Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell
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Book Reviews of Outliers: The Story of Success
Book Review: Outliers and the Fate We Make That Makes Us
Summary: 4 Stars
I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest study of human behavior, Outliers, about the backstory of success in America and to a lesser degree, in the world. The other books are The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Outliers did not disappoint. Gladwell delivers a diverse range of applications of his thesis with humor and the kind of penetrating wisdom you would expect from a poet who can reveal some hidden secret in something you think you know all about but have never really seen.
Someone asked me if Outliers was a religious book, and I told them that it could be a way to understand the more subtle and powerful ways of grace in our world. But while Gladwell prompts an exploration of the road to success (and how we might widen it a bit), his definition of success creates an extraordinary tension he can never resolve.
Stratospheric success, it turns out, according to Gladwell, involves the gift of talent and extraordinary, relentless hours of practice - 10,000 hours of practice. That's the kind of precision Gladwell delivers repeatedly, like the fact that you can recall a series of numbers you can recite in 2 seconds, or how the ability to stay with a math problem for 22 minutes makes the difference between excelling in math and merely surviving. Or if you're a southerner who has just received an insult, you'll walk to within 2 feet of a bouncer before turning aside, rather than 6 feet (for anyone not from the south). All of the numbers, of course, are based on studies Gladwell cites to buttress his argument that reads more like a conversation over a really good meal.
The last tidbit exemplifies the thesis that gives the book title an ironic twist: in addition to talent and determination, outliers are inevitably products of their families and the larger communities (living and dead) and even history - in other words, they're not really outliers at all - they're inescapably woven into the human social fabric. And though Gladwell spends much more time exploring this thesis than suggesting ways to capitalize on it in society, he repeatedly asserts that taking the social environment part of the success equation far more seriously would result in far more opportunity for success.
Near the end of the book, he cites an inner city school program that closes the well-known learning gap between rich and poor students by extending the classroom hours and nixing a three-month summer break (where studies Gladwell cites demonstrate the real reason for the learning gap between rich and poor occurs). Earlier in the book, Gladwell writes about a group of geniuses followed by a sociologist whose success or failure correlated well with the income and education levels of their parents. The extended hours school program recognizes this cultural reality and then mitigates it essentially by removing the kids from their unsupportive home environment.
Another example of what Gladwell refers to as taking cultural factors seriously involves the retraining of Korean pilots in the wake of a series of accidents. Recognizing that a Korean culture of deference to superiors made it difficult for co-pilots to correct pilot errors, an (American) consultant banished the Korean language from the cockpits, essentially creating a competing cockpit culture that would allow the egalitarian cooperation necessary to safely fly commercial jets. And of course it worked.
But this is just where Gladwell's highly entertaining book leaves me unsettled. The author shifts between the draconian social re-engineering I mention above on the one hand and a resignation to the fate of (for instance) being born in 1835, 1917, 1951, or on January 1, which would give you a much better chance to be one of the richest persons in the history of the world, a highly successful Jewish lawyer in New York, an architect of the PC revolution, or a professional Canadian hockey player, respectively.
Radical social reengineering (or, more to the point, eradication, as in the Korean Airline cockpits) to level the playing field for far more people to succeed and "luck" (to use Bill Gates' words) form opposite poles of Gladwell's study of success. But I can find no middle ground - no spectrum of what I have come to call Grace in between the harsh poles of Make and Fate. In the end, Gladwell refuses a "bloom where you're planted" ethic for a success standard imposed by a non-existent patchwork culture he forms from Asian rice farmers to European tailors and obnoxious air traffic controllers from the Bronx - all with the goal of getting into a mythical house on a hill, via a road marked with 10,000 hours of unrelenting toil for greatness.
His epilogue is a colorful description of his own patchwork Jamaican/English/African cultural history, which makes a kind of sense, given the thrust of his thesis. The view from his house on a hill must be marvelous, and he justly recognizes that it is built literally on the foundation of the backs of his tireless and blessed forebears (blessed by fortune in ironic ways).
