Page 146 - Hard Goals

Difficult 137

The people who make your team successful are not usually
any smarter than anyone else. And the coworkers that make
your life really diffi cult aren’t somehow lacking in IQ points
(royal pains, yes; morons, no). In the real world, raw talent isn’t
the predominate determinant of success. What matters way
more is desire, hardiness, work ethic, and a striving to tackle
big (and diffi cult) challenges.
K. Anders Ericsson is a professor at Florida State Univer-
sity and one of the top researchers on expertise. He’s the fi rst
person to debunk the idea that it’s somehow natural talent that
determines what people can achieve. He says, “The traditional
assumption is that people come into a professional domain, have
similar experiences, and the only thing that’s different is their
innate abilities. There’s little evidence to support this. With the
exception of some sports, no characteristic of the brain or body
constrains an individual from reaching an expert level.” 1
Fortune editor Geoff Colvin wonderfully distills and expands
the work of Ericsson and other leading expertise researchers in
2
his book Talent Is Overrated. And he uses this as evidence to
prove the point that a “lack of talent” is quite simply not a valid
excuse for not doing big things.
In most of life, attitude does matter more than aptitude.
Why? Because if you have the right attitude, you can tackle
your HARD Goals while signifi cantly increasing your aptitude.
Consider a 1992 study Colvin refers to that sorted 257 music
students by instrument, age, gender, and income. Researchers
asked study participants about their musical precociousness,
how much they practiced, and which of the nine standard levels
of musical performance they had achieved at school. Here’s big
fi nding number one: no profound or conclusive measurement