HPU: Gladwell and Qubein | Universities in North Carolina

High Point University presents Malcolm Gladwell and nito Cobain is a production of unc-tv in association with High Point University ladies and gentlemen good afternoon to you and welcome to High Point University this institution was founded in 1924 and it has about 4,000 students who come here from 51 countries and 46 states it's an institution that believes in holistic education experience your learning and values based living and one of the elements of hypeeee university that we are most proud of is that regularly in this theater and on this campus and we bring thought leaders from across the country and across the world men and women who have made an impact in the way they have written ideas in the way they have invented concepts and we want him to come and share with our students today I'm very very proud to introduce to you such a thought leader a man with whom you are very familiar a man who has written four bestsellers his first book was came out in the year 2000 the tipping point it became a best-seller on Businessweek very quickly and it remained on the best-selling list all through the years even today when you pick up the New York Times bestselling list you'll see the tipping point it has become a part of our conversation in America and the world and you would say this is a book that really changed the way we think about interpretation of trends and then Malcolm Gladwell went on to write another book name is outliers outstanding book I hope today to ask him some questions where he can expound on the ideas that came to him as he wrote this book and the influences it has had on corporations and organizations worldwide and his third book was blink and his fourth book is what the dog saw so this is a man who wrote for outstanding books with whom I think you're very quite quite familiar and my job this afternoon is to ask him some questions about his life first about his book second and about life in general third I hope I'll do a good job to read your mind some of these questions I hope you'll pay close attention because this is one person from whom we could all learn measure ladies and gentlemen hypo university is proud to present Malcolm Gladwell Gladwell welcome so welcome to High Point University we're glad to have you here and as you can see we have in the audience students from High Point University we have some faculty members we have some neighbors and friends and we have some young professionals called PTP next is a young one young men and women who are entrepreneurs or in business or professionals and with whom our future I believe lies in big proportion so Malcolm we're glad that you're here and and I want to begin if it's okay with you asking some questions about you so we get to know the person and then perhaps move on to ask some questions about some of the books that you've written and then we'll like to get your opinion about some other stuff because you like stuff I think right so you were born in England I was yes you are of Jamaican background my mother is Jamaican in my father's English yeah okay and your father's is Graham Gladwell and your mother's Joyce Gladwell you give him a lot of credit you you actually dedicate some of the books to them they moved to Canada and they had three sons and is the oldest the youngest the minute I'm the youngest the youngest son well you're a naughty boy growing up I don't think so I don't um you know my parents were very laid-back parents and you know when you're a laid-back parent it has that paradoxical effect on the child of giving you nothing to rebel against so I was foiled by my parents very good very good well it's so sweet but you grew up in Canada yeah in I grew up in an hour west of Toronto in the town where the BlackBerry comes from not the fruit but the object was real Blackbird yes yes that black break and and you went to school in Canada I went to the University of Toronto you wanted to become a lawyer I had many I had many thoughts yes lawyer real estate developer advertising copywriter all of which I failed at which is why I ended up as writer so this was the default mode but we should all fail in this way well I you know I've often remarked on how good how good my bad fortune was yeah yeah and and your fortune is incredible you ended up at The New Yorker and before that you were the wife yeah I really sort of cut my teeth as a reporter at The Washington Post during the heyday of that newspaper in the nineteen late 80s or 90s and you were covering what I started out writing about on the business staff which is where they put you at the Washington Post when where you can't make it when you can't make it anywhere else because it's the if you think about it you know that most papers being a business writers quite high status but at the Washington Post who is it who cares about business I mean it's Washington right so there your that's what they stick they didn't know where else I had no experience I had really no business being there so I was that's where I started and then I was um then I covered medicine and healthcare and then I covered then I was in New York bureau chief which sounds fancier than it was because it was just me there was the bureau was in fact a bureau I mean it was not like this it was a head it had drawers but it wasn't a kind of it's not what you're thinking and and did you fail miserably at all those which is why you ended up a writer or well I did you do I am I became I did okay for a while I I recently got the New York bureau chief job was to believe or not when that opening happened I was the only person paper who applied for it no one wanted to move to New York I was so stunned by this and there was like what other one do you want it I was like I guess I do and so off I went and then I discovered that when I got there that um they were really interested in New York so I didn't I was kind of left alone for three years and then eventually I I started freelancing and I got to the point where I was writing more for other magazines that I was to my employer and that's what I decided I should leave and that's what I went to The New Yorker mmm amazing and and we all know of course that in 2005 Time magazine named you one of its 100 most influential people and they actually said that I quote Malcom Gladwell has an