As it happens, I'm also reading Tom Sawyer to my 12 year old son and 11 year old foster son, each night as they go to bed. They boys love the hero of the quintessentially American tale, and strive to emulate him in their lives. They look forward to a golden summer of delights at the helm of a mountain bike, in the pool, surrounded by budding beauty they (like Tom) are beginning more and more to appreciate, and at the computer screen, where they live out a heroic existence Tom would not have been able to imagine. My son is gifted with extraordinary intelligence in math and science. My foster son is a whiz on the basketball court and skating rink - and is remarkably observant. My daughter already dreams of putting her considerable empathy and music talent together into a career in music therapy.
The idea of sending them to a rice paddy this summer to increase their chance at success seems to mock the very idea of success. And grace. No doubt hard work finds its own reward. But the culture that nurtures them and my wife and me encourages us to value other virtues as well, like friendship, sacrifice for others, and Sabbath. And grace. Which promises me and my community that God has indeed gifted us all for a purpose.
In the midst of his discussion of the arduous labor involved in rice farming in China, Gladwell defines what he calls meaningful work. To be meaningful, Gladwell asserts that work must involve (1) a clear relationship between effort and reward; (2) complexity; and (3) autonomy (p. 236). Those sound like the reflections of an entrepreneur - an author, perhaps, from the vantage point of the house on a hill. They are the words of a self-made man (albeit haunted by the injustice of fate that allowed him to make himself on the backs of others).
The words I would use to define meaningful work would be challenge, variety, and value (not merely defined in terms of money, of course). Life work should be stimulating, worthy of the creator and their creativity, and it should make the world a better place. Perhaps that's too much to ask, but in the end, I'd rather not settle for anything less (for myself or for anyone else). Success does not mean masking my cultural impediments, but recognizing in them (and in myself) unique strengths and (as I would label them as a pastor) gifts from God.
Gladwell entertains, surely. And he has collected a stunning amount of data to ponder the meaning of success. But his title dooms his thesis by posing an insoluble dilemma: how to escape the bonds of one's culture in order to achieve "success". He is right about one thing, certainly. There are no true outliers in the human community. No islands. We are bound together in a shared history and family, and we truly succeed only when we reclaim both our cultural heritage as a gift - and our lives as God's gift to the human family.
Book Review: Gladwell's well-written and enjoyable disappointment.
Summary: 4 Stars
Malcolm Gladwell's third book is a curious mixture of interesting ideas and sound mechanics blended with a handful of well written but somewhat redundant essays about culture and turning failure into success. The combination and arrangement of the two sections (Part 1: Opportunity and Part 2: Legacy) almost feel as if this was intended to be two separate books that became fused into one, or perhaps one book that ran short on ideas and got stretched into something a bit longer than it needed to be in order to match its predecessors. In any case, Gladwell's ability to write continues to distinguish itself as it aptly carries this book from beginning to end quickly and thoroughly in an efficient manner that, even despite times towards the book's last third where substance and continuity become scarce, will still manage to leave the reader feeling more like they have just enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's latest book and less like they have just sat through an uninspired management seminar. Ultimately, despite moments of disappointment, the book never ceases to be enjoyable and offers plenty of topics worth pondering.
The book starts off as well as a book can and is somewhat reminiscent of Gladwell's first and best effort "The Tipping Point" with one single idea that is explained and then demonstrated in a multitude of examples, which are for the most part quite good and make for a strong beginning with good continuity. The principle idea that gets discussed is the aspect of timing on those that we frequently deem as great - the Outliers. The initial example is an effective attention getter - a comparison of professional hockey players and their relative age when they started playing organized hockey before the age of 10. Regardless of anything else the book may or may not achieve, the point made here is a good one; the comparative difference in development between six years and one day and six years and 11 months is significant. Group a bunch of kids together based on their current age digit and overwhelmingly the ones closest to the next birthday will significantly outperform the ones who just celebrated their last birthday. This idea is expanded directly from athletics to academics. The remainder of Part One looks at numerous cases where the importance of timing has played a significant part in choosing the "outlier" - The class of the PC revolution and their birthdates, a successful and powerful law firm that specializes in corporate takeovers driven by a senior partner who graduated from a less than prestigious law school, and an interesting study of potential geniuses and the correlation between their success and their birthday's proximity to 1911.
