Almost 25 years ago, Malcolm Gladwell captured our attention with his groundbreaking book, The Tipping Point. Now, he returns with a fresh perspective in Revenge of the Tipping Point, exploring the darker side of how ideas and trends spread. A mega-bestselling author and host of the popular podcast Revisionist History, Gladwell has been named one of Time‘s 100 Most Influential People. In our conversation, we discuss how group dynamics shape individual performance, the tendency of leaders to overvalue team cohesion at the expense of effectiveness, and the outsized influence of outliers in shaping trends and behaviors. It’s a fascinating conversation about the complexities of social change and the forces that drive it, offering insights into how we can effect meaningful change in our communities.
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Show Notes
- Rethinking the idea of “tipping points” 25 years later (1:36)
- Why he chose to examine the darker side of social epidemics in the sequel (3:24)
- Malcolm’s definition of a social epidemic, and the three key characteristics (5:24)
- The power of overstories (8:30)
- Culture is specific and culture matters (12:34)
- What is social engineering? (14:48)
- Why three women is the magic number on corporate boards (17:57)
- Why we undervalue group composition and overvalue group quality (23:13)
- You can’t evaluate individual performance without the context of group composition (27:02)
- An effective team is not the same thing as a cohesive team. (30:56)
- Outliers pay an outsized role in social epidemics (34:15)
- Rethinking failure (38:47)
- What Malcolm wants the reader to reconsider when reading Revenge of the Tipping Point (44:02)
Resources / People Mentioned
- Revenge of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- Revisionist History
- The TIME 100
- Steffi Graf, tennis player
- Jana Novotná, tennis player
- Janet Malcolm, author
- The Bill Simmons podcast
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