Talents in the society and market

Statistically talents are rare individuals. 

Convincing the above statement

You may argue talents are hyped and every person/child is special in his own way. So you may want to discard the notion of some individuals being talents. But please read on:

Consider you are trying to hire the best instructor for your child with unlimited budget for expenses. Or your son has met with an accident and you want the best doctor to operate, again with an unlimited budget at your end. Or while looking for a lawyer for your daughter in her marital case. Or while hiring the CFO of your company about to file its IPO. You will look for the most qualified person. You will be biasing towards someone one with a flawless track record, achievements or high profile recommendation under her belt. Suddenly you will respond to phrases like: "He practiced in Harvard Medical School" or "He was VP Finance at Goldman Sachs" etc. etc. as if earning such tags or brands require some qualification to justify something in a person. Good, so now we both agree that talents are not mythological creatures.

Next, consider a cognitive science lab which claims that it has unlocked the secret of how a human brain learns. Then the pedagogy experts jump in to create "super easy" training modules. And here lies the paradox: A certain knowledge or skill was supposed to be linked with "talented individuals" and the moment the knowledge or skill is massively available, those people are no longer deemed as talented anymore.

So where exactly lies the catch?

Well, learning is not about the end results but the process of learning itself.

What is a talent?

It was August 2013 and I had joined Gandhi Fellowship, which I found to be a very beautiful program to test one's strengths and weaknesses, and reflect on oneself, but terribly infected by undeserving and poor quality mentors. So we, the fellows, were given 5 schools to improve in our tenure in geographically different communities. The early part involved teaching in a classroom so that we have lived and empathized enough as teachers ourselves before getting involved in managerial improvements. It was during this period that one of my co-fellows came up with a creative idea.

She observed that the kids were having difficulty in recognizing and writing the alphabets. In devanagri script, there are some similarity in the alphabets visually. So she proposed of rearranging the entire alphabet order to facilitate easy teaching. Eg the alphabets: व, ब, क etc should be clubbed together. Our mentor was particularly excited for such kind of project. It showed some great promises indeed in Indian pedagogical scenario, perhaps can become a major hit. Our other co-fellows were half excited and half surprised.

But I had a different viewpoint. I didn't think that something so fundamental cannot be just waiting to be discovered so easily and unceremoniously. I knew the arrangement of alphabets in Hindi was in accordance to the phonetics. Family of same phonetics were clubbed together and they were arranged in a certain pattern of the primary part of mouth involved in pronunciation of that particular alphabet. But that is not a very strong reason which can resist a breakthrough idea. And then it stuck me.

It's not about making the student learn the alphabets but the student making himself learn. Of course even I had tried rearranging the alphabets in my head when I was learning. But without much encouragement or flexiblity of my teacher. And here was the catch. It may sound too basic or useless but it has profound effect in real life.

Remember when you were actually stuck with some concepts or chapters. In real life you can just skip anything which you are finding difficult but when you were a student then or are in an important role in career now, you may find yourself terribly stuck, stressed and helpless. That is because we don't know how to make ourself learn a new thing.

So I gave my argument against my co-fellow's proposal. I proposed that it benefits a child much more if we show him a color card of "green" color and she discovering on her own that the color resembles the leaves. The moment we are handing him a leaf and declare to her that this is green in color, we are essentially making her a handicap and making her greatly vulnerable and ill prepared for greater challenges and learnings in life. Subsequently,  her idea was dropped.

So that brings us to our original story: talents, by definition, are expected to be rare. That's why talents are less about results and more about the process. And that process is: making oneself learn.

That's it.

Who is a talent?

If one can make oneself learn something on her/his own then she/he is a talent. Someone who has an ability to creatively and critically learn a skill either with one's self interest or under motivation of adequate incentives. 

In everyday conversational life a mean hack to quickly assess someone to be a talent can be in these three ways:
1: Display of black humor: It is the ability to critically detach and see a fresh usual perspective on something. Black humorist lack sentiments like emotional patriotism, blind loyal love towards parents or employers etc.
2: Some achievements under belt: Be it natural ability or hard work, but having some achievement is a quick way to at least conclude one may not be stupid if not over the top talented.
3: A dedicated skill based hobby: Learning a new skill like playing a learning instrument or oil painting requires activation and perception of a different set of brain cells. Combine this with the patience needed to learn a new skill, the ability or the experience to have spent time with oneself struggling to learn something, recognizing one's strengths/weaknesses and overcoming it in the process or being aware of it.