As interesting as Part One is, it does not take long to realize that this is a book about one of the oldest arguments in existence--nature verses nurture. Gladwell does a good job of making some useful observations, but like every other attempt to tackle this subject, one never gets too far away from one side, before the other side comes roaring back. On one hand, Gladwell's observations are good ones. But ultimately, they are merely examples of particular instances where timing was a key factor. They do not rule out the existence of true outliers. The chapter on the 10,000 hour rule is well worth the read, and again it makes a good point - those who are able to have the opportunity to work at something for 10,000 hours will become highly proficient at it. It says nothing of those who "achieve greatness" at something in far less time. For example, two of Gladwell's arguments include Bill Gates and The Beatles, both tremendously influential in their respective fields and to the world at large. Yes, Bill Gates programmed for many hours and no doubt he was proficient at it (as his work with Paul Allen in writing BASIC suggests), but a large part of his success was based on his purchasing the operating system QDOS and renaming/repackaging it as DOS and selling it to IBM. And Yes, The Beatles were one of the greatest bands in Pop/Rock music history, perhaps the greatest. But their greatness was much more a function of their song-writing and less about their technical musicianship. This is not to say that Bill Gates is/was a bad programmer or that The Beatles were bad musicians. Merely that using them to argue in favor of the 10,000 rule builds an incomplete case that does not drive the point as far as it could and leaves important questions unanswered. How many programmers are better than Gates (Steve Jobs?) and how many reach that level of proficiency in 10,000 hours and how many reach is in less? How many musicians achieve technical musicianship in 10,000 hours or less? The fact that some people just seem to have a "knack" for something does not get discussed.
Part Two is where some issues develop. Whereas Part One contains points on which one may agree or disagree, the chapters are coherent, consistent and develop nicely around the central theme of timing and its influence on selection. Anyone can follow the common thread that runs through them with ease. And they all relate, in some fashion, to the book's main idea. Part Two however consists of four separate accounts of culture and its influence on people's approach to understanding that which confronts them. Yes, all four share the common theme of culture an its influence, and yes all four are well written, but as a set they don't hold together nearly as well Part One, and they don't really have anything to do with the book's man theme of Outliers - they just tell the story of culture and its influence on people 4 times. Most notable is the chapter on the abysmal safety record of the Korean airlines during the 1980's and 1990's, which is in fact the longest chapter in the book at 46 pages. It has some good things to say, and in typical Gadwell fashion, tells a good story. But after a long buildup and analysis the reader is left with the fact that changes were made and cultural differences were overcome and people over 50 learned new things and the unsuccessful was turned into the successful. Not that positive change is a bad thing (it certainly is not a bad thing), but even with Gladwell at his best, it's difficult for something like this to avoid sounding generic, empty, and out of place in a book of this nature.
Still, even in its moments of disappointment, the book never fails to be readable and never departs from its relative fast pace. And again, even when the chapters aren't all that well connected they manage to include interesting points of reference, such as the reference to David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed and the chapter on the Asian rice patties comparison of the Asian and Western methods of counting. Books of this nature are at their best when they connect to other interesting topics, and regardless of its problems, this book does that relatively well. Even the a fore mention disappointing and lengthy chapter on the Korean Air problems contains a classic example of Gladwell's concise observatory wit - "Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from - and when we ignore that fact, planes crash."
It may seem odd to describe a book as an enjoyable disappointment, but in this instance it fits rather well. Mechanically is rates an easy 5, but the nature of the ending feels more like a 3. From someone partial to Gladwell's books, this one has earned some generosity and nets a 4 (a 4- if such a rating were allowed.) Fans of Gladwell should enjoy this book as should fans of other non-fiction/hack-social science/hack-psychology/hack-economics and commentary. Enjoy -- and from time-to-time be patient.
