Talent is Overrated by Geoff Covin

I Posted this to a blog:


I just glanced at this book, it was mis-shelved in the computer section; it belongs in Business and Management, which is the main problem I have with its ideas. Aside from the fact that Colvin seems to completely misunderstand the magnitude of the achievement of an 11 year old Mozart to write seven symphonies and get the function of the Augmented Sixth Chord established, and that the message of concerted practice at anything is obvious, it is the audience the book is directed to that bothers me the most, the very goal-oriented results-driven who distract the people who work with them from creativity and the support it needs. It seems to me that the most important factor in talent is a zen quality to be single minded in attention to the craft and to not care or be distracted either by what others want or say, least of all the average idiot who manages others. America will revert to a second class power because of its focus on results rather than its encouragement of talent. The latter will find better soil elsewhere, and not in Asia, but in Europe where it thrives because of a better toleration and not a short term ROI, that spoils things here. Cheap and Chintz will not reward Patience.

And I added:


Just an after thought on what I wrote above. The issue that is most glossed over in books written for business people about the people they manage is forming goals, and that relates to talent where goals were formed long before some business-types encounters someone whose abilities he may or may not call talent. It is because the business person does not recognize talent; he only sees a possible fit with HIS goals. And that is where Colvin’s idea falls apart. People become famous, or get recognition, or get hired, or get rich, NOT because they are talented, but because the average idiots in the world see value in what they do. The lesson of history is that most of whom we recognize from the past who have contributed to us with what we would call talent go unrecognized by their contemporaries and if we are to encourage that as a result the very last people whose judgement we ought to trust are results-driven business people. They don’t know anything; their word is not to be trusted at all.

It takes time for the truth to become visible and emphasis on short-term ROI is the last way to find out.