incomparable gift for interpreting new ideas in the social sciences and making them understandable practical and valuable to business and general audiences alike I would point out though that Time magazine has a hundred most influential people they name a hundred in front of people in the world every year and they've been doing it for I think probably 12 years so that's twelve hundred people so eventually you know as time goes on virtually everyone will be one of their bunch of people so I wouldn't place too much stock in that let me give you my car Malcolm I I want to know and I think we all want to know how did you learn to think the way you do because when one reads your books there is a there is a unique writing style there is clearly a unique thinking style there is a mindset that somehow compels you to approach ideas that may be overlooked by so many of us and yet you see them from a different angle you see them through a different prism where in your life did this come to be that's a good question I don't really know I mean I suppose there's many ways to answer that question one is that um you know I am an and you and you and I share this in common I'm an immigrant I'm an immigrant many times over my mother is an immigrant first from Jamaica to England then England to Canada my father was an immigrant first from England to Jamaica then Jamaica to America then America to Canada then I was an immigrant from England to Canada to the United States we're a family of outsiders you know I grew up in little very very religious farming community in southwestern Ontario and I was a family with a you know black mother and a mathmetician father and frizzy hair and we were oddballs and I've always sort of been if you're always an outsider you have that there are there are advantages and disadvantages but the great advantage there a privilege of being an outsider is you get to look at things differently right you see things it's one of the reasons I think and I would actually be fascinated I would be I'm far more interested to hear you under subject than me but one of the reasons I think that so many immigrants are so successful as entrepreneurs is that they look at the world differently right they have a whole different set of assumptions and they look at what to us who are or to those of us who are familiar with a culture we start missing things right we don't have the same kind of acuity we don't see things fresh we're kind of a nerd to it all I think that that may apply anytime somebody comes from the outside period whatever the outside means whether it's external to a country or external to a sector yeah I mean I think I think what you've just talking about is exactly what happened in High Point University is that I'm a non-traditional president who saw things very very differently and so an opportunity to to work hand in hand in side by side with faculty and staff to create and to transform an institution and in what many have called remarkable ways and in very short period of time and I think I would attribute that to just what you said we this isn't this this university is an outlier by definition of his book and and I do think a good extent because we do see things differently because we come from different from different backgrounds you know not as I get the Sunday Times at my home here in High Point and I always look at the book section and you're in it every week I mean as a guy who wrote a few books in his life I hate you dude that's this is unbelievable the maybe you look at the tipping point for example and and I want to make sure I quote this correctly you have been in the in the nonfiction paperback bestsellers 366 weeks on the top 20 that's the tipping points then you look at outline then you look at blink then you look at what the dog saw and it's remarkable it's absolutely remarkable you've had sustainable success to say the very least four bestsellers and I'm dying to know what is your secret you know I don't really know I I'm I might be as mystified as you I you know you don't write books with certainly tipping point hi you know I wrote it with the expectation that my mother would read it you know that was about as far as I could I could see and I remove and it kind of happens you know these when you write a book the the minute it's finished and you said it to your publisher it doesn't belong to you anymore it belongs to the world and so I almost feel like I can't take any credit for what's happened it's just a kind of for some reason that I certainly didn't intend or didn't foresee it has it it kind of it kind of embedded itself in people's conversation about certain kinds of ideas and like you say it's persisted and we I remind my agent refers to my books as the cockroaches because nothing short of nuclear war seems to affect them and that's if you know their little kind of unstoppable furry creatures crawl around at night and there yeah no I have no I have no clue I just I mean I the minute you write a book intending to make it a best-seller your chances of becoming a best-seller go downhill right you can't do it's funny I just read um I do not mean in any sense to compare myself to him but just read the Steve Jobs biography which if you have not viewed if you if you haven't read it you should speak that say that to all of you it's an amazing book and a an incredibly interesting portrait of an extraordinary man but you realize you know he had he never once asked the question what does my audience want because he was in a fast-moving high-technology field and he understood they didn't know what they wanted they didn't know they let on him to tell them what they wanted right and he he got that in a way that no one else did and he was like so what he did was create a products that he thought were beautiful and that was the reason these products have been so successful I went to I was in I had to buy a new little iPod Nano and I went into the Apple store on Fifth Avenue yesterday on in Manhattan there must have been 5,000 people in there it was phenomenal it's like what that guy created it's just I mean you couldn't move there was people really that's not about taking the pulse of people or sitting down and trying to figure out how do I create a successful product it's about someone having taste and an intuitive sense of what he thinks is going to be important and