Outliers - Understanding our potential

An outlying book

I would not offer further analysis to the fact that it took me 5 days to finish a 154-page book and soon after I finished reading that I thumbed through a 299-page book in less than two days.

I had heard of The Tipping Point [1] and Blink [2] but the hype surrounding the publication of the books and the ideas in it left me thinking they were quick-buck books given advertisement oxygen that would soon run out.

In fact, I did not know of the author Malcolm Gladwell [3] until just about 3 weeks ago when he appeared on a news programme to talk about his new book Outliers [4] and espoused the view that the prevalence of air crashes with Korean pilots was one of cultural significance rather than pilot expertise.

Power-Distance in the cockpit

That seemed an absurd generalisation to make but there was empirical data to buttress the points being made and this lead to the Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Index [5] and the consequence of a high Power-Distance Index on communication in the cockpit.

Apparently, because of the paternalistic nature of Korean society the First Officer always deferred to the Captain and even in danger situations the conversation was always mitigated never direct, however the Captain in his position would just give an order and expect it to be obeyed.

The cockpit is hardly the place where honest and direct communication should be lacking, in fact, there are too many cases of where communication breakdown in the cockpit has been the cause of crashes and it suggests that where the First Officer is flying the plane there is probably a higher level of safety than the other way round.

Essential new thinking

Outliers was quite a good read and it covered a lot of ground as to how the subtext we read about successful people hardly reads like the reality behind their successes.

Obviously, there are many learned scholars who would view some of these analogies and allegories as over-simplification, but then, just because there are elaborate studies of certain human factors for success does not mean that the accepted norms are the embodiment of the complete truth.

I would hear Malcolm Gladwell out first because he breaks down complex characteristics and phenomena into manageable chunks and I can see where commonsense thrives over convoluted preserve of the elite.

The winners of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine had to go against the accepted grain of knowledge in finding out that bacteria (helicobacter pylori [6]) can grow in the stomach and duodenum which causing ulcers and cancers – to think certain cancers could be cured by antibiotics – I am open to new thinking and Mr. Gladwell opens new avenues of interesting analysis, though one should not swallow it all.

Physical maturity over real ability

Malcolm Gladwell is not an anthropologist nor do I think he is a sociologist, but he gets you thinking and he puts together patterns and consequences from how the time of birth in the calendar and the selection processes based on the school calendar year is based on physical maturity rather than ability at childhood, going on to create sport professionals later on in life.

I could well agree that it was my higher physical development that allowed me to be a year below the class average age though it has not really perpetuated into great advantage for me, in areas like sport, that could make all the difference.

In my father’s generation you had to be able to pass your right arm over your head to touch the left ear to be admitted into the first year in primary school, just imagine how many age mates were unfortunately left behind because of that act of discrimination and separation, a few years down the line the ones left behind catch up and they are giants in a class of midgets along with the abuse that it could entail.

Work ethic and legacy

The real story of Bill Gates’ success is in having access to computers at the age of 13 and the thousands of hours spent learning programme and this was long before Microsoft in what he called the 10,000 hour rule.

Much as there are a combination of factors that made the Beatles a runaway success in the 1960s, he suggests that did all the graft work in Hamburg through long hours of practice and performance, I would suppose Tiger Woods and Lewis Hamilton come to mind as people who started very young honing the skills we now appreciate and celebrate – basically, there is no overnight success without the initial graft work.

He then covers the issue of background and generational influences that seem to endure even though we have moved on from those times, how the number systems of Far East Asian countries allows for them to be better at mathematics and how more time at school allows for children from seemingly poor backgrounds to perform well.

My early opportunities

Reading this book allowed me to understand even better why I still think my primary school education was the best gift from my parents and how having been in an very international setting albeit in Nigeria gave me a number of personality traits that allow me to be both respect authority and engage authority.

My father always said, I knew how to talk, I could make conversation with anyone if they are in the slightest interested in being engaged. No one could understand why I could sit for hours chatting to my great grandmother at the same time, I found I could walk into any office and feel comfortable without being enamoured by power or influence.

