hello greetings from Philadelphia and thank you very much for having me uh

it's my honor to follow Mark and to um say that you know in uh a climate of uncertainty and change um but also I would say you know historically across time that there has been a quality of the highest Achievers in every domain at least every domain that I have studied and that includes leadership um

so I'd like to present to you today what I have discovered about what grid is why it's special and what this means especially in the leadership context um

I want to say on a personal note that I grew up with a father who only talked about being a world class achiever literally that's all we talked about at breakfast at dinner on the weekends summer vacations um

and my dad talked a lot um implicitly about how the highest Achievers were naturally talented they were smarter than everyone they were more gifted

and what I grew up to learn as a psychologist is that Talent innate Talent especially has nothing to do with grit

let me show you four questions from the grit scale to give give you a sense of what I'm talking about um

here's an item that indexes your perseverance for long-term goals ask yourself whether if I talk to your closest colleagues whether they would rush to tell me that you are an especially hard worker um

would they tell me that you uh finish whatever you begin um

this item by the way um also an index of your perseverance for longterm goals is the single most predictive item on the grit scale

so this is probably what you think of when you think of grit someone who's really a hard worker also uh you know resilient in the face of setbacks they finish things when a lot of other people quit

and I would tell you that that is half right because that is half of grit uh but grit is also passion for long-term goals

and let me show you two items from the grit scale that index your passion for long-term goals

and before you read them I need to warn you that they're reverse scored meaning that if you read them and you say wow that's just like me that's how everyone would describe me then actually you get a lower passion score and a lower overall grit score

for example I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take more than a few months to complete or I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one

given that I'm following Mark and his comments I do want to say importantly that when I study grit this combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals I want to say on the passion element that in the context of uncertainty and change now more than ever what I what I mean about passion for long-term goals is a kind of steadfast and even stubborn dedication to some top level goals

some it's usually very abstract it can even be um so abstract as to not be easily understandable by other people um

but you want extreme agility and flexibility on how you're going to get there um

and I think that reconciles in some ways the current environment of of uncertainty and change with this um Timeless character strength of grit

now I said that in my research that I found grit and talent to be not at all related and that's exactly true in my re Arch and in research from around the world

when you measure IQ or other kinds of natural ability uh you find that IQ is great it predicts achievement but it's not correlated with grit which I think is at least as essential

and I want to um share with you one personal um relationship that I have with a paragon of grit because I think he illustrates um how talent and grit are different and how grit in some ways unleashes uh the the the talent that uh people have in order for them to accomplish great things um

meet Toby Cosgrove

Toby Cosgrove grew up he was a a very mediocre student uh turns out he had dyslexia a reading disability but um in those days they didn't have a word for it they just thought he was slow um

but he wanted to be um a doctor and he eventually um got into medical school and he eventually graduated from medical school

and it was time for him to choose his specialty um he wanted the hardest one so he he chose heart surgery and and it was the most competitive and everyone told him he couldn't do it um

but Toby did it anyway um

he was told while he was a resident in uh heart surgery cardiac surgery that he was the least talented individual there was um

and uh he didn't disagree with that um but he believed that he could learn from his failures

failure is a great teacher he said um

and Toby went on to work and work and work at refining the craft of cardiac surgery um

he said he was on a constant quest to find ways uh to do things better

and I want to share one um very specific story from you know Toby's early years as a cardiac surgeon um

he realized that there were other surgeons in the world who were far better than he was so he would uh go and see see them he would get on a plane like Mark did and he would travel and he would stand in the operating theater not operating himself of course and he would take notes and he would watch like a hawk

and these these Discovery trips um as he sometimes called them he would come back and then he would have a goal he would have a picture in his head of something he could do better that he would try to do as as best as he could and then to refine and refine and refine and to improve

and I want to share with you how this links up to um what is sometimes called the 10,000 hour rule 10,000 hours of practice

now it's a dark Auditorium and I'm in Philadelphia I'm not with you but I'd like you to raise your hand if you've ever heard this expression 10,000 hours of practice 10,000 hours you know makes you great at what you do well um

uh I know it's not the same country but I do want to say that in Sweden there was born a scientist named Anders Ericson

and um he was the scientist whose research became popularized as the 10,000 hour rule

now Anders was a dear friend of mine he passed away several years ago um but he spent his entire life as a cognitive scientist trying to understand the learning curve of worldclass experts so Grand Chess Masters Olympic gold medalist athletes Prima ball Aras worldclass mathematicians etc etc

and that expression that you've heard of 10,000 hours of practice comes from a single study just one of his studies that showed that at a German Music Academy the very best musicians those who would go on to recording contracts and um achieve worldclass prominence um they had on average about 10,000 hours of a certain kind of practice

the next group had less of it maybe 7500 hours and the worst group who were still pretty great because this was a selective German Music Academy they had maybe 5,000

now that became popularized as a kind of um heris a rule that the quantity of practice makes you great but I want to show you a different learning curve that Anders also discovered

and this graph essentially summarizes his lifetime of insight into how to become world class at what you do you can put in 10,000 hours or 20,000 or even 40,000 hours of a different kind of practice a less effective kind of practice and actually stop improving unlike worldclass experts

