This bestseller by Malcolm Gladwell, a New Yorker journalist and author of several fascinating books, explores a topic all the more interesting in the age of social media: how a trend becomes viral.

In no more than 300 words

In The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell invites readers to consider how a trend starts. What makes something go viral is the combination of three rare factors. The initial reason if that a specific information or product encounters three type of very specific people that are labeled as Connectors (imagine your friend who knows everyone), Mavens (your other friend that is always aware of the new technologies and the best places to strike a deal) and Salesmen (the enthusiastic but sometimes annoying friend who stills the attention at diner parties). The second element that makes a viral trend is that the information is packaged into a simple and very efficient way: it sticks. Gladwell exposes how research proves that ability to achieve an outstanding level of information stickiness outsmarts the best possible creative marketing campaigns. Intense practical testing – via focus groups for instance – appears to be the only way (yet exhausting) to reach such efficiency. Finally, environment plays an extraordinarily important role into the unfolding of any trend. However, seemingly negligeable details, such as the immediate context (stressful situation, unfavorable environment, community type of organisation…) carries similar influence to the previous two factors.
In the age of social media, Gladwell provides simple queues to understand how viral content is created, and enables us to break down retroactively and understand existing or past trends. This is a powerful “How-To” that we can leverage on to promote causes dear to us or improve our marketing abilities.

Three takeaways

• A trend is started by a very small number of highly specific people who fall into three distinct groups: Connectors (who know everyone), Mavens (who genuinely want to help) and Salesmen (who persuade others due to their mesmerizing skills)
• There is always a simple way of packaging information to make it irresistible. Putting up the hard work to discover the right format is the most effective way to make information stick. There is no shortcut to testing: intuition can not tell you what really woks
• Environment can have an immense impact on behavior, yet the seemingly little details tend to have the largest impact

Bridging the implementation gap

• Identify and keep an eye on the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen in my environment. They can play the role of canaries in the mine and help me spot trends
• Put marketing strategies and material to test relentlessly. it is the best way to achieve maximum communication efficiency. Creative marketing can not replace this effort
• Accept that environnement plays a major role in anyone’s behavior, including me. Focus on fixing negatively impacting elements of my environnent to ensure long term success and happiness

Do I recommend this book? It is indeed an interesting read but unless you are fundamentally interested by the research behind the conclusions, I would recommand you stick to the summary and action points

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In this book, Malcolm Gladwell quotes a research paper that I am strongly influenced by. This paper is the Affective Communication Test by Howard Friedman published in 1980. It shows how salesmanship efficiency relies heavily on a quality that is highly difficult to measure: the ability to convey emotions. Research shows that, contrary to our intuition, this is mostly a non verbal process and that it can hardly be faked. In conclusion, charisma appears to be a gift. Friedman built a self test to assess levels of individual charisma. Such test has been proven efficient by many subsequent experience. I encourage any sales professional to use it as part of his recruiting method.
Read the paper: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f14c/36b4a59112b4dae5b9eed711c565d8ef96e3.pdf

Malcolm Gladwell on TED:

Hans Rosling was a doctor and public speaker who fought two main battles: children mortality and ignorance. If you never had the chance to watch Hans’ inspiring TED Talks, give it a look. I’ll add them after the review. The main reason to read this article – and the book – is that I bet it will make you happier about the current state of the world! I am comfortable to say it will help most of us make better decisions.

In no more than 300 words

Factfulness was written by Hans Rosling as a digest of his lifelong quest for a fact-based understanding of our world. After countless research and public speaking exercises, Rosling concluded that human beings living in richest parts of the world tend to imagine a distorted reality, through the lence of poverty, violence and fear. Factfulness exposes how we rely on an outdated matrix to make our judgements. Western vs Developping world framework prevents us from realising that most people live today in middle-income countries, that 80% of 1-year old children globally have been vaccinated or that Malaysia life expectancy today is comparable to Sweden in 1975. Rosling invites us to consider a 4 income buckets framework. Level 1 corresponds to $1 a day, and encompasses our traditional poverty image: people going barefoot to get water from a well. 1 billion people are today in this category. Level 4 stands for “western” lifestyle, with a daily income over $64, home to another 1 billion individuals. Remaining 5 billions are split between two categories: from $4 daily income for category 2 and $16 a day for level 3.

Rosling warns against the use of stereotypes: facts show that religion has barely any impact on number of children while income, and to a second order healthcare and education do. Consider that that number of children per woman is lower in Iran than in USA.

As I finished the book, I realised such data-driven exercise opened my eyes on opportunities. It also calls for lifelong learning: the world is evolving fast, yet the eduction is mostly provided when people are young, by teachers who rely on data usually from their own twenties. Luckily, data is now available to most of us, and at a very cheap cost. A small effort can grant us a useful framework upgrade.

