavens and salespeople.  Connectors are people with a wide social network that are good at creating communities to rally for the concept.  Mavens are knowledgeable experts that enjoy educating the public on their area of expertise.  Salespeople are gifted at drumming up excitement for new things.

Cydcor recommends this book to future leaders and business people because: Gladwell has a talent for identifying key factors in how to make something popular.  The biggest difference in an idea that fails and one that succeeds is knowing the right people to hand your idea to.  Networking, knocking on the right doors and finding the people who will think the idea is “cool” is the best way to become a viral sensation.  However, Gladwell also explains that ideas need to have “stickiness” factor that will help the important people spread it to others.  Both of those factors also have to an in an environment where the idea and the people are relevant to current sentiment.

Our favorite part: "The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts."

Cydcor is a leading outsourced sales company that specializes in omnichannel sales. Follow Cydcor on LinkedIn or Twitter for more professional development advice.  Want to work for Cydcor? Find our openings on the Cydcor Careerbuilder page today.

This is the ninth installment of our book reviews project designed to introduce you to books that Cydcor team members find especially valuable.  This review is by Megan, Cydcor technology consultant, and is the first review she has done for us.

Title: The Tipping Point; How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Description of the book: The Tipping Point is a succinct look at that moment where a marketing campaign becomes a success. What does it take to make something viral on the web? According to Gladwell, it's very much like how a disease becomes an epidemic. All it takes is one person, a small and targeted push, to make a campaign a success.

Why should you read this? I highly recommend the Tipping Point to anyone in sales, but it's also just an incredibly enjoyable look at human nature and how we function as a society. One gets the feeling that Malcolm Gladwell is one of those people who just really enjoys diving into data and research, and he definitely brings the reader along for the ride.

My favorite part: My favorite part of the Tipping Point was his description of the 1967 small world experiment by social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Basically, Milgram distributed almost 200 letters to students in Nebraska and asked them to try to get them to a stockbroker in Boston by passing it to people that they knew and asking them to do the same.

The study found that it took an average of six people to deliver each letter. But, more interesting, of the letters that came through to the stockbroker a vast majority passed through a single person, a travelling salesman.

This illustrated one of Gladwell's points, that success of any social epidemic is dependent on a few important types of people. That salesman was one of those types of people, a connector.

We all know connectors in our lives. They are people who know large numbers of people and who are in the habit of making connections, a sort of hub in the middle of social wheels. But the reason why this resonated with me so much is that my mother is clearly one a connector, and reading the Tipping Point helped me understand why she has been so successful, and some of the struggles that she has experienced.