just pursuing it and I think it's a real lesson in that for all creators um how does Steve Jobs come into play there there's yeah would he be in the same oh absolutely I mean I have a little thing in outliers member where I talk about this should you know how gates and Jobs and Bill joy and all the guys at Son for all born in 1955 and also how more than significant that is but that's a kind of fun fact that's not the central fact I mean what all of these people have in common is this kind of a passion first of all what they're doing and an ability to seize advantages when they are presented to them I mean that's what's so and I could with the kind of single mindedness with which they pursue what they're interested in and what the world gives them and that's what's you know jobs jobs is what's fascinating about the biography is you know he's not a pleasant man right he's a distinctly unpleasant man he's a Yeller he's a screamer he's he's the kind of guy who you know the at the end of his life is to facts so the Animas life he did not mellow at all over the course was like two things he's in the hospital he's got terminal cancer he goes through 67 nurses 40 finds three that he likes right and then he's going they're putting him under for the surgery on his kidney and or his liver and Ed's are about to put the oxygen mask on him he tells him he's now halfway sedated he tells him to stop because he thinks that the oxygen mask is inelegant and he says I want to see five choices of oxygen masks and I'll choose the one I think is bad now that's insane but it's also why he is who he is right he just refused to ever settle for something that he thought was imperfect and he made the life of those around him a living hell but the result was extraordinary products right he refused there was a you know like little tiny details like them you know how when you're on your um if you have an apple when you look at the title bar of Windows or the word document it looks a certain way it looks that way because in 1982 when the software designers are doing the software for the first time for the Macintosh they're they do a standard title bar and he says no I don't like it I don't even know their wings I don't like it and they go through 20 different iterations and they're going crazy like you know Steve we've got to write the software for this whole computer on a tight schedule and you will go and on and on and on and on about this stupid title bar he says it's not stupid because every time someone opens up a window in Macintosh they're gonna look at that title bar and it's got to be perfect and you know what he's right because we're still looking at the same title bar right it's probably been looked at a hundred million times over the last twenty years that's the kind of that kind of thing is is you know that's a very very rare quality what is that quality I mean what what give it a term what is the term well you know it's perfectionism but it's more than that it's because because there's there's there are certain kinds of perfectionism that is there's a certain kind of perfectionism that's pointless right if and that doesn't have any sort of any kind of useful purpose that's merely an exercise of ego and of and he certainly had elements of that but there is another kind of perfectionism that is in the service of some greater goal and I think that's the kind of perfectionism that he had that is so rare that there was he had a reason for wanting that he had a thing where he drove people crazy when he built the first factory for the for I think the Macintosh or maybe the the computers he was building it next he wanted the the entire factors of the factory had to be painted white a particular shade of white and all of the machines had to be painted this special shade of grey and that people came to and said you're crazy it's a factory you don't paint a factory white and he insisted and he ranted and he raged and they finally did it and rolled their eyes and they finally they just thought he was just being difficult and stupid but what he says is and he's right he says look it's not about me having an you know a crazy affection for white it's that if you force people to pay attention to the smallest detail and to keep a factory a white factory clean then you will instill an ethos that will affect every aspect of manufacturing right it was it was it it looked like nutty perfectionism but it had a point and a point is absolutely right right the little if you take care of the little things then you will instill a mindset that'll make the big things easier and it creates a it creates a culture yes exactly it penetrates an organization yeah so Bill Gates you suggested that that he had he had a privilege if you will of attending a private school and having access to certain technology that others did not and therefore that helped him in his life mm-hmm and how so yeah because he has I mean Gates is interesting this is not the full story of his success but it's a his success is based on a whole series of building blocks this is one of them that when he got interested in computers in the late 1960s there are a lot of computers around right I mean there are enough young people in this room that I cannot make this point enough you know you're used to computers everywhere they just didn't exist I mean they weren't they cost millions of dollars they were as large as you know this stage I mean they're if you wanted to play with computers in 1908 1960s and you were 15 years old you had a problem I mean and he just happened to be and what you did is you bought time on mainframes and you had a little terminal a dumb terminal and you paid some astronomical sum of money and you would have ten minutes you got to play on the computer he happened to go to a school that was wealthy enough that had a terminal in the basement and that was linked into a mainframe in downtown Seattle and he got free time and that you know the number of 15 year olds in 1970 who had access on a terminal to a mainframe in the entire world was probably less than 50 so he's one of 50 and that meant that by the time the real personal computer revolution starts five six years later he has under his belt hundreds thousands of hours of practice I mean he was up he was as good a programmer as there was by the time he was 21 and so he starts Microsoft