FUTURE TALENT November - January 2019/2020 | Page 76

P
PERSONAL TRAINING
The value of range: how generalists
triumph in a specialised world
B
ack in 2008, Malcolm Gladwell published his
book, Outliers, in which he popularised the
‘10,000-hour rule’ based on Anders Ericsson’s
work on deliberate practice.
Greatness, according to Gladwell, requires time;
at least 10,000 hours of practice is the key to
performing at the top of our game. But is it really that
simple? Since the book was published, the
‘10,000-hours rule’ has been dogged with criticism,
including from Ericsson himself, and Gladwell has
been forced to defend and fine-tune his argument.
One thing is clear: this book from David Epstein
promises to be a key contribution to the debate. In
Range, Epstein turns the deliberate practice theory
on its head: rather than specialising
deeply and early, he calls for a re-
| Clare
appraisal. His research into the
world’s top performers, from
professional athletes to Nobel
laureates, suggests that early
specialisation is the exception, not
the rule. Many tend to be
generalists, often taking time to
find their calling, trying out
interests, learning from failure and
acquiring knowledge across
disciplines. That experience
makes them more creative, agile
and able to make connections
that the specialists just don’t see.
Epstein contrasts the early
careers of Tiger Woods and Roger
Federer, the former almost born
with a golf club in his hands, the
latter trying out a range of sports
before, as a teenager, he ‘began
to gravitate towards tennis’.
Although he started later than
many other tennis players, this was
no impediment . His stor y,
according to Epstein, is more
common than we think, giving the
lie to the claim that
‘hyperspecialisation’ is a prerequisite for high
performance and success; instead, Federer-style
‘sampling periods’ may be a better predictor. He
distinguishes between teaching strategies that
emphasise repeated practice, which can lead to
‘excellent immediate performance’ and ‘interleaving’,
which develops inductive reasoning in which students
“learn to create abstract generalisations that allow
them to apply what they learned to material they
have never encountered before”.
76 // Future Talent
Grist
Epstein is not suggesting that Federer was able
to walk onto a tennis court and win; once he’d started
‘gravitating’, the focus and structure needed to
become a top tennis player kicked in. But, it’s
intriguing that Epstein’s wide-ranging research and
anecdotes suggest that sampling a range of interests
– even trying and failing – can give us the skills and
resilience we need to succeed down the line.
To be fair to Malcolm Gladwell, he hasn’t shied
away from endorsing Range, despite it providing yet
another challenge to the 10,000 hours rule: “David
Epstein manages to make me thoroughly enjoy the
experience of being told that everything I thought
about something was wrong,” he says. In fact,
Gladwell himself has defended his
argument by placing himself
Taylor
towards the middle of a continuum
with pure natural talent at one end
and focused deliberate practice
at the other. Much depends on
context. Even Epstein admits that
his generalists do best in fields
that are ‘more complex and
unpredictable’, citing the work of
psychologist, Robin Hogarth, who
differentiates between ‘kind’
learning environments, such as
golf or chess, where patterns
recur and feedback is unequivocal
and ‘wicked’ environments where
patterns are less easy to establish
and feedback is unclear or even
non-existent.
For Epstein, most of the world
is ‘not golf’, the basis of his
argument that, when it comes to
tackling the unfamiliar – and
prevailing - world of the wicked, a
broad range of experience and
learning is more useful than ‘kind’
environment specialisation.
Range is a fascinating book,
itself ranging widely to support a
rigorous and eloquently presented argument. There
is much to be said for a theory which champions a
diversity of interests and experience as a precursor
to success, even if the door is still left slightly ajar for
a more Gladwellian appreciation of how, in some
contexts, practice can still make perfect when it
comes to making it to the top.
Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
is published by Macmillan.