Book Review: Outlandish
Summary: 2 Stars
A criticism common to both Malcolm Gladwell's previous books, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, was that while they were packed with interesting, well told, anecdotes there was no consistent underlying theme to the stories; no particular lesson to be drawn. For example, of the many anecdotes recounted about "thin slicing" some (such as an art expert's ability to instantly assess the bona fides of a statue) suggested it was a special and important skill while others (an impulsive police decision to pursue and shoot dead a innocent bystander) suggested quite the opposite. You were left with the impression that, well, there are these things called snap judgements, and sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don't.
Clearly Malcolm Gladwell has taken those reservations to heart: in Outliers he has been scrupulous to sketch out an integrated underlying thesis and then (for the most part) array his anecdotes - which, as usual, are interesting enough - in support of it.
Unfortunately for him, the theory is a lemon. Nonetheless, the flyleaf is hubristic (and unimaginative) enough to claim "This book really will change the way you think about your life". It's not done that for me, but it has changed the way I think about Malcolm Gladwell's writing. And not for the better.
Gladwell has looked at some psychological research into success and genius and has concluded that, contrary to conventional wisdom, success isn't to be explained by raw talent. The evidence suggests that genuinely exceptional performers, in whatever field - these are the titular "outliers" - can be identified by a combination of unique and unusual *opportunity* and *commitment* to achieve. It isn't talent, but graft and the odd lucky break. Hmm.
A common thread, Gladwell claims, is that most "world class experts", be they "composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, what have you ..." have put in 10,000 hours of practice before really achieving success. So, as the paradigm case goes, the Beatles weren't just in the right place at the right time (though clearly they were), but were instead preternaturally prepared for it by their grueling stint playing hundreds of eight-hour shows in Hamburg, an experience which afforded them both the necessary period of time and unusual opportunity to gain musical proficiency.
The first quibble here is to note that (even allowing for the patent fantasy that the Beatles played eight-hours non stop each night), on Gladwell's own figures, the Hamburg experience - which didn't involve Ringo Starr - still left the band roughly 8,000 hours short of their necessary 10,000. In any case attributing the Beatles' success to their (undisputed) musical proficiency indicates the degree to which Gladwell misses the point, both about rock 'n' roll (wherein neither concerted effort nor musical acumen has often had much to do with initial commercial success - just ask Elvis or the Rolling Stones) and the quality of the data itself. Gladwell's theory suffers from survivor bias: it starts with an undisputed result (the Beatles - clearly an outlier) and works back looking for evidence to support its hypothesis and takes whatever is there: easy enough to do since the "evidence" is definable only in terms of the subsequently occuring success. In less polite circles this is called revisionism.
There will, after all, be no record of the poor loser who spent 10,000 hours at his fretboard and who squandered a wealth of opportunity through ineptitude or bad luck, because, by definition, he never caught the light. Even if you grant Gladwell his theory - and I'm not inclined to - the most that can be said is that he's found a *correlation* between graft and success. But to confuse correlation with causation is a cardinal sin of interpretation (see Stephen Jay Gould's splendid The Mismeasure of Man for a compelling explanation of this fallacy) unless you have independent supporting grounds to justify the causal chain. Gladwell offers none: The Fab Four (well, Fab Three plus Pete Best) may have become a tighter band in Germany, but as Gladwell acknowledges there were many Liverpool bands in Hamburg at the time, all presumably clocking up eight hours non-stop (yeah, right) per night, and none of the others made the cover of Rolling Stone then, or has done since.
Much of the rest of Gladwell's patter is similarly glib: look at any "success story" long enough and you're bound to find something in its past you can designate as the crucial 10,000 hours. But to imply - as Gladwell seems to - that it isn't special talent but nothing more than sheer grit and unique opportunity that creates Outliers seems fatuous, and liable to needlessly encourage a class of plodders who will end up very disappointed (and resentful of M. Gladwell, Esq.) in 10 years' time. It struck me when I listened to him speak in London last month that the 10,000 hours might just as easily be confirmation, rather than falsification, of the presence of raw talent. If you take two violinists, one tone deaf and the other unusually gifted, all else being equal, who is more likely to stick at it for the ten years it takes to achieve concert level proficiency?
