‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell, published by Penguin Books

I reviewed Gladwell’s book ‘The Outliers’ for an earlier blog and have been fascinated by the way in which his ideas have caught the imagination of people I know. Mention Gladwell’s name to a group of managers and you are likely to find someone who has read one or more of his books, often people who would not normally read management texts. I bought my son in law ‘What the Dog Saw’ last Christmas; the copy is now on his desk in ‘dog eared’ form and he’s regularly boring me with quotes from it.

Yet the response from some academics has been typically negative, ‘just a colourful story teller’ and ‘cherry picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry’ were two typical reactions in reviews of his work. Yet ‘Tipping Point’ sold two million copies. This reaction from the academic world reminded me of the initial response to Peters and Waterman when they published ‘In Search of Excellence’; it smacked of jealousy that it had become the best-selling management book of all time. Academics do not like journalists getting in on their act.

I decided to review ‘Blink’ on a friend’s recommendation that it is the best of his books, even though it is the least well known. After reading it I emerged convinced that there is something in his arguments and was armed with lots of ideas and anecdotes that are useful in both course and dinner table environments. Just as I could initiate debates about whether it takes 10,000 hours practice to be really good at anything after reading Outliers, I can, after reading Blink, quote evidence for my long held belief that being six feet tall makes success in business more likely.

The underlying message of Blink is that first impressions and intuition count more than we realise and can be more valid than more complex analysis and research. As with previous books, Gladwell keeps the reader’s attention with lots of anecdotes and statistics, with sometimes a bit of theory. He keeps our attention because his stories reflect everyday life and cover a wide range of contexts and disciplines. He links them all to what he calls ‘Rapid Cognition’, instant assessment which will produce better results than can be achieved through more considered judgment. The secret is in knowing what to discard and what to keep.

Having advanced the theory, he chooses anecdotes to back it up and, though one would have to agree with academic critics that his scientific method is questionable, he certainly makes you think. He suggests that a four question decision tree has proved to be a better predictor of heart disease than medical examination, that you can better predict a student’s personality by quickly examining their bedroom, compared to interviewing them. I could see this point but was unsure how, with rapid cognition, you can be sure that you have chosen the right factors. Love at first sight is a well-known concept but how valid are the results?

One particularly interesting theory was that you can predict the effectiveness of a teacher by looking at a silent two second video of their appearance in the classroom; I recalled the troubles MTP has had over the years judging effectiveness of potential trainers after a whole series of interviews and trial sessions. But you can see where he is coming from; sometimes you do just know that someone is not going to be a good teacher after those first few seconds, yet, out of politeness, you still have to sit through the full session!

The problem with Gladwell’s books is that you end up unsure whether he is just very good at stating the obvious and backing it up with nice stories or whether he really is making a contribution to management thinking. I described some of the ideas in the book to a marketing colleague and his view was that it was all obvious stuff to marketers, the basis for instance of focus groups and segmentation. But, more than any other management writer of modern times, he makes you think and he makes reading enjoyable. So, despite the criticism, I’m a fan.