And here are few interesting things about activities involving "talents":

1: If everybody or the majority can learn something on their own or easily then it is no longer a talent. Eg. bring able to write was seen as a talent once, but in the present stage of our civilization it is not. Being able to code was seen as a talent but as more and more people are learning the skill, and there are more resources available, that is no longer seen as talent. 

2: Another thing about talent is that, it's value is directly related with its economic value. Eg. as a child I thought people who can beat box were extremely talented. And I knew I was right perhaps. But not many people were excited to learn or make their child and citizens learn that skill due to lack of its economic value. As a result it was not exactly a respectable talent or called exactly a talent in socio cultural norm, beat boxers are, in general, seen a "skilled" rather than "talents".

3: Despite having no intrinsic economic values a talent can still be seen respectable and be in demand. That is when either the people at the top of the socio economic ladder financially encourage a certain talent (music used to be such before they were commercialized), or if they themselves pursue them and give that activity certain social stutus (like painting or golf or leaning piano in India etc.).

4: The concept of talent is nothing new. Talents always had been in great demand by corporates (seeking individuals who have made themselves learn something which others have not been able to). This practice has encouraged blooming of bizarre practices which attrancted talents which were otherwise inexistant. Eg skills around using MS Excel, which was seen as a talent a couple of decades ago. And this further strengthens the argument that talents should have an economic value.

There may be other numerous traits too but these are the fundamental ones. A talent can be under threat or die out if the above conditions are not met.

Distribution of talents in a population

There is another curious thing about talents in a population set:

Gussian Curve.

So when mapping competency frequency curve of any skill we will always get a Gaussian curve, or more popular as bell curve. Depending on the type of skills and community under observation the μ  and σ will vary. But a standard curve will be something like this:

If I may quickly explain:

Genius: They display exceptional level of natural competency in a skill. They are quick learners, able to train themselves intuitively with ease.

Talents: They have enough competency to instigate competitive feelings among themselves and others. Their learning ability is backed by hard work and/or good mentor-ship / training.

Hard workers or laid backs: They either lack competency or motivation to give top performances. They are normally good - average self learners.

Strugglers or uninterested: These people are the real sufferers. It may happen to anyone stuck in a class unrelated to her interest or natural skill set. They are average - bad self learners.

Unfortunates: Let's be honest. There are always some bottom performers. They may be genius in some other thing or at a natural disadvantage genetically.

Now like every adjacent categories, the category of genius and talents also overlap. Genius may comprise of a not so exceptional individual undergoing rigorous training while a talent can be a genius with a bit of chilled attitude. So, obviously, there are two ways to land up in these top categories: with good genetics / natural competency or by hard work / environmental advantages. If we take the top performances and see what factors are behind those in a simple venn diagram, it will be like this:

If you are convinced of this then, then let's plot a common graph of each factor vs percentage of population depending on each factor to deliver top performance. That will approximately look like this:

The above graph representing nothing but the age old observation: the percentage of geniuses who also engage in hard work (may be due to need or right motivation) and have supportive environment (parental support, socioeconomic resources, exposure to other talented peers etc.) are very rare indeed. The people falling on the extreme left end of the above graphs are the prodigies who some of us might have known while growing up, but as we enter college etc. they lag behind due to either lack of resources or right inspiration. They have gone underground or are not seeing the need to push their performance beyond certain comfort zone. The people on the extreme right of the above graph are the people who work hard. They may not be genius or specially gifted, but when given enough time they train themselves and ace in the performances, or are motivated by some good mentors or helicopter parents or someone else...

That small percentage of people who are both genetically at an advantage, and have the right attitude and resources are extremely rare. They are also more prone to become a victim of despair.

Some examples of such people are George Soros, Björk, John Updike and those who you can think, who all their lives have worked hard to push their performances irrespective of their age or social challenges. I was fortunate enough to meet a couple of such people who I thought held great promises but then they fell victim of despair or just the general bold move that they limit their greeds and extents of curiosity. Both being very fascinating in their own ways indeed.

Movements of talents in society and market/organizations

Who love the talents?