In secondary school, I found it strange that my other colleagues were scared of the teachers, what some might call disrespectful because of the very high Power-Distance Index meant that teachers never really got to interact in ways that allowed their passion for a subject to be infectious – in fact some teachers used their positions in sadistic domination of students.

Even in that kind of setting, I was able to make friends with teachers because there was no fear to engage them and what might have looked precocious was simply an inquisitive mind, it might have appeared smart but it was because I was not bound by the cultural encumbrances of obsequiousness and unnecessary genuflection – I think adults noticed it, engaged it and responded positively to it.

The gift of opportunity

There is much more in Outliers that gets you thinking about how our lives are shaped by circumstances that seemed to look like some destiny but the is fact we are gifted with all sorts of opportunities and where we have been able to grasp those opportunities we have been able to make radical difference to our lives.

It goes without saying that heaven still helps those who help themselves and as the Chinese saying goes – “Don’t depend on heaven for food, but on your own two hands carrying the load”. Outliers is a book that should have those who have suspended their intellect and God-given abilities for some system of false religion and fate to wake up and become Outliers too.

On the scale of Read – Skin – Toss, again, Outliers is a good Read.

Sources

[1] The Tipping Point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Blink (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Malcolm Gladwell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Outliers (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Geert Hofstede - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] Helicobacter pylori - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dead Aid - Review

Aid is not working

A couple of months ago it burst on our screens and there was all this rave about a book – Dead Aid – reviews in newspapers, interviews on chat shows, blogs awash with opinions and Twitter in overdrive.

Dambisa Moyo comes with impressive credentials and experience to boot having worked for the World Bank and been a global economist; she completed her Masters at Harvard and culminated in a PhD in Economics at Oxford.

I suppose that is enough to turn heads when she talks about aid especially when it runs counter to the megaphone diplomacy and sympathy-laden enjoyment-based concert fund raising efforts spearheaded by the apostles of aid to Africa in Sir Bob Geldof and Bono.

Easy reading

I consciously decided after all the publicity and debate I had heard not to offer any comments about this matter until I had read the book and reviewed its contents and measured the opinions proffered against reality, expectation and fantasy.

Dead Aid became part of my holiday reading, it was not a tough book to read and it sits in the genre of economics for dummies, taking basic examples, analogy and allusions to explain difficult subjects, it was just as good a read as the Undercover Economist.

At 154 pages, it probably could be finished in hours; between cocktails, the beach and waking hours along with holiday commitments of loafing around, it was done in just about 5 days.

What has aid done for us?

The book is divided into two parts named The World of Aid and A World without Aid – the first part is quite engaging, indeed, it is a brief history of aid and what it has now turned into – her historical analysis of aid and its failings were succinct.

We can more or less agree that the amount of aid poured into Africa has not necessarily shown any appreciable progress or benefits. There is no doubt too that there is a culture of aid dependency that might be counter-productive to development allowing for lazy policy and government activity.

It was also interesting to note that a vicious circle has evolved between the drug addict (aid dependent countries) and drug pusher (countries that mean well and find it an obligation to offer aid). I was not sure the external catalyst to wean off the addiction or the business model of the pusher is clear cut.

The aid industry is a beast, if not a leviathan, it needs to be fed and watered, the employees and the agendas in the West, the bottomless receptacles of ineffective utility in Africa engaged in a mutually destructive alliance that seems to prevent Africa from coming of age and leads the continent into a downward spiral of poverty, disease and insufficiency.

Implausible solutions?

I was not too sure that I followed the leap from aid dependency to tapping the capital markets through the issuing of bonds by the way of obtaining a sovereign credit rating. Whilst she does say sovereign ratings are different from corporate ratings, she suggests that businesses are limited to the ceiling of their sovereign ratings and offers examples of certain businesses that seem to have ratings higher than that of their countries.