and he's already I mean he's already halfway there right he's got the piece put in the kind of experience that most people wouldn't have gotten until they were in their 30s and that's a huge part that kind of structural advantage is a huge part of why he becomes a success yeah you'll be glad to know that High Point University acknowledges that even in this day and age there are people who are denied access to whether its technology or any any form of learning because they go to a certain school that doesn't have the facilities or the resources an example is a school in our own neighborhood here Marlow Avenue school that that our IT department and our students are engaged in a daily basis that we've given an iPad to every one of these students 97% of whom come from minority backgrounds and don't have access to like that so even even 4050 years later early in in a different way but in the same way yeah we have a responsibility I think to to bring that that Bill Gates you know advantage to people who otherwise might miss it even today again in the in the times this past Sunday mm-hmm while someone did not refer to but refer to you but clearly they'd read your work made these statements let me just sort of read them out to you and get your response to so why did Bill Gates become a giant in the personal computer revolution through one lens you might see mr. gates as an incredibly lucky guy he just happened to have been born into an upper-middle class American family that had the resources to send him to a private school his family happened in or limit lakeside school in Seattle which had a teletype connection to a computer upon which he could learn to program something that was unusual for schools in the late 1960s and early 70s he also just happened to have been born at the right time coming of age as the advancement of micro electronics made the PC inevitable had he been born ten years later or even just five years later he would have missed that moment yes he was lucky but luck is not why Bill Gates succeeded consider these questions and I found these questions excellent conversational diet a dialogue and debate was Bill Gates the only person of his era who grew up in an upper-middle class American family was he the only person born in the middle 1950s or attend a secondary school with access to computing was he the only person who went to a college with computer resources in the mid 70s the only one who read the popular electronics article the only one when you oughta program in basic that the point that the the writer is trying to make is that it can't be just that and I think you're you're supporting that point in saying it's not just that because many people may have had those opportunities including other kids who were in his class what access to these 150 computers but may not have really done anything exceptional in their life no I think it's fair to say that that all successful people are lucky on some level but luck is not a is not the explanation for their success what they have done is they have taken a set of advantages that have been given to them through no fault of their own through no just given to them by virtue of their good fortune and they have made use of them and what's interesting to me about these people we're talking guys like jobs and gates is how how quickly they recognize what an advantage was and how ruthlessly and brilliantly they exploited it right once Bill Gates realized as a kid I mean what that thing is he wasn't just at his high school gave him access to a computer 1969 instead he actually was one of the kids who went down there and played with it endlessly he was one of the kids who got his mother to give you even more money to extend the connection and then when that ran out he was one of the kids he figured out with his friend Paul Allen with whom he went and founded Microsoft that there was another mainframe they could use at the University of Washington that was free between the hours of 2:00 and 6:00 a.m. on weekdays and he would get up at 2 a.m. and walk 2 miles in the rain because I was raining in Seattle too now so like so is he's lucky in the sense that he lives close to a place as a mainframe but he also gets up at 2 a.m. and the number of of teenage boys willing to wake up at 2 a.m. in the world in the world to do anything he's probably like there's probably about six of them well well how come they don't wake up at two o'clock because there's a larger group willing to stay up until but then not to go and and do computing for four hours but you do a lot of research for your books clearly you make lots of references a lot of documentation how do you first of all where do you find the idea how does it come to you at what point do you know it is the the germ of a potential book how do you assemble and collate the notions that you might want to put in the book how long does it take to write the book when do you write the book you do it at night you do today you take long segments of time a month to month sabbatical or do you discipline yourself to sit every day and work for 3-4 hours do you find yourself at times going with writer's block or your flow all the way you do it on computer in a book you see where I'm headed just let us into your world a little process well I I have I start with kind of I start with a single I usually start with with a story a single story that kind of strikes me as being very powerful and interesting and then I kind of tease out the theme and construct a book around that story so my next book for example started one of the first things I started with was and I bring this up because who you are I you probably know this guide you know Cajun Nepal or Fela yes yes okay so I've met Paulo he owes me money this guy by Betty theis actually another reason I need to give you my business card you you could be useful in my life now I'm glad to have you here so just for those you know colorful is a Lebanese that promote family 11 these immigrants grows up in Los Angeles and he's the guy who founds Kinkos so I met him randomly at something what's chatting with him and he's really interesting guy because he he has both dyslexia severe dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and and he's the first to say this he's a damaged guy right he's not a he's a troubled complicated guy and but he nonetheless