To be sure there are some fascinating lessons to be drawn here, but precisely at the point where Gladwell allows himself to drift off the moorings of his underlying theory: ethnic theory of plane crashes, which seemed to establish very little about outliers even on his argument, is cogent (and in these melting markets, timely) caution as to the risks of autocratic behaviour. Towards the end of the book Gladwell reaches some uneasy conclusions that, based on the extraordinary results of Asian schoolchildren in mathematics, that US schools should effectively abandon summer holidays and have children attend school all year round, like they might if they were working in a rice paddy. I'm not convinced that more school (as opposed to better parenting) is the answer.
It was my fortune to be reading Steve Gould's classic tome on scientific sceptism at the same time I read (and listened to) Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell's prescriptions are analogous with the flawed IQ testing programmes Gould so elegantly takes to task: the hypothesis comes first, and the intellectual process behind it is the search for evidence in support of it rather than a dispassionate attempt to falsify. It is hard to imagine how one would go about falsifying (or proving, other than anecdotally) Gladwell's theory and even harder to conceive what prospective use Gladwell's learning, if true, could be. Seeing as the "golden opportunities" can only be identified with hindsight - once your outlier is already lying out there, this feels like the sort of junk science with all the trappings - and utility - of 20:20 rear vision.
Olly Buxton
Book Review: Product Of Place And Environment
Summary: 4 Stars
Outliers: The Story Of Success is the latest book by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and focuses exclusively on the topic of what makes a person successful and another not. Gladwell is answering the question many have asked themselves, `why and how did he make it?' The answer is not as simple or romanticized as one would believe. It involves demystifying cult of personality.
Outliers' lecture contends that to be successful the qualities needed go beyond one's choices or actions alone. One has to go beyond the particular person and look at outside factors like culture, community, occasions and where one is placed. Gladwell wants to correlate the health of the residents of the town of Roseto in Pennsylvania, for instance, to success factors in general despite the same residents' poor dietary choices. Why an `outlier' community (which is very healthy relatively) like Roseto can be an oasis of wellbeing teaches the rest of us things about why some are successful. The answer involves family and civics. Gladwell argues that deliberate and conscious choices are not everything, but sources of things, like origins, societal class as well as application make a difference. Should this method give us a blueprint for success then we can all make a difference early on.
So Gladwell challenges our understanding of success and insists that success requires pushing, aiding and encouraging from one's parents, class, city/region of birth and that background is more important than the fabled ingenuity of the progeny who pulled more than his weight to reach the summit of success. It may not be a message of hope, but the author has come with examples and statistics. These include how the winter-born children do much better in the CHL and NHL (hockey leagues..) in droves by a margin. Why? Having met the cut-off date of January first, they are in groups that make them the bigger child, receive better coaching and more practice. It looks like, while the hockey players' ability is present, luck and the time of birth give them an advantage. Older children in a class perform better at school and later and therefore, societal choices are more pivotal than rules and individual talent. The same applies to individuals like Bill Joy who is celebrated for his work on the UNIX operating system and founding Sun Microsystems. Gladwell terms it the 10,000 Hour Rule where so much opportunity and practice, if available and possible, leads to success. He further goes on to insist that 10,000 is indeed the number of hours of practice needed to be not good, but a standout, at anything. Even Mozart, the supposed child progeny, wrote his first masterpiece after the age of twenty after so much practice. Here is the kicker: practicing for 10,000 hours on anything is improbable without active support and facilitation by one's parents. Society has a choice in how much talent it produces. These choices affect the productivity of a society and indeed a country.
In this framework, Outliers relates the stories of The Beatles and Bill Gates, two diverse success stories. It turns out that luck and practice make perfect. Opportunity and circumstance come together and correlate with practice and later success. Except, one doesn't need just any luck. One needs extraordinary and unusual luck for the stars to align.