I was afraid that the exposure as a global economist might have beclouded some stark realities in Africa, access to the capital markets requires that some fundamentals as infrastructure are available if not robust and governance through leadership are critical for confidence to be garnered from issuing bonds.

To garner support she suggested road shows which brought to mind Nigeria’s moribund rebranding project – there were examples but I felt they would be difficult to extrapolate without the fundamentals.

The Chinese are here

We all recognise that the Chinese are coming and they are offering deals of engagement than the West have ever afforded Africa. But this is just a new Bwanarism in my view, we still have Chinese managers and many Chinese staff supervising where their money is going in projects, however, I am not sure there is enough high-level African involvement to move from installation to maintenance, when the Chinese leave.

The danger of all these projects falling into disrepair is possible as with other aid sponsored projects that did not engage the communities in the purpose before execution despite the benefits that would initially accrue.

Trade and finance

Trade is growing but we need more equal partners in this enterprise, we also need to be able to appreciate what we have, a country selling off land to be developed for agriculture purposes by foreign lands is absurd, when we should be able to manage and cultivate the land and sell the food instead.

There is more scope for the Grameen micro-finance model, the advent of mobile telephony banking instruments but quantitative reliance on remittances as an anti-aid push is a bit far-fetched though one probably needs the brain of an economist to see the effects in entirety.

The Dead Aid model

The Dead Aid model suggests a secession of aid in maybe 5 years forcing governments to pull up their socks – I almost scoffed, but it might work for countries where the governments really care; care being used as an expression for those who understand the purpose of government as opposed to ones that just want to be in office and in power and nothing else.

To implement Dead Aid policies in the fictional Republic of Dongo that we were told of in the book, Dongo requires technocrats, in a very politicised country, it is difficult to focus on enterprise when it is power that offers privilege and opportunity.

Dr. Moyo herself confessed that she was not sure that opportunities in Africa offered commensurate challenges to her qualifications, but that is just half the story, there are so many of us who have been exposed to Western influences that would almost find it impossible to fit back into our indigenous settings along with the culture and attitudes.

We are of a different generation from our parents too who returned home to build the motherland and have rarely left since then – but Dr. Moyo’s assertions need to be road tested not by the pot-pourri of examples all around the world but by being engaged by African leaders in a concerted view to getting off aid and pursuing real development.

It would preposterous to adopt Dead Aid wholescale without participation that risks the reputation of the proponents that see the truth in the detail.

The need to more modern books

Beyond this, the references and notes in the books were not consistent and whilst URLs to certain documents were so long, as a user of Twitter those URLs should have been accompanied with shortened versions.

It like to read opinions and views but most importantly I like to see where the facts are derived from, and it should not be an extraneous exercise with cataloguing numbers for books and an accompanying website that compliments the views expressed in the book with all the alluded references, the audience does not want to be spoon-fed everything nowadays.

Presumably people with doctorates are accorded a modicum of originality of thought but this topic is too volatile in its assault on the norms of aid to be the main tome but a body of knowledge and opinions has to be created with the proponents coming to the fore – they have their work cut out against the juggernaut of aid.

In the end, to use the readability scales of another magazine which rates books as Read, Skim or Toss, I would give this a Read; you just cannot honestly participate in the debate about aid not working without reading Dead Aid as part of your reference material.

Book Reviewed:

Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa

ISBN: 9781846140068

Fly away holiday

Work hard play hard

Going on holiday is an integral part of my work-life balance, I work hard but reasonably within the hours God provides rather than all hours as if we have reached the end of time.

A whole stretch of working is always followed by a period of holiday that would last a minimum of 15 days and can go up 22 days.

The holiday we get in Europe is one reason why I will not cross the pond for work, productivity should always include the ability to have more time off, productivity is not living in fear of losing your job and only having 2 weeks off a year – that, in my view is slavery. Period. To borrow an Americanism.

For good reason you need the first week to wind down, the second to get out and do stuff beyond the routine of bathing, beer and beach.

By the third week you should be ready to return and be the freshest proponent of your calling and career as well as have stories to tell about your experiences and adventures – my stories are told in my blogs and pictures – I take plenty of them and throw them up on flickr.

