What it takes to be great

A revista Fortune de 30 de Outubro, na sua edição europeia, traz um interessante artigo assinado por Geoffrey Colvin “What it takes to be great”.

Uma das principais mensagens que retiro do artigo é a de que o sucesso custa muito trabalho.

“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.”

Não há acasos, nem Pélés ou Eusébios de nascença (“The evidence we have surveyed ... does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts.")

Por que existem diferenças entre humanos? Por que não somos todos extraordinários?
“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.”

“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. Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.“

Mas não chega trabalhar para cumprir o calendário, há que trabalhar deliberadamente para melhorar:
“So greatness isn't handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn't enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What's missing?” e “it's all about how you do what you're already doing - you create the practice in your work, which requires a few critical changes. The first is going at any task with a new goal: Instead of merely trying to get it done, you aim to get better at it.”

A importância de trabalhar com modelos, de perceber o que é importante e ignorar o acessório:
“Through the whole process, one of your goals is to build what the researchers call "mental models of your business" - pictures of how the elements fit together and influence one another. The more you work on it, the larger your mental models will become and the better your performance will grow.”

O artigo completo pode ser encontrado aqui.