HIGHLIGHTS: Malcolm Gladwell

0:00Hi, everybody. Tune in to this short version of the podcast, which we do every Friday. For the long version, tune in on Wednesdays. Hi everyone, I'm Nikolaj Tagen, the CEO of the Norwegian So-one Wealth Fund. And today in Good Company, we have a tremendous guest, Malcolm Gladwell, who has refined the way we think about things like success, intuition, and how ideas spread. Great to have you here, Malcolm. Wonderful, glad to be here. You, in a way, invented the concept of tipping point. What type of tipping points are you seeing now? In the United States, for example, college-age population, the number of kids applying to college is plummeting.

0:42It's one of the most dramatic shifts that we've seen in generations. And I really think that's important. And I cannot tell you why it's important. I don't think we know yet. But I really do think there's something that's, you know, that could be a good thing. It could facilitate the introduction of new kinds of kind of cognitive technologies like AI because we simply have a smaller cohort of people who are competing for them. It dramatically changes the kind of social balance of power within industrialized societies if that sector of the population is shrinking. I don't know. It just – but it strikes me that we've been living in a world where we have been steadily expanding the number of college-educated people for 150 years.

1:26and that may be coming to an end. And that's weird. You have argued that being open to correction builds trust and credibility. Why is it so hard for leaders to admit they're wrong? Because they're confusing two things. I think that they're confusing admitting you were wrong about your ideas and admitting you were wrong, admitting to a kind of moral failing. I do think admitting to a moral failing is something that is fundamentally damaging. I don't think your colleagues will forgive you easily or move on quickly from the knowledge that you have done, that you have revealed some fundamental flaw in character.

2:16But admitting that you were wrong about an idea or an action, and that you understand the nature of your mistake and are daring to do something about it, strengthens my belief in you as a leader. It makes me think that you are someone who's better adapted to a fast-changing world. And also, it makes me feel better as an employee because I understand that this is an environment that doesn't penalize risk-taking. And I think people confuse those two. You say that failure and mediocrity in sport can teach us a lot. So, what are your thoughts there? You were a previous runner. You still run. Yeah.

3:01You ran faster in the past, of course. Yes, I did. As do we all. Well, you know, it's funny. I have many feelings about sports, and I it took me a long time, but I came to the, I listened to too many CEOs. So many CEOs or people running companies told me that they like to hire former athletes. And for a long time, I dismissed this. And then I realized there must be something there, that there must be picking up on, there must be something specific that is taught in sports more effectively that's taught in other domains when we're young. But the second question is, is the thing that's being taught in sports specific to being good at them?

3:51Or is it just specific to participating in them? In other words, to benefit from whatever good is coming out of being a long-distance runner, do you need to be an Ingebrigtsen? Or can you be Malcolm Gladwell coming somewhere in the middle of the pack? And the answer is, I'm now convinced that there may be as many, if not more gains, to being good or mediocre as opposed to being very good. I don't think you want to be the—and I think we get—for among other reasons, the time costs of being exceptional are so large that they crowd out other kinds of knowledge and skill acquisition. What you want to be is someone who is simply acquiring the kind of discipline and thought processes that come from participation in a sport without being overwhelmed by it.

4:49Now, you identify as an introvert. What have you learned about introverts' approach to challenges? I mean, are you really an introvert or are you just saying it?

5:04Well, the introvert is someone who is not hostile to social interaction. On the contrary, we can be inspired by it, throw by it, love performing. But someone for whom social interaction is costly. So I am someone who is, I enjoy this conversation. I enjoy interviewing people. I enjoy giving talks. But it's costly. In other words, it does not invigorate me. It drains me. Thanks. So that just means that we, because we regard those activities, we understand those activities to be costly. We ration them like you would in any, whereas the extrovert does not ration those things. I watched, once watched Bill Clinton work a room.

5:51He's the quintessential extrovert. he is so invigorated by meeting people that he will do it indefinitely. I mean, he would stay in that room for hours if he had a chance. That's not what the introvert is. Why do people at the top complain more than others? This is one of the mysteries. There are many mysteries that I find with wealth. There are several wealth paradoxes. One is the wealthy should logically, complain less about taxes and be less sensitive to tax rates than the poor, right? Because they're wealthy. It makes up, you know, they still have so much left over. They can still live their lives.

6:38And yet they seem to be far more sensitive to even subtle changes in tax rates. Now, that may be because they're more focused on it, whatever. There's all kinds of other reasons you can come up with. But fundamentally, as a psychological problem, You would think the acquisition of great wealth would permanently remove any worries I had about impingements on my wealth, right? Because you're rich now. But people never—they never seem to—rich people never seem to reach the point where they say, I'm rich. And that means I can now focus on enjoying myself, hanging out with my family, going sailing.

7:14You know, no, they're still obsessed with the impingements on their own wealth. So that's sort of mystery number one. Mystery number two is that you would think that the acquisition of great wealth would make you aware of the fact that the rest of the world looks at you differently. In other words, if I am a 17-year-old working two jobs with no money and I complain, the world understands the nature of my complaints. You're young. You have no money. You're family. But if that 17-year-old grows up to be a billionaire, the world looks on that same set of complaints very differently. Instead of being sympathetic and understanding of them, the world now says, why are you complaining, right?

8:01So there's a certain point in the maturation of an individual where we have to realize we can no longer behave in the same way as we did previously if we would like to maintain the respect of the rest of the world around us. Many, many wealthy people don't make that transition. They don't understand that we don't want to hear about their complaining anymore once they have enormous wealth. What is your advice to young people who want to think differently? Travel would be the first. In fact, I think it may not even be necessary at the beginning to go further than that. I just think, particularly now, one of the dysfunctions of elite production in the West is that we increasingly sequester young people in these homogeneous universes.

8:59They're simply not getting access to people outside their class, peer group. And that's fine. It's a very efficient way of learning the modes of kind of elite performance. But it really hampers them when they are put in a position where they have to deal with someone outside of their world. And what is the fastest way outside of that bubble? It's to travel. I just think, I don't think a university education, for example, is complete if it does not require the student to not just leave the school, but leave the school and go somewhere that is profoundly different in its social structure and political structure and whatever structure than the place they grew up.

9:55to you.