Routine or adventure?

Planning a holiday is not too difficult, it settles somewhere between seeing something new which I do at least once a year and returning to old haunts which have their benefits of comfort, security, knowledge and service.

Packing for holiday is however a completely different conundrum and one struggles between what one wants and what one needs. Not to forget anything I might need is what I want but I never end up with what is really needed.

So, after shopping for holiday things – first aid kit, vitamins, batteries and reading material it was left to me to pack for 3 weeks holiday in the sun, not just shorts but other things that would allow you to turn out well without having to go shopping for those things whilst away.

Scheduled for a charter

Usually, I travel to Gran Canaria by scheduled flights but that includes a stop-over in either Barcelona or Madrid and a 4 and a half hour direct flight from Amsterdam ends up run for 7 hours or more.

The benefits of scheduled flights are myriad, 4 trips to my frequent flyer account, double the miles and rights if things go wrong – though I was miffed when I found that flying on my own accord was almost EUR 400 more expensive than if I went by the included charter flight.

Besides, I am able to take up to 35kg as opposed to a paltry 20kg, that is just about enough for basic makeup and lip gloss.

So, I packed and weighed the stuff on a set of two scales, one digital the other analog and it came to 24kg, so I unpacked everything and struggled to jettison some stuff, it came down to 22kg on my contrived measuring system – it was in fact 24.5kg and I had to pay excess baggage to Transavia, a KLM company that KLM does not accord any flyer bonuses.

The way they get you to pay up is to ask if you want to jettison stuff at the check-in desk – how you could ever do that, I do not know, the suitcase alone is probably 8kg – I should have asked if I could have sealed mailbags.

My boarding pass was ripped up and I was given an invoice to pay up at a KLM window where I was issued with another boarding pass, but really, I could have just had it printed out at one of the terminals again – my suitcase was already on its way onto the plane.

For the witching hour

Did I say, my taxi picked me up at 2:00AM? I do not enjoy charter flights for all sorts of reasons and that is one of them – our flight was to take-off at 5:15AM and it was already airborne at 5:08AM – we were the second flight out of Schiphol.

My seat was on the second row, typical of when I travel on scheduled flights and I always have the window, a magazine or two and a Sudoku puzzle book, my Creative Zen Mozaic MP3 player was playing back the classical playlist as I settled down to a nap, a snore and the occasional jolt.

The seat belt was quite extended, the person who occupied it before me must have been wider than they were tall, but there was no heat from the last sitter.

Front row seats also have that unusual situation of being sparsely populated, the middle seat was unoccupied, and travelling Economy really did feel like I was travelling Business Class.

The man behind me must have been in his 60s but he fidgeted like a kid, banging at the back of my seat that I first gave his wife that look, she restrained him for a while and it continued, then I gave him that look and it stopped.

Observing people dropped off

On arrival at Las Palmas, at baggage collection you could see a study in bizarre human behaviour, I am no anthropologist but the baggage comes out on a conveyor belt meaning eventually no matter where you are stood along the 70 metres of conveyor belt, your baggage will eventually get to you, but they all bunch up that the starting point and wreak havoc on each other collecting their stuff.

I now arrange a personal transfer from the airport to the hotel because when we travelled on the coach we had a tour of all hotels in Maspalomas and Playa del Ingles until we are the last to be dropped off 75 minutes later.

I arrived at the hotel to the greeting – Welcome to your second home, Sir – it is my 4^th time at the Riu Palace Maspalomas Hotel and I am a creature of habit because the staff here have the habit of making my stay the complete absence of stress the epitome of ease.

The rooms are not that luxurious, I have been in bigger suites, but it is people that make hotels not the building – as I remember, when leaving home, the heavens were open with rain pouring down, I arrived at my second home and the heavens were open with rays of sunshine kissing my body and making me tan naturally.

It is too far away to think of the 25^th, I’ll just have a cocktail and put my feet up today.