The example of Christopher Langan, a certified genius with an IQ off the charts, in a chapter called The Trouble With Geniuses, again points to (in this case bad) luck and (lack of) opportunity. In this context, the book argues that thresholds, such as IQ scores beyond a level, are more important than comparative numbers and scores. Once one is in a high enough percentile all possible outcomes are available to one. The top scorer in a SAT examination is as good or as probable a success as the runner-up or number ten. A corollary is how one can be of `average' intelligence and still win the Nobel Prize for instance. Many Nobel Prize winners, turns out, are actually not that `intelligent.' Universities do many injustice as they churn out their top graduates to `the man' when these are actually no better in succeeding than lower scorers in absolute terms. Gladwell cites a study by sociologist Annette Lareau who proves that rich parents are involved, poor parents are not and hence poor children are easily intimidated by authority and do not gain a voice which gives them the chance to make it. The probability of success is pre-determined in that dividing line. Family matters because of the attention to grooming, coaching and acclimation to success. New York City Jews did not succeed in spite of their humble origins, but because of it. They had the right skills at the right time.
In the second part of the book, Gladwell asserts that cultural legacies persist. One's ancestors' behaviours transmit themselves to the following generations. It is hence important to recognize and understand cultural legacies. The author uses commercial flights as an example to demonstrate how the operations by lower ranks is the better and safer way. Junior flight officers should not mitigate their expressions and behaviours with their supervisors, or in this case the head pilot. Rank is unimportant and one would do well to speak up!
An easier language (an important part of culture) in numbers and counting in Asian languages is a mitigating factor. This is the kind of inner (shall we say `institutional') advantage that helps Asians perform better in math. There is no IQ advantage. Since the numbers are easier to learn, they are easier to remember as a young child, making math simpler, more pleasant and so on. Over the years, this has become a shared trait. This shared circumstance is a perfect example of the impressive correlation between one's culture/legacy and success. Having said that, a criticism might aim at and ask how the above data and conclusions apply to those who are excluded. That is, would the reverse be true under scrutiny of numbers? Although, interesting insight is provided in this respect by surveying the chart on the world's richest men earlier in the book. Having said that, much of the book is not original science, but rather conclusions and compilations of others' thoughts.
Culture, opportunities are domineering factors, in addition to subsequent persistence, in determining success. It is not all IQ and smarts or a rags-to-riches fable. Luck and circumstance cannot be denied. Give individuals , people and society the right tools, opportunities and a chance and watch the seeds yield fruit. Societies would do well to give as many as possible a leg up and the chance to seize success through provided circumstance and as much help as possible. The environment of the particular group though must be favourable to the task as well however. There is nothing especially innate otherwise about those we deem so gifted.
Book Review: Air safety chapter conclusions so flawed as to be worse than useless.
Summary: 1 Stars
Gladwell's analyses of various issues from the beginning of "Outliers" seemed convincing to start with. However, with the "ethnic theory of plane crashes" he got on to something I actually knew about. I have had 35 years as an international airline captain, working extensively on this very subject for both my own airline and the global pilots' organisations. This chapter revealed that the shallowness of his research can lead Gladwell to sweepingly inept and arguably racist conclusions, resulting from the just the same type of cultural biases he criticises in others.
The "ethnic theory of plane crashes" starts with a valid and important issue: that the relationship between crew members in an airliner cockpit, communications skills, and workload management are crucial factors in determining whether the outcome of an event is benign or catastrophic. Unfortunately, Gladwell reaches the simplistic and possibly racist conclusion that people from some countries will inevitably make bad pilots and have lots of accidents, because he totally fails to understand that the situations he describes were not solely the result of simplistic "national" cultures.
In fact the dominant issue is the internal culture of the individual airline, in which "national" culture is just one of many factors. What is most critical are the procedures that dictate how individual tasks are allocated between the two pilots. This is the responsibility of each airline and is based strongly on its interpretation of the airplane manufacturer's handbook - and historically the major suppliers have been from the USA.