has been an extremely successful businessman and I as I talked to I began to realize that his success as a businessman was not in spite of his difficulties and disabilities it was because of them and once I realized I said that is a really interesting idea for a book and that's my new books about now it goes in a million different directions but it began with me sitting down with this guy and listened to him talk and realizing that's actually that sounds a really simple thing but the more you dig into that it's an incredibly powerful insight that he's successful because he is damaged and and disabled in certain ways so they start like that with kind of and then I just kind of let the idea I just run with the idea as far as I can in different directions and collect stuff and do I get writer's block not really because wouldn't you you get stuck then you just stop and you work on another part of the book I mean I write the book as I go along so I don't because otherwise what happens is this is the great for those of you who ever want to write a book do not do as follows do not do all the reporting all the research and then stop and sit down to write the whole book you'll kill yourself I mean it's like the worst idea in the world you well you should do it is because you'll go crazy right six months in you just be your head will just be like you know throbbing and you're you know then your computer will your file and it just be a nightmare know what you do is do a little bit of research right a little bit do a little research read a little bit and all of a sudden becomes very manageable anyway that's my little that's what I do and it's it's quite fun I tend to write in the mornings I suppose you could only write a couple hours a day it's not a very taxing I don't work that hard but I spend a lot of time at the gym and but I think you know it's my and I in this I'm I have my parents are very interested inscribed neither my parents are both I would i thought growing up were very hard-working but in retrospect i realized not at all my father was once news about fish it was once offered a job at an american actually ale and he flies down to yale favorite citrus tree comes back we all sat we're all so excited we could move to new haven how killing would that be because i could we meet him the doorman are you gonna take it again ticket signal no way yet why he goes you're not gonna believe how hard they work but i tell us say i got there at nine o'clock in the morning and they were all at their desks and when i left at five they were still at their desks that's a very Gladwell attitude but i will say this about my father and my mother as well he did not work long hours but when he worked he worked so he did not take any breaks he didn't doodle talk on the phone procrastinate he would sit down and he would focus and you couldn't you could scream in his ear and he wouldn't look up and then he would rise and have tea with my mother they're English he's English eighty at 10:30 and then he'd go back focus and then have like more tea and then focus and then still more tea and then he would walk the dog it's three o'clock and be done but I think he just I think he was efficient and I think that's um if you're doing brain work you can't work 12 hours a day efficiently hmm creative work I think you but you what you need to learn is that kind of focus and discipline and that's what I learned by looking at him is that kind of make your make the work make the time that you spend working count right do not by the way listen to your iPod while you're working I see people do this I like this is insane right you can't do work why you listen to music I'm sorry it just can't be done right there's all this great research I'm now just kind of I'm going off on a tangent but there's all this great work on psychological work on multitasking and the here's the fine here the two findings finding number one is that everyone thinks they're great at multitasking finding number two is no one is I'll have to ask my you've clearly been successful I brought four of his books here to to show you the the fruits of his labor I think the amazing part is that each of them has been a best-seller you clearly have enjoyed your success in your own way and what what were some of the best byproducts of this success well the freedom being able to choose what I would like to do and have others agreed to let me do it that's probably the single greatest byproduct was just being in a position to be in control of how you use your time and what things what ideas you choose to pursue and there and with that comes a level of confidence that is it becomes really the anxiety lessons and the fun of creative work increases because I know it's you know I have I've had enough success that I trust myself and others trust me I suppose that's the biggest that's the biggest by-product all the other byproducts by the way are pale in comparison to that I mean they're not they don't you think it would be really great to be wealthy but in fact he didn't make any difference and actually having the more money you have I don't know if you agree with me on this but I'm sure you disagree with you but go ahead you're I'm sure women but I found they're feeling it like I'm gonna I find that everything I thought would happen as I got more money hasn't happened yeah and in fact it's just it's a pain in the butt half time just complicates your life that's why I should give it all away yeah no no no I yeah that's not a joke I mean you're up see right I'm being serious that's that's why you see people work all their life diligently and and without the freedom you're speaking about and then you're people are astonished when someone in their latter years of their life give their alma mater or some other organization they believe in principally all their money and you go how can that be and I think it has to do with a cycle of discovery what you discover about yourself what your value is about its clarification it's what you find is meaningful yeah and money is a conduit money has many many uses but money in and of itself certainly cannot be the armament with which we can live life significantly you know in all this research you've done about people and and events and organizations what surprises you most about people people are a lot better than I thought they