Mark Charmer asks whether Malcolm Gladwell's cult book really cuts it.
I think the world neatly divides into people who are fascinated by the concept of ‘types’ and those who hate such categorisation of people. I love it, and can spend hours on the subject. Gladwell’s connectors, mavens and sales people really do exist and I can think of many successful creative teams that combine such elements. I could probably define most of the ways in which I work with people in some way like this – I am probably often a connector, a regular maven but rarely a salesperson. Finding the sales people is something I always have to do.
I’ve been hearing the phrase ‘tipping point’ quite a lot of late. And not just anywhere – BBC Radio’s Today Programme of all places, which is almost a royal endorsement of the concept. For anyone trying to understand how things change, how the future is formed and how people support or discourage that change, this book seems, on the cover, like you’ve struck gold.
Reading Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell coincided with a few other conversations. First, my friend (in marketing) did a Myers Briggs psychometric test. She’s an ENTJ, apparently, and was trying to work out what this meant for her. Second, a (marketing) director friend of mine recounted a senior training course a few years back where everyone got a copy of Gladwell’s book. Tipping Point was, for him, yesterday’s big story. A bit ‘dot com’, in the days when every graph grew exponentially. Well mostly it didn’t, but every MBA graduate thought they’d get lucky.
The business school vibe continues. I’ve spent years trying to interpret new innovations and turn them into meaningful concepts for the outside world, so found Gladwell’s tales of teams at Hush Puppies and edging brands across tipping points interesting and, on the surface, quite useful. Even the reference to Graham Allport’s descriptions of how the WW2 Chinese teacher rumour in the US was ‘leveled’ (details removed) then ‘sharpened’, are all great stuff and relevant to many situations. But a nagging doubt followed me throughout – that somehow his alleged miracles felt contrived and assembled together in a less than scientific manner.
I remain unconvinced that Gladwell has a theory. The book is presented as offering a new theory – that some kind of observable, potentially controllable tipping point occurs in all kinds of commercial and social situations. We have interesting observations and case studies to set the thing rolling, a natty idea on the kinds of people to have around to try and massage tipping points and then some examples of how smart people have controlled tipping points.
Part of the problem with some of his case studies is the blind adoration involved. While he presents the Sesame Street story as an imperfect development case, his description of Gore-Tex is unbelievably perfect – anyone in business knows that no organisation is without problems. His Airwalk case study is even worse – I have never read such a load of reverse engineered hindsight-driven management tosh. First, what is this case study doing following another (Hush Puppies) from the same sector? Oh, and am I alone in noticing that Airwalk had a groundbreaking collaboration with Goretex? A huge portion of this book might be based on a single, linear line of enquiry.
Linear isn’t something you could use to describe the chapter on suicide and smoking. This sits almost entirely separate from the rest of the book and its observations don’t adequately connect with his other theories. Was it a thesis he developed for a postgraduate project that somehow got glued on?
It gets naffer. His 150 person team barrier is an old management theory that runs and runs and is frankly old ground but it highlights how this book is partly management theory on the challenges associated with midsize company growth. When you start to get this, Gladwell’s study becomes remarkably transparent in its thinness. The Hush Puppy / Airwalk / Goretex thing feels like a client-driven or postgrad study on innovation in the footwear industry. The suicide and smoking stuff doesn’t really connect with the other theories and might have been another project. Same with the study on Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. A take on New York’s crime trends is interesting but far from scientific. And then there’s standard issue discussion on growth stages of teams and businesses with some nice characterisation about the sort of people that drive innovative businesses. Business school boring, all wrapped in the natty tipping point idea.
Natty some of it may be, interesting some of it is, yet Tipping Point is assembled, shallow ad-industry fodder. Gladwell’s overall concept is blandly applicable in all kinds of situations. And there are some solutions in here that will sell consultancy or get you a promotion. You see, somehow a combination of connectors, mavens and salespeople will send your sales stratospheric. It has all the credibility of the exponential chart. And as I mentioned earlier, dot com style exponential growth is usually down to luck. One thing’s for sure – Gladwell got lucky when this book tipped.
Mark Charmer is director of The Movement Design Bureau. He reviewed Tipping Point for The Future Cities Project.
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