Everyone. Starting from parents to the corporate executives. The reason is their ability to learn new things by themselves and thus producing a greater output than resource invested on them. Great corporate want great innovations so they constantly look out for them. On this I, if allowed to drift, would like to make more points:


1: Where are your peers who you considered prodigies while growing up have ended up? 

Statistically in the present times they are concentrating in the tech giants. A couple of decades back they were making their ways to banking and consulting. But there is a profound difference in their work cultures. One is nurturing its employees in the most pampered ways while other is engaging in fierce competitions. Assuming both are run by smart people, their respective work culture must be economically rewarding to both the organizations. This means tech startups has less supply of talents compared to the other elite organizations in the past.


2: What does a talent want (or who taps them)?

This is a stupid question. But if you are an organization then there may be a couple of answers:
a) From talent perspective: Freedom
    From organization perspective: Problem statement
They need freedom to approach their work in their own way. This may be a total nuisance to a large scale organization which give more points to processes and norms than the tasks at hand, since they have a large workforce to coordinate among itself and has a complex structure.
So when does an organization need them enough to grant them a large degree of freedom?
When they have challenges or problem statements that need to be to solved and not managed. So if you have a challenging problem statement then you can attract a talent. Early tech startups and ultra selective finance industry roles tap this route.

b) From talent perspective: Friends
    From organization perspective: Peers
What is the core motive of a talent who is not in despair? To learn new things.
What is the other way an organization can retain talents either as a potential future resource or horde them from going to competitors? By bringing a lot of similar minded people together and creating an ecosystem. Tech giants are especially known to pioneer this route. Why else would talents love to work somewhere where their job essentially is to, as Hammerbacher put it:

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads”

Types of talents

Consider a tight rope walking artist. She surely has a useless talent. Useless because neither the society nor the market is finding it useful enough to pay her enough compensation based on that skill. But there are some talents which are lavishly compensated and sought after. So how do we classify talents? One way is to accept the fact that our society has been designed such that an individual must contribute in someway, ie take up a professional route to earn money in order to survive. So let's do it in the type of activity/ route they take to earn money.

If not a victim of despair, then there are two kind of talents: Originals and Improvisers.

a) Originals: They are fiercely obsessive and independent. They are more probably shaped by their genetic advantages, but I am fortunate to have seen obsessiveness shaping such category of individuals as well. They fall into two categories again: Artists and entrepreneurs.
   i) Artists are ego centric, viewing the world in their biased lenses which may at times perceived as delusional. They have their own set of rules in their own mental worlds. A hacker/coder may also fall in this category
   ii) Entrepreneurs are adapting and think they can bring change in the society/market. They are ready to rise up from failures and not quit, although they may not necessarily succeed. They form their own outlooks and theories on real societies and markets. A politician may also fall in this category.

b) Improvisers: They are less courageous from the originals. They are more influenced by the resources around them, I have been unfortunate enough to have seen gifted individuals falling in this pit.They again fall into two categories: Worker and Executives
   i) Workers are the least courageous and least egocentric. They don't do anything different/new and adapt to the set of rules defined in their profession. A talent can be extremely frustrated or a society will benefit the least if a talent is stuck in this kind of profession. One way to recognize this class is to see if they are compensated on "per hour" basis ie a regular salary, even if they are merely above national average. Data scientists, analysts, associates etc fall into this category.
  ii) Executives are the clever ones. They may lack courage but they have an ego centric view which may make them to adopt a series of job switchings, networking and social jacks to compensate. They end up as someone who is paid on "cut"' basis. Bankers, investors, business developers etc fall into this category.

Please note that this is only a correlation presented above. These are not causations. ie Please don't quit your job and start something up just to declare yourself an original talent.


Before concluding, having worked as a full time teacher in 6 schools and having studied in 7 schools, there are two suggestions for a practicing school teacher: 

1: Do not underestimate the importance of a child making herself learn something. What she learns seldom matter in the long run of life, but how she makes himself learn does affect her throughout. 

2: Don't give unfair advantages to your favorite kids. Anyone remember that teacher/professor who gives half ass instructions expecting us to assume things matching up to his expectations? Not at all cool, right? But we still used to love teachers who may go extra hard (or creative?) on us but makes sure we "learn".

And excellent example is this anecdote about one of my favorite professors :)