were so as a kid you know you're the world is a very mysterious place to you and you don't really know what adults are like and you you are a little bit afraid of them right and then you and you read about famous people or how they accomplished people and you have a kind of notion in your head of what there must be like and then you know as you get older and you with the world becomes more familiar I'm always surprised at how fundamentally decent people turn out to me that's it was a wonderful kind of everywhere you know that the default mode for people is decency it's not malice absolutely and and when you look at leaders you've made many references to leaders in your books and in all in all forms and all backgrounds what are some of the what are some of the attributes that you admire about leaders and perhaps not just admire but you find to be useful purposeful meaningful in the in the content of life and would they have less in common than I thought they would leadership comes in an astonishing number of forms that's the one thing there are more than there is more than one great way to be a good leader I mean if you I'm a huge sports fan and you just you can see this by looking at football coaches right you could be a great football coach and a disciplinarian and a great football coach and a player's coach you can be the guy who's incredibly charismatic or you could be the guy Bill Belichick who doesn't even crack a smile or it's not even clear he ever talks to anyone right and yet he's one of the best coaches in the game there's a million ways to do it and that's really important because I think one of the mistakes that we make sometimes is that we very successful people make is they become convinced that the only way to be successful is the way they were successful huge error yet if the only thing that I would say that most effective leaders have in common is their energy that's really that's the really you must notice you meet the striking thing about high achievers that the one thing they do all always without exception have in common is they have got a motor in them and they've found a way to put that motor to good use but they have to have the motor and it's you know you meet some of these people and it it is amazing I mean I mean I don't have a motor I made them and I'm just like whoa I mean do you ever sleep do you ever stop how did you I'm always amazed I was a I had this guy I've got to know who's a powerful guy in Hollywood and I'm I was astonished that when I had nothing to do and he emails me I email him back within a couple days because I can't get around to it you're in the gym I'm in the gym yeah I email him bull he emails you back boom like it's just it just yeah literally like I press send and that Bing I'm so what are you doing you he's got like a thousand people working for him he's got ten different projects let's get 500 emails a day I don't know snow no he's that guy it's just that's the way he operates everyone's getting it it's like it was like right and that's that's why he's a mogul and I'm you know sitting in my boxers on my sofa to Aniyah Malcolm don't you think that I don't know the answer to this question but I suspect that energy is a byproduct it is not in and of itself the cause I suspect that energy is a byproduct of passion yeah passion may be the byproduct of purpose purpose may be the byproduct of a need in oneself that that there is as one of my friends once said he said you know I am privileged to have been underprivileged yeah and and I think that each of us has a need to do something to contribute something and that may create purpose that make great passion that may create energy I don't think energy is in and of itself you know a characteristic there's some yeah I would agree with that in part I do think there is a you know we can make simple physiological observations about people's need for sleep for example and we can find significant differences so I mean but you're right i think that that um it is absolutely a whole lot easier to be focused in energetic and on a task if you believe in the task and it makes you it brings you meaning yeah absolutely well let's talk about your books just a little bit and if you will please give us in your own words a sentence or two to describe each of these books the first one was the tipping point yet tipping point is about how many copies is the tipping point sold in all forms all versions have no idea well you in the gym you know you don't have a gym I don't know time I mean a couple million maybe more probably more probably more probably more how many languages no idea will you give away language rights you know so it's like it sounds impressive 52 languages but in fact you know languages 50 through 52 you were like someone called you up and said can I translate it you said sure go ahead okay it's like not if it's another one of those things like the time 100 that you guys should be careful before you get too excited about it but um tipping point is about all the books are about the same theme which is the that I'm obsessed with which is that as human beings we are constructed from the outside in that is to say who we are on the inside is a function of what's going on around us right so tipping point is about how does the world around us affect which ideas spread or how ideas spread or how quickly ideas spread which what how does the world around us affect what we believe right blink is about how does the world around us affect how we think the kind of these kinds of judgments that we make how we and outliers is how it does the world around us affect our success the trajectory of our lives and what the dog saw is just a collection of stories that often ask the question how does the world around us but so there are yeah that's my I can never get enough of that notion of how I mean I'm in that sense an environmentalist that's to say I believe in the impact of the environment upon everything I'm and I'm and I don't really believe in my heart of hearts I don't really believe in the idea of innate traits I mean I know that they exist but for example I don't really believe in the notion of personality I I don't buy it I don't think that you have a personality I think your personality is a function of what's going on and the people that surround you and the influences you've had and and that's