Best selling author of ‘The Tipping Point,’ ‘Blink’ and ‘Outliers’ and staff writer for The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell will be in Ottawa at the NAC on June 11. Using anecdotes, fresh insights and engaging stories he will leave you brimming with ideas and creative solutions – no matter what your line of work – engineer, designer, entrepreneur, CTO, CFO, CEO, community leader – there are lessons here for us all.
We’ve arranged a 10% discount off the purchase price for individual tickets for members of The Ottawa Network (#TON). Purchase your tickets online at United Way Centraide Ottawa and enter promo code Promo8
Also, thanks to our friends at United Way/Centraide who are bringing Gladwell to town, you can also win a pair of tickets to the event.
Simply post your favourite quote from one of Gladwell’s books in this blog. I’ll keep track of all the entries and on June 5 we’ll put all the names into a hat and draw a lucky winner of two tickets to see Malcolm Gladwell on June 11 at the National Arts Centre, Southam Hall. The event takes place from 4-5:00 pm.
Get your entries in now and you can enter as many times as you want. Just include a new Gladwell quote with each entry. See you at the event.
Rick
We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility. Malcolm Gladwell
“We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably beneficiary of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.”
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers (2008)
We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
“People weren’t getting their jobs through their friends. They were getting them through their acquaintances. Why is this? Granovetter argues that it is because when it comes to finding out about new jobs — or, for that matter, new information, or new ideas — “weak ties” are always more important than strong ties. Your friends, after all, occupy the same world that you do. They might work with you, or live near you, and go to the same same churches, schools, or parties. How much, then, would they know that you wouldn’t know? Your acquaintances, on the other hand, by definition occupy a very different world than you. They are much more likely to know something that you don’t. To capture this apparent paradox, Granovetter coined a marvelous phrase: the strength of weak ties. Acquaintances, in short, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.” The Tipping Point
“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just the right place – it can be tipped.” pg. 259 The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell.
“Have you ever wondered why so many mediocrities find their way into positions of authority in companies and organizations? It’s because when it comes to even the most important positions, we think that our selection decisions are a good deal more rational than they actually are.” Blink
“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”
— Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
“We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.”
— Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
“The Law of the Few says that one critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger.” Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point)
We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that – sometimes – we’re better off that way.(blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
“We store information in other people” (The tipping point)
We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play — and by “we” I mean society — in determining who makes it and who doesn’t. (Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell)
The lesson stickiness…
There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.
Page 132, The Tipping Point
Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good. (Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell)
Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking. (Blink)
“If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.”