I call this the plateau of Arrested Development and I think it makes the point that it's not just quantity of practice that makes you world class it's the quality of the practice you're doing

now I want to unpack that for you very specifically because I think there's a lesson in that for every leader for every investor and indeed every performer who wants to get somewhat better every day at what they're doing

before I unpack that I want to show you another learning curve um

I have two daughters and I rais them to believe that life is a multiple choice question

you have a choice of improving every single day at what you do that's the path to becoming a world-class expert

there is plateauing at some level of mediocre performance you know you get better in your first year you get a little better in your second year but maybe in your fourth or fifth year you're just on autopilot that's probably most people

and then there's a third choice for you in life and that is to drop out of what you're doing

now especially given Mark's comments and my own um personal history and what I've learned as a scientist I want to emphasize to you today that dropping out is sometimes exactly the thing to do especially when there's some low-level goal some tactic some quarterly objective that's just not working out or when the opportunity cost exceeds what you're doing right now

those are excellent reasons to drop out

I played piano when I was a little girl and I'm so glad I quit because I wasn't very good at it and I didn't love it and I was able to take my time and devote it to something else

but what you find about every worldclass investor and every worldclass leader is that they eventually find something that they love enough to keep with it to stay improving and improving to have passion for that long-term top level goal that keeps them motivated

now here is what Anders Ericson discovered about highquality practice

it has three specific elements and they're quite easy to understand but maybe not easy to do in combination

the first element is that you must decide on a very specific narrow aspect of your overall performance and you drill that in particular

so uh if you if you ask an Olympic Athlete you know like you know a skier you know like what are you doing they're not going to say I'm skiing better they're going to give you a very technical answer that you probably only understand if you were also a worldclass skier

now they uh they do this usually with a coach helping them but when they practice they usually practice alone

so Andre's discovered toward the end of his career that almost everyone needs a mentor to show them and to help them identify what to do next but when they do the work it is almost always uh alone uh so they can concentrate completely and and really pay attention to what they're doing

so the second element is practicing with complete Focus the opposite of multitasking if you will

and the third element is the hardest motivationally psychologically I would say which is that you have to get feedback on what you're doing feedback back on that performance and then to repeat the cycle again

and I say it's the most difficult motivationally because if you tell me one thing that I could have done better for you today in my 15 minutes with you I will immediately be defensive

I don't want to hear you criticize what I just did but if I ignore your feedback then I will never get better as a speaker

and so this feedback is the essential element closing the feedback uh cling the learning Loop but also it's something that is the enemy of ego

now if you are somebody like Toby cosgro if you do this kind of deliberate Practice Day in day out to become a better cardiac surgeon you have a top level goal

let me show you what a hierarchy of goals looks like uh for somebody like like Toby Cosgrove

all human beings have goals but what makes gritty people special is that there is a top level goal for which they are have so much passion and persever that they don't give up

for Toby that was to improve the patients lives that he was working with both the quality and the length of their life

and to achieve that goal he had mid-level goals you know prevent cardiac conditions the treat the conditions coordinate care

and then there were these low-level tactical goals that uh he should be more flexible and agile with but he should be very stubborn about the top level goal

now I want to say what happened to Toby

so he became uh arguably the best heart surgeon in the world he invented many procedures um that are still in use today um

and then he became a leader uh he became a real leader and he um uh became the CEO of the Cleveland clinic

now the Cleveland Clinic is um uh one of the world's most um renowned medical facilities and suddenly Toby had to understand how to lead with grit not just how to be a Prof former with grit but a leader with grit

and I want to end with this Insight I believe that what a gritty organization is a gritty company for example is uh in a way it's a macrocosm of what a gritty individual is

so there is still a top level goal there is a goal hierarchy with mid-level goals and low-level goals

I believe that the top level goal in this case when Toby took over the Cleveland Clinic he made the top level goal put patience first

just those three words

everybody walked around with buttons that said put patience first

when I talked to the uh secretaries and the custodians anybody at the Cleveland Clinic I said what's this place all about they said put Patients First every single one of them told me that

now they all had different jobs right they all had different functions there was a hierarchy but there was this steadfast stubborn dedication to a top level goal

and I want to say in conclusion that if you believe that Talent is not enough if you believe that it's not enough to be lucky if you believe that in addition you need to have passion and perseverance at the individual level as a performer you must also believe that you need that at the organizational level

and that to me is the essence of leadership with grit um

in the words of the Great American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson any institution is the lengthened shadow of its leader

when I find gritty leaders I find gritty organizations when I find gritty organizations I find gritty leaders

there is a top level goal that motivates both

and in on a personal note I will say the reason I am so delighted to be with you um is that I think niiki is uh truly a great leader uh he leads with grit and integrity and has been an example for me uh for many years

so in friendship and in uh admiration I say thank you