I don't really think that you just walk into a room with some kind of hard-wired approached the things you know cuz I you observed people people can go from one moment being depressed to the next moment being exultant and it's the same person and they look totally different what's different well the circumstances of their life are different right if you and I were living in the in the in the in the slums of some of one of those mega cities in China and working 18-hour days in some Factory and being slowly poisoned to death we would not be the same person as we are here in this gorgeous Hall right very nice since your you're describing hyper university my friend that's exactly why High Point University looks as beautiful and as elegant as it is because I believe in that wholeheartedly and I believe that that students reach up to this level that you set for them and in part you can't lecture them so you create an environment through which in which by which they choose to become extraordinary and I think you're absolutely right who we spend time with us who become what we choose is what we get and we know those things because of those of those environments in the tipping point you speak of the law of the few you call them connectors maven salesmen etc and as I said today we have some students here and some other young entrepreneurs explain that law of the few to them if you will and and give them two or three pieces of advice that you believe are pertinent to achieving both success and significance in life well the law the view is just this idea that I was pursuing a tipping point that social power which is to say to be distinguished from economic power which we the power of that comes from money or political power the power that comes from institutions or or even institutional power the power that comes from your title there's a different different and equally if not more important thing called social power which is the kind of informal way in which influence is mediated in the world and social power is not held equally by all of us fact it's largely held by a very small number of people with very exceptional abilities and gifts and so mavens connectors and salesmen are kind of crude descriptors of this kind of social power extorted social power some people are have a capacity for social interaction that is way out here some people have a capacity for persuasion that's way out here and some people have a capacity for for making for for collecting information being purveyors of information that's way out here and those people those kinds of people play out size roles in the in the kind of informal side of social organization and if you look in any you know you could do it in this campus we could do I could do a really really simple experiment in this room right now we could figure out who has the social power and it would not be the same people with the political power of the economic power or the right we would do a madness you need simple you do a map if I took everyone on at the high point and I asked them to list the five people they talked to the most right and then I do I have a giant map and every student at this university this college is a point on that map and then I draw you a line connecting you to all the people you talk to what you would discover is that the map would not be wouldn't be that lines wouldn't be equally distributed to all the points there'd be twenty-five students who everyone was talking to all the lines of lead you'd see these nodes on the map maybe 2500 and those people would be a relatively random sampling they wouldn't necessarily be the smartest prettiest biggest most gifted they would just be people who have this kind of play this kind of social role and they were they and those 25 by the way are enormous ly important in the functioning of this institution something would be teachers some of them would be administrators somebody some of them would be I mean I don't you know just a kind of sample of this so that's what I was interested in getting at is and I wanted this to understand I think we spend a lot of time in our society obsessing over who's got political and economic power and not enough time thinking about who's got social power because the people with social power get get really good stuff done if you look at a high functioning organizations of any sort whether it's a university or a company they depend on these people I mean why do you want to go to work in the morning or why do you want to go to school in the morning part of it has to do with the person who's running the show but a lot of it has nothing to do with that person has to do with the environment and whether that environment feels welcoming to you and it's these people who create functional environments so I guess wondering if you ask me for advice it's people I mean is understand where social power lies and take it seriously I mean most of us don't play those roles that these are rare roles but all of us have an opportunity to kind of recognize and reward those kinds of people and I think a well-functioning societies and organizations do that in in tipping point you speak of charisma and I quote you say the charismatic person started out depressed and the inexpressive person started out happy by the end of two minutes the inexpressive person will be depressed as well but it didn't work the other way yeah really you know I wrote that how many years ago I don't even remember writing it but I'm sure I'm sure it must be true I'll give you a pass on that well that's got a blink in blink your sight priming and you say priming happens when subtle triggers influence our behavior without our awareness of such changes you were talking about priming five minutes ago no question about it yes says this is why that hypo University we used was like extraordinary caring inspiring generosity this is why this place is pristine this is why there's no graffiti on the walls this is what we prime in this institution our students to do that talk to us about that yeah this is I mean there are so many there are so many I was talking about earlier when we were talking about Steve Jobs in the factory why is the factory white he's when you said that's about creating a culture yes exactly and he's creating a culture by means of priming he is planting the idea in the environment that we care about