Grit(9)

Impressed? If not, let me add that Chia also has degrees from the Peabody Conservatory in piano performance and pedagogy—and yes, she’s performed at Carnegie Hall, not to mention Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and at the palace recital commemorating the presidency of the European Union.

If you only saw her credentials, you might leap to the conclusion that Chia was born more gifted than anyone you know: “My god! What an extraordinarily talented young woman!” And, if Chia’s research is right, that explanation would embellish her accomplishments with more luster, more mystery, and more awe than the alternative: “My god! What an extraordinarily dedicated, hardworking young woman!”

And then what would happen? There’s a vast amount of research on what happens when we believe a student is especially talented. We begin to lavish extra attention on them and hold them to higher expectations. We expect them to excel, and that expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’ve asked Chia what she makes of her own musical accomplishments. “Well, I guess I may have some talent,” Chia said. “But I think, more than that, I loved music so much I practiced four to six hours a day all throughout childhood.” And in college, despite a punishing schedule of classes and activities, she made time to practice almost as much. So, yes, she has some talent—but she’s a striver, too.

Why did Chia practice so much? I wondered. Was it forced on her? Did she have any choice in the matter?

“Oh, it was me. It was what I wanted. I wanted to get better and better and better. When I practiced piano, I pictured myself onstage in front of a crowded audience. I imagined them clapping.”



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The year I left McKinsey for teaching, three of the firm’s partners published a report called “The War for Talent.” The report was widely read and eventually became a best-selling book. The basic argument was that companies in the modern economy rise and fall depending on their ability to attract and retain “A players.”

“What do we mean by talent?” the McKinsey authors ask in the book’s opening pages. Answering their own question: “In the most general sense, talent is the sum of a person’s abilities—his or her intrinsic gifts, skills, knowledge, experience, intelligence, judgment, attitude, character, and drive. It also includes his or her ability to learn and grow.” That’s a long list, and it reveals the struggle most of us have when we try to define talent with any precision. But it doesn’t surprise me that “intrinsic gifts” are mentioned first.

When Fortune magazine put McKinsey on its cover, the lead article began: “When in the presence of a young McKinsey partner, one gets the distinct impression that if plied with a cocktail or two, he might well lean across the table and suggest something awkward, like comparing SAT scores.” It’s almost impossible, the journalist observed, to overestimate “the premium placed within the McKinsey culture on analytic ability, or as its denizens say, on being ‘bright.’?”

McKinsey is famous for recruiting and rewarding smart men and women—some with MBAs from places like Harvard and Stanford, and the rest, like me, who possess some other credential that suggests we must have very big brains.

My interviews with McKinsey unfolded as most do, with a series of brainteasers designed to test my analytic mettle. One interviewer sat me down and introduced himself, then asked: “How many tennis balls are manufactured in the United States per year?”

“I guess there are two ways to approach that question,” I responded. “The first way is to find the right person, or maybe trade organization, to tell you.” My interviewer nodded, but gave me a look that said he wanted the other kind of answer.

“Or you could take some basic assumptions and do some multiplying to figure it out.”

My interviewer smiled broadly. So I gave him what he wanted.

“Okay, assume there are about two hundred fifty million people in the United States. Let’s say the most active tennis players are between the age of ten and thirty. That’s got to be, roughly speaking, one-fourth of the population. I guess that gives you a little over sixty million potential tennis players.”

Now my interviewer was really excited. I continued the logic game, multiplying and dividing by numbers according to my completely uninformed estimates of how many people actually play tennis, and how often they play on average, and how many balls they would use in a game, and then how often they would need to replace dead or lost ones.

I got to some number, which was probably wildly off, because at every step I was making another uninformed assumption that was, to some degree or another, incorrect. Finally, I said: “The math here isn’t that hard for me. I’m tutoring a little girl who is practicing her fractions right now, and we do a lot of mental math together. But if you want to know what I’d really do if I needed to know the answer to that question, I’ll tell you: I’d just call someone who actually knows.”

More smiling, and then an assurance that he’d learned all he needed to from our interaction. And also from my application—including my SAT scores, which McKinsey heavily relies on to do their early sorting of candidates. In other words, if the advice to corporate America is to create a culture that values talent above all else, McKinsey practices what it preaches.



* * *



Once I accepted the offer to join the New York City office, I was told that my first month would be spent in a fancy hotel in Clearwater, Florida. There I joined about three dozen other new hires who, like me, lacked any training in business. Instead, each of us had earned some other academic badge of honor. I sat next to a guy with a PhD in physics, for example. On my other side was a surgeon, and behind me were two lawyers.