Three takeaways

• The world is in much better state that our intuition would let us imagine. A simple look at the facts helps to realise that.
• The next 1Bn population willl be aged between 30 and 45 years old, while other buckets will remain stable from now to 2030
• It is very difficult for the brain to get a sense of large numbers, hence using ratios and comparables provide a much better understand of general situations

Bridging the implementation gap (actions I added to my toolbox based on this book)

• Dedicate more time to understand what the majority stands for (in terms of actual distribution) and focus less on averages or extremes that tend to cloud the understanding
• When facing an urgent situation, instead of acting right away, take an additional look at the data (and get more if not relevant) and assess the second order consequences of action versus non action
• Beware of statements starting with “in times like this” or “in the world we live in now”. They usually introduce false and overly pessimistic statements.

Do I recommend this book? That is indeed a must read!

View the book or the ebook Factfulness on Amazon

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See Hans’ TED Talk, Let my dataset change your mindset

Factfulness was highlighted as a reading recommendation by Bill Gates Summer 2018 Reading list and by Howard Marks, Oaktree Investment Manager and bestselling author in the Tim Ferriss show #338.

This is my project to sort the books in read over time. My criteria is how much I would recommend my sister and my brother to read the book. This is indeed highly subjective and does not necessarily reflect the quality of the books.

You can follow #neverendingbooklist on social media to get updates on the project

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
2. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
3. Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris
4. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
5. The One thing you need to know by Marcus Buckingham
6. Drive by Daniel Pink
7. Principles by Ray Dalio
8. Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
9. Factfulness by Hans Rosling
10. Influence by Robert Cialdini
11. Act like at Leader, Think like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra
12. The Everything Story by Brad Stone
13. Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
14. The Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington
15. The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
16. Why Nations Fail by Damon
17. Art as Therapy by Alain de Bottom & John Armstrong
18. Brain Rules by John Medina
19. Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink
20. The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
21. How you learn is how you live by Kay Peterson & David Kolb
22. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
23. Good to Great by Jim Collins

What a mastery Daniel Kahneman accomplished by squeezing such an amount of useful knowledge in a single, easy-to-read book. I accept the challenge to sum up my understanding of Thinking, Fast and Slow, in this post for the #neverendingbooklist.

In no more than 300 words

Daniel Kahneman is a renown scholar, behavioral economics specialist, that was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman compiles the most important breakthrough of behavioral economics and describes their impacts and implication in simple language. Central idea is that the brain is made of two Systems: System 1, that provokes automatic answers and is always operating and System 2, your thinking-self, a little more challenging to use. This split leads people to take sometimes irrational decisions when facing specific situations. Research has documented a number of these situations, across many practical fields, such as Economics, Investments, Healthcare, but also choices related to daily spendings or holiday planning. Kahneman breaks up with the traditional Economics which assume human being as always rational (Econs) and calls for a more complex picture: the situation in which the decision is made influences the way such decision is made. Not patronizing but analyzing, the book illustrates patterns and offers research-backed rational for abnormal behavior. It then introduces systems to reduce biais whenever such behavior results in long term disadvantage. On many occcasions, brain focuses only on the information that are readily available to him, even when such information may be irrelevant to such decision. Another flaw is our propension to “mental accounting”, a silo-type of thinking process. Kahneman reviews the considerable impact of Priming which can be used to substantially orientate your decision making process.
This booked helped me to reframe my vision of how my personal feelings have a direct impact on choices that I was considering rational (investments) and give me ground to develop stronger decision making process.

Three takeaways

• Your brain is a two gear engine which performs two singularly different functions: the first one is always on and deals with automatic tasks while the second needs a bit of work to engage and enables you to built up more refine analysis
• Humans are not always rational beings (Econs). Difficulty to engage System 2, the thinking part of the brain, leads to irrational choices under many circumstances. Yet, slower thinking is almost systematically available if we make the conscious effort
• Experience and memory are significantly different processes. Ultimately memory appears indifferent to the notion of time and favors highlights (peaks). This has a profound impact on our life choices

Whenever assessing a situation, add a simple step. Ask yourself “what is it that I don’t know?” Don’t fall into the focusing illusion that leaves you to consider only the readily available information – (For your brain, “What You See Is All There Is”)

• Rely on checklists or very simplified algorithm for recurring decision making such as investment portfolio reviews
• “It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you” & “The easiest way to increase happiness is to control your use of time”. Keep schedule under tight control and leave plenty of time for who and what you love

Do I recommend this book? Definitely

View the book (or ebook) on Amazon: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

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