You could just tip me over with a feather

by Posted on

The sev­enth book I read in 2010 was Mal­colm Glad­well’s first book, Tip­ping Point: How Lit­tle Things Can Make a Big Dif­fer­ence. I’ve read (and report­ed on) both of his oth­er books, Blink and Out­liers. Both I thought were excel­lent, so I guessed it would be worth my while to read the book that got Glad­well’s career in hard­cov­er started.

My only com­plaint with Tip­ping Point is that I should have read it first. The oth­ers build on and expand upon the ideas in Tip­ping Point. Out­liers espe­cial­ly seems to be a spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tion of the con­cepts set forth in Tip­ping Point; it’s not just the lit­tle things that make a big dif­fer­ence, but the lit­tle things that make those big dif­fer­ences in peo­ple’s lives.

As a result, I came away inter­est­ed but not feel­ing as though any new doors had been opened from read­ing Tip­ping Point. It’s not exact­ly a new idea that small changes can make big dif­fer­ences, but the exam­i­na­tion of cir­cum­stances in which small changes could bring impor­tant and much-desired results is impor­tant. We need more peo­ple think­ing like Mal­colm Glad­well about the solu­tions to the prob­lems that we face.

In some ways, Glad­well’s books remind me of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. The Art of War is full of exam­ples of small, some­times coun­ter­in­tu­itive changes one can make to strat­e­gy which open a space that allows for the desired result. Sun Tzu, like his con­tem­po­rary Lao Tsu, believed that rush­ing head­long into bat­tle, army against army, was the result of strate­gic fail­ure. It is far bet­ter to win the war before it has begun. Bet­ter still is to get what you want from your ene­my while your ene­my believes he has got­ten the bet­ter of you.

So Glad­well posits (and backs up his the­o­ry with research) that vio­lent crime can be reduced by focus­ing on non-vio­lent offens­es, clean­ing graf­fi­ti and ensur­ing that win­dows and street­lights are kept in good repair. He exam­ines caus­es which can be addressed with much greater ease than by deal­ing with their effects. As our nation and our world gets more dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed and as tech­nol­o­gy advances, we need more of this kind of think­ing that looks at sys­temic solu­tions rather than attempt­ing to con­front each prob­lem one at a time.

Published by splicer

4 Replies to “You could just tip me over with a feather”

  1. I have read Tip­ping Point and

    I have read Tip­ping Point and Out­liers, and I agree that Tip­ping Point brought no new rev­e­la­tions. I thought that Out­liers was sim­i­lar­ly weak, although the exam­ples were more inter­est­ing. Still, I read it in a cou­ple of hours at one sit­ting, and that tells me there was­n’t a lot of depth. Glad­well just put what appear to be com­mon-sense ideas togeth­er into a well-writ­ten book. Since com­mon-sense isn’t all that com­mon, it is no won­der that edi­tors and review­ers were “aston­ished” at his “insights.”

    As for graf­fi­ti and bro­ken win­dows caus­ing urban vio­lence, I dun­no. Cause or effect? I know if I had to live in ANY urban envi­ron­ment I would prob­a­bly resort to vio­lence, too. (I say that sit­ting here look­ing out my win­dow at green grass, trees bud­ding, daf­fodils daffing, for­syth­ia syth­ing, and my bicy­cle calling.)

    Dad

    1. I hope that does­n’t mean that

      I hope that does­n’t mean that you skipped Blink, which I think was by far the best of his three books.

      As for the con­tents of the oth­er two books, I think he delves a lit­tle deep­er than plain com­mon sense. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary? No. Insight­ful? Yes. Back to my com­par­i­son to The Art of War. Even though mil­lions have read The Art of War over the course of the last 2600 years and there’s been plen­ty of time for its ideas to per­me­ate all the cul­tures on the plan­et, there’s a rea­son that new copies get print­ed; we need to read it again and again to be remind­ed of its rel­e­vance and to com­pare its ideas to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tions we face. The rea­son com­mon sense is so eas­i­ly for­got­ten may be that it isn’t repeat­ed and applied to new sit­u­a­tions the way that Glad­well has.

      1. I’ve been mean­ing to read all
        I’ve been mean­ing to read all three of these books, so I’m glad you’ve read them for me. I’ll start with Blink. 🙂

    2. Tip­ping point — … com­mon sense
      I’ve only read Tip­ping Point and Blink and I agree with Dad.

      > Since com­mon-sense isn’t all that com­mon, it is no won­der that edi­tors and review­ers were “aston­ished” at his “insights.”

      Com­mon sense seems to be the point upon which much of this turns. So where is it? IMHO, it has been the aspect of mat­u­ra­tion most often under­val­ued and unde­vel­oped. The intu­ition that leads to com­mon sense has been ignored in favor of rote solu­tions to the most com­mon prob­lems. The aban­don­ment of devel­op­ment of this vital intu­ition has meant depen­dence upon oth­ers for a sup­ply of syn­thet­ic com­mon sense. 

      With­out reg­u­lar exer­cise, atro­phy of intu­ition occurs. So, maybe we agree that it is not so much the small changes mak­ing big dif­fer­ences as it is the impor­tance of exam­in­ing the cir­cum­stances that facil­i­tate the inau­gu­ra­tion of these small changes.

      Per­cep­tion is key to any prob­lem solu­tion. And if the tool set is ham­strung by miss­ing ele­ments, the odds of suc­cess are dismal. 

      So, I main­tain that true com­mon sense is not some flighty on-again-off-again gift of the tru­ly wor­thy but an attribute miss­ing most­ly due to lack of prac­tice of its required every­day discipline.

      Thanks for salt­ing the idea field — I enjoy your efforts.

      Bob Amberg­er