I teach intro to business statistics usually every semester.  While students grasp the concept of the mean rather easily, the notion of variance and standard deviation often takes a little longer.

Take the 10,000 hours "rule," for example.

Popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," the 10,000 hours rule basically states that through dedicated practice, reaching this "magic number of greatness" allows one to achieve a professional level of proficiency regardless of talent or skill.

In the fascinating new book, "The Sports Gene," David Epstein (that will likely provide a number of posts to fulfill my #8ManRotation quota), challenges the belief in 10,000 hours.


What is often ignored in the discussion are a couple of items.  First, is the notion of sampling and research design.  In the original 10,000 hours study of musicians, most individuals were already screened out, making it difficult to discover evidence of innate talent.  It is extremely hard to create a longitudinal study where groups are divided into those who receive 10,000 hours of training against those who do not.

Second, variability is not often discussed.  Is 10,000 the hard rule, or do some take a longer or shorter time.  In the Sports Gene, Epstein highlights the work of Guillermo Campitelli and Fernand Gobet who recruited 104 competitive chess players of varying skill for a study of chess expertise.  They found that it took 11,053 hours to make it as a professional chess player.  Much more interesting was the range of hours it took to attain master status.   "One player in the study reached master level in just 3,000 hours of practice, while another player needed 23,000 hours."  As a result, Epstein notes about the musician study, "it is impossible to tell whether any individual in the study actually became an elite violinist in 10,000 hours, or whether that was just an average of disparate individual differences."

Epstein also shares an anecdote about the skilled Swedish high jumper Stefan Holm.  Holm fastidiously practiced - 12 hours a day for years on end - to become a world class athlete, winning the Olympic gold medal in 2004 and equaling the record for the highest high-jump differential between the bar and the jumper's own height.  However, in 2007, he faced Donald Thomas, a jumper from the Bahamas who had only just begun high jumping.  In less than 8 months of training, Thomas cleared 7'7.75" to win the NCAA indoor high jump championship.  Despite such insignificant training time, Thomas defeated Holm, winning the world championship.   While not the sole reason, it was found that Thomas had an incredibly long Achilles tendon that better serves one's ability to rocket throught he air.

Nonetheless, being fat, 45 years old, and 5'9'' with a limited vertical leap, LeBron has nothing to worry about, even if I practice 10,000 hours or more.  Much like Thomas had an incredibly long tendon, you can't teach height!

Every Thursday, I receive the latest issue of The New Yorker and I quickly turn to the table of contents to see this week’s set of contributing authors. I usually look for two names: Malcolm Gladwell and Atul Gawande. While Gladwell, I believe, needs no introduction, Gawande is an endocrinologist who writes frequently on the topic of health care. However, like Gladwell, he also often writes on decision-making.

So, it was with some excitement that I read his latest book, “The Checklist Manifesto,” Gawande tackles the problem of complex decision-making and problem solving and with it provides some suggestions that human resource managers should take to heart. Our world is becoming increasingly complex, and that has led to two significant problems. First, “the fallibility of human memory and attention, especially when it comes to mundane, routine matters are easily overlooked under the strain of more pressing events.” We tend to focus on a particular tree, and lose the forest. The second problem “is that people can lull themselves into skipping steps even when they remember them.” Even as non-programmed decision making becomes more familiar, people look for short cuts. The answer, Gawande argues, is the simple checklist.

Gawande recounts the story of Peter Pronovost, as critical care specialist at Johns Hopkins, who put together a simple 5-point checklist to address the problem of central line infections. This checklist consisted of

• doctors washing their hands with soap
• cleaning the patient's skin with chlorhexidrine antiseptic
• putting sterile drapes over the entire patient
• wearing a mask, hat, sterile gown, and gloves; and
• putting a sterile dressing over the insertion site once the line is in.

Simple and obvious, right? Yet, when Provonost asked nurses to observe doctors in the ICU for a month and record how often they carried out each step, more than a third skipped at least one step. Pronovost got Johns Hopkins Hospital administration to authorize nurses to stop doctors if they skipped a step. They monitored the results for a year, and found that infection rates went from 11 percent to zero. They also calculated that the checklist had prevented forty-three infections, eight deaths and nearly two million in costs.

Gawande also shares the familiar story of Chelsey "Sully" Sullenburger, whose exploits in landing US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after the plane collided with a large flock of Canadian geese. While much has been made of Sully's experience, much of the success of the landing can be attributed to the array of checklists he and his co-pilot had at their disposal in case of such an emergency.

Why might there be reluctance to adopt checklists? Gawande argues that, first, checklists are boring. We get thrilled with the latest technological advance, but checklists lack flair. Further, they require discipline, something we often lack. It is something we have to work at. Third, is pride. As we become more specialized and gain more expertise, checklists often seem beneath us.

With that in mind, how can checklists be applied to the many tasks facing a human resource manager, such as:

• detailing the steps to take with an applicant when they come in for an interview, ranging from greeting him/her to following up after the interview?
• terminating an employee
• a disciplinary or performance appraisal interview
• an industrial accident
  
• one employee attacking another

Do you have checklists of your own? Have they worked? Why or why not?