What Gladwell terms as "piloting" is actually a number of quite different tasks that need to be shared, particularly during the approach to landing when most accidents occur. Gladwell hits this point (without recognising it) when he endorses the attitude of a pilot friend who says "when I had a problem, I said to the First Officer "you fly the plane"".
This meant that he (the Captain) could concentrate on the critical tasks of overseeing and managing the flight, and communicating effectively. These are exactly the aspects for which Gladwell criticises the Korean and Colombian pilots. Yet he never asks "why didn't the Colombian and Korean pilots do that?"
The bottom line is recognising that "piloting" involves more than just immediate hands on the airplane controls, but strategic planning, communication, and systems management - and one person can't safely do all of them at the same time in an airliner, even if you can in a small plane. Most of the time, being the "hands-on pilot" is a lot less critical (and prone to error) than the other things.
Gladwell notes that the frequency of accidents (even in the US) is much higher when the Captain is in direct control of the airplane. He is apparently quite unaware that this has been recognised in the airline industry for over 60 years, especially outside the USA. Simply changing an airline's "crew co-ordination" procedures so that the co-pilot normally flies the approach, preparatory to the Captain making the actual landing, hugely reduces the frequency of the type of accident Gladwell describes, and is widely recommended by major air safety organisations. It is exactly what Gladwell approvingly notes his pilot friend Ratwatte does with his Helsinki medical diversion example. It is widely documented in recommendations after accident investigations, but crucially is not part of the basic procedures provided by the airplane manufacturers, because their handbook only describes how to do the individual tasks. So they will say, for example during the landing, "Pilot flying does X, other pilot helps by doing Y".
Gladwell's research clearly got as far as a couple of accident reports, but rather than make any deeper analysis of the problem, he much prefers to provide specious detail from voice recorder transcripts. This lets him make his pre-judged national cultural point. If he had dug any deeper, he would inevitably have been asking why these simple procedure changes are still not widely implemented across the entire international airline industry, as they address precisely the issues of power-distance index, Captain-First Officer (cross-cockpit) authority gradient, mitigation in communication, effective Crew Resource Management, and all the other technical terms which he throws around with apparent authority.
Why didn't Gladwell dig any deeper? I suspect it is because his own cultural bias simply told him he needn't bother to look any further. He just assumed that because the US has the lowest ranking of plane crashes by country (to use his rather simplistic approach to accident statistics), simply forcing other cultures to apply an "American attitude to piloting" will fix problems elsewhere. Unfortunately, it can't and won't work if that is believed to be the only change needed - as Gladwell appears to think.
The fact is that the American airline industry IS generally very safe, and as a direct result provides the model for many other countries. Many US airlines HAVE implemented changed procedures for some conditions, but even the US industry it is not perfect and still needs to make changes. But as Gladwell points out, the USA scores highest for individualism on Hofstede's "individualism-collectivism" scale. For that reason, American pilots are among the most reluctant in the world to accept the idea that as a normal procedure, flying an airliner in the 21st century should be regarded as a shared task - which is what is ACTUALLY required. Gladwell should be pushing that idea, not just in the "high PDI culture airlines" whose ethnicity he thinks makes them inherently bad pilots, but in the USA as well - and not only because the nature of aviation is such that much of the world simply follows US practices. Gladwell is not entitled to simply say that an entire nation's aviation activity is unsafe, unless they change their whole cultural background and social etiquette to be more American, which is what he is in effect saying.
Gladwell starts out with an important public safety issue. He makes an initially plausible sounding analysis, but this is actually seriously flawed by his own cultural and other biases. As a result he spirals into some completely improper conclusions, for which he has gained a lot of publicity. Before writing this review I tried to communicate with him, but my messages have not been acknowledged, and I can only conclude that his "Ethnic theory of plane crashes" is more important to him than actually addressing the issues he's raised. That to me completely undermines the value of anything he writes or says. In the end, this chapter is worse than worthless. We have a high profile "intellectual" apparently analysing an important issue. Through ignorance he advocates an inappropriate solution, albeit one that will find a ready audience. What is hard to forgive is that by doing so he has made it harder to get the right one implemented. And in the industry he is talking about that will cost lives.