CSU EXPOSITORY READING AND WRITING MODULES WHAT IT TAKES TO BE GREAT | 1
READING SELECTION
What It Takes to be Great [Adapted]
Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great
success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work.
By Geoff Colvin
Fortune, October 30, 2006
1 What makes Michael Jordan great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren
Buffett the world’s premier investor? We think we know: each was a natural who
came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett
told Fortune not long ago, he was “wired at birth” to be an investor. It’s a one-in-a-
million thing. You’ve got it - or you don’t.
2 Well, folks, it’s not so simple. You are not a born CEO or investor or chess
grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard
work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that’s
demanding and painful.
3 Buffett, for instance, is famed for his discipline and the hours he spends studying
financial statements of potential investment targets. The good news is that your lack
of a natural gift is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can
make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.
4 Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings across a wide array
of fields. Understand that talent doesn’t mean intelligence, motivation, or personality
traits. It’s an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well. British-based
researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson, and John A. Sluboda conclude in an
extensive study, “The evidence we have surveyed ... does not support the notion that
excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts.”
5 To see how the researchers could reach such a conclusion, consider the problem they
were trying to solve. In virtually every field of endeavor, most people learn quickly at
first, then more slowly, and then stop developing completely. Yet a few do improve for
years and even decades, and go on to greatness.
6 The irresistible question—the “fundamental challenge” for researchers in this field,
says the most prominent of them, professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State
University—is, Why? How are certain people able to go on improving? The answers
begin with consistent observations about great performers in many fields.
7 Scientists worldwide have conducted scores of studies since the 1993 publication of
a paper by Ericsson and two colleagues, many focusing on sports, music and chess,
in which performance is relatively easy to measure and plot over time. But plenty of
additional studies have also examined other fields.
No substitute for hard work
8 The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work. It’s nice to believe that
if you find the field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one; but it
doesn’t happen. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or
practice.