order and cleanliness and a meticulous attention to detail and most of all and by extension we care about you right that's the real message of painting everything white he's saying I even care about the paint so think how much I care about you as one of my functioning employees right that's the message that's what parents tell us every day yeah they say school that cares about that must also care about the safety and security of our students was also cared by the academic excellence of our students and so on yeah and then another concept is thin slicing how a little bit of knowledge goes a long way it's an example of that in business well yeah that's a more complex idea we tend to thin slice in virtually any instance where we are confronted with some kind of problem in the moment I walk into a room I meet you for the first time right I form an instant impression of you which is a I use as a guide going forward in my interaction with you or Allah all right drive around this campus for the first time boom right I think ah parents do this when they come right boom you see it those are always important sometimes incredibly accurately useful sometimes incredibly there are times when we should not listen to that kind of we should turn it off that mechanism and there are times when we should really care about it that mechanism is dangerous when we use it to stereotype or to demean people or to make judgments that have no basis but for people who are highly expert who know what they're doing with great experience in the field that when you walk into the medical specialist who's been doing what he's been doing for thirty years looks at you and says oh dear right he's thin slicing you and you should listen to that his oh dear matters because he knows what is behind that right what if you walk in to the medical student the medical student says oh dear I think you're safe to say dude let's bring in a pro I'm not gonna I'm not interested in your gut feeling about what's wrong with my pancreas I mean you've been in medical school for two years right you haven't slept since January you know college students who go to school sometimes sacrificially paying for especially a private education across America then they graduate and they face recessionary times unemployment rather discouraging disappointing any views on what can colleges be doing and if used on what we ought to be doing to help these students as they graduate beyond career services internships etc but in more in terms of preparation for the real world I would I guess I would say I would encourage I think colleges should encourage their graduates and their students to think of the entire world as their oyster so the whole world is in the recession right right this country is going through a period of diminished economic expectations there are parts of the world that are going gangbusters you know Brazil Singapore China India I mean there's tons of places you can go there is absolutely no reason why graduates of high point Nerissa t equipped with a great education shouldn't take those skills and go to someplace some part of the world that's going to where the growth rate is fantastic you left as a kid for greener pastures my parents left my grandparents left I left I mean that's what you do right and America is not an exception we're you're for going through a fallow period then go someplace where it is in fallow right there's no day you get on a plane and didn't cost that much right by the way you can fly back home for Thanksgiving it's not like 1880 where you just take a ship that took two months right I mean it's you can go home and see your folks when you want to so that's one thing is you know the world is wide open it's flat Tom Friedman was visiting with us not too long ago and he did an exceptional job and and as I expect he'll do tonight as I expect you better do tonight ahead of competition and he spoke about course the world is Fred and and he's right and you're right we have to look at the global village and as we tell our students here we have students here from 51 countries so they meet Chinese students and students from India and other places and they have a view of the whole world yeah they don't have a view of an island they have a view of the whole world what's next for you well I have this new book I'm working on which will be out in about two years seems like a long time way but it it just the lead time when these things is I didn't only work two hours a day I don't work two hours damn I say it takes a little while and and also you can't put out a book I mean I could get it done for fall of 2012 but this is an election you know whenever there's an election people get very distracted and you know a prop by the way appropriately distracted I mean sound like a dismissive Canadian but and for some reason that some I think this election is going to be very distracting so I'm gonna wait until after that's over but that's what I'm working at the moment Malcolm Gladwell you have made some serious contributions to our process of thinking and analyzing ideas you have written generously about matters that are significant and important it's amazing to me how you have reached both the intellectual reader and the regular guy because I think your audience of a readership generally speaking is is large it has a wide spectrum I think that is a testimony to your skill it's a testimony to your ability to communicate with everyone and to connect with people in a marvelous way as you've certainly done on the campus of hiper University for the last hour I thank you and I want you to know you're always welcome back on this campus ladies and gentlemen High Point University presents Malcolm Gladwell and nito Cobain is a production of unc-tv in association with High Point University

Channel: High Point University

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Keywords: high point university, hpu, high point university videos, highpoint university, top colleges in south, top 10 colleges in the south, universities in north carolina, best colleges in the south, north carolina colleges, north carolina universities, best north carolina colleges, top north carolina colleges, top colleges in nc, Nido R Qubein (Organization Leader)

Id: iFz4NODes9c

Length: 57min 25sec (3445 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2012