Remaking the Workplace

I raised my kids on the basis that every child is born a genius - and then we (parents, teachers, the workplace, church, society at large, pretty much everybody …) spend the first twenty years of their lives de-geniusing them. Okay, I’m being a bit hard (there are lotsa great parents, teachers and (ahem) even workplaces, community and church organisations. But the rate at which we underperform as a species (living below our privileges, so to speak) suggests to me that the de-geniusing bit is more real than we’d like to think.

But help is on the way. As a species, we’re rethinking so many things about how people collaborate. (It is beyond argument that we need major work done on the absolute basics of the workplace.) But we’ve started. We’re beginning to rethink what it means to have talent and what it means to be a genius.

Two interesting (very interesting) participants in this debate (well, it’s not yet really a debate - this whole thing is too new, and the nay-sayers haven’t marshalled their troops yet) are Elizabeth Gilbert (she of Eat, Pray, Love  fame, that insanely successful and popular offering) who spoke at TED recently. Watch her entertaining, heartwarming and challenging talk at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html.

A second cool thinker on this topic is Daniel Coyle whose “The Talent Code” argues that genius is more common (and more developable) than we think. Read David Brooks on this topic at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html?_r=1 [If you don't yet have a New York Times registration - and hence, cookie - it's worth taking the few moments to register ...] and Coyle talks about a concept called deep practice, a form of drill (your mother was right after all) that enables more rapid growth than we normally expect and that forms one part of his genius model. Go to http://thetalentcode.com/video/ to hear Coyle make his point. This is worth watching all the way through to see Coyle mimic Tiger Woods, in order to argue more convincingly.  Enjoy!