Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw and What I saw in it...

These days I practice what can be termed as parallel reading. I read three to four books at the same time. Since I am able to create a Now Reading section in iBooks, I am able to clearly divide my time for each book. I read according to the time, mood, and space. Right now I am occupied with the Swedish mystery writer Henning Mankell's thriller series featuring Kurt Wallander, the detective. Today I finished reading Gladwell's - What the Dog Saw and other adventures. I am waiting for the right chance and time to voraciously feed on the contents of his next book - Outliers. Malcolm Gladwell is known for his explorations into the human mind, for his 'thinking out of the box' ideas. I remember my 'neigbour' in MCC talking excitedly about Gladwell's book titled - 'Tipping Point' which if I remember correctly is all about the changing trends in our world and how quickly some trends 'tips' to become popular and some get washed away in the passage of time. You can read more about the book by following this link -  http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/. 

'What the Dog saw and other adventures' is a book about curiosity. It stresses the need to nurture inquisitiveness. The title reminded me of the essay by A.G.Gardiner  titled -  'All about a Dog'. The essay is about a woman who enters the bus with her dog and the commotion and the altercation that followed it. I have taught this essay and I particularly remember asking students to think the whole incident from the point of view  of the dog. That was a staple question which was based on the essay, I was soon tired of the question but since my students changed every semester, they always found it refreshing and challenging.

I started reading this book in the printed format. Later I continued with the ePub version in my iPad.  Towards the final chapter or adventure I combined the audiobook version and the ePub. It was nice to listen to the author reading the words he has composed. He has this soothing, meditative kind of voice which takes care of each and every word as it came out of his mouth. This is second book  that I finished in a span of 30 days, thanks to my acute 'bathroom reading habits'. The first one was the collection of best author interviews from NDTV's program - Just Books. (My next blog will be based on that. Blogging helps me to cement my reflections on the book and fast-read the book one more time) 

The book may not be about dogs. But, there are two essays on dogs. One is about Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer who had the god given gift to train or groom even the wildest dog. More info here - http://www.cesarsway.com/. The  

essay is an act of profiling where the author wants to know how Cesar Millan did his 'dog whispering' acts. More than this, he wanted to know what went inside dog's head when it was being trained. The second essay featuring dogs is the final one which is titled as 'Troublemakers' which is about how the behaviour of a dog is influenced by the 'wrong background, the wrong history in the hands of the wrong owner'. The essay is about the wrong canine-human interactions. 

The book opens with a quote, 

"To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish"

This is followed by the preface which discusses the philosophy behind the composition of the book. As mentioned earlier the driving force behind these essays is curiosity, 'the trick of finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has story to tell'. People who are occupying the seats of power can never acquire knowledge, because they are always self-conscious about what they say and they have to protect their position and privilege. The author says, 'self conscious is the enemy of interestingness'. The book is based on real life incidents and reports that were published in The New Yorker. When the author wrote about the art of failure ( panicking and choking) and the accident that happened to John F Kennedy Jr., he wanted to experience the act of falling from sky and he flew with this friend to immerse himself authentic experience. He talks about another instance where the original and real experience guided his writing - the connection between satellite images and mammography images in the essay titled - The Picture Problem. Talking about this pursuit for originality he says " I spent an afternoon with a radiologist looking at mammograms and halfway through - completely unprompted - he mentioned that he imagined that the problems people like him had in reading breast X-rays were not like the problems people in the CIA had in reading satellite photos.  

There are five things that I found appealing and interesting in this book: 

1) Malcolm Gladwell is somebody who enjoys writing and he talks about this hobby/job in the preface: Writing was the thing I ended up doing by default, for the simple reason that it took me forever to realize that it took me forever to realize that writing could be job. Jobs were things that were serious and daunting. Writing was fun. He also talks about Late bloomers, 'people who don't realize they're good at something until they're fifty'. He uses the life of Ben Fountain as the example for this late blooming creativity. He was a lawyer and he took a decision to quit his job and dedicate his life to writing. He was apprehensive and he describes the feeling 'I felt like I'd stepped off a cliff and I didn't know if the parachute was going to happen'. I personally felt inspired by his PLAN -  'He sat down at his kitchen table at 7:30 a.m. He made a plan. Everyday, he would write until lunchtime. Then he would write until lunchtime. Then he would lie down on the floor for twenty minutes to rest his mind. Then he would return to work for a few more hours'. This essay also discusses the importance of authentic feelings that should brought in to one's writing. The research element also is of pivotal importance. 

2) The essay titled - The Talent Myth - Are smart people overrated? examines the myth of talent and checks it against the organisational settings in a company.  He quotes the case study of McKinsey &amp Company,and  their War for Talent. The two catch words used here are - differentiation and affirmation. There is the need for the employers to sit down, once or twice a year and hold a "candid, probing, no-holds barred debate about each individual sorting employees into A, B, C groups. The A's should be awarded, the B's need to be encouraged and affirmed. The C's need to shape up or be shipped out. The Internal Performance Review Committee should be set up to monitor these acts.  The biggest drawback of schooling is that it cultivates 'the habit of doing things all by ourselves'. Once you get out in the real world, everything you do involves working with other people. What is required is the tacit knowledge which involves things like knowing how to manage yourself and others and how to navigate complicated social situations. 


The essay also talks about three types of flawed managers - One is the High Likability Floater, the next one is the Homme de Ressentiment, and the third is the Narcissist. The first type does not take any difficult decisions or make enemies. The second type seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. The third type tends to self nominate, they are self-confident and they have the strong need for recognition. The talent myth assumes that people make organisations smart. More often than not, its the other way around. The essay also takes a dig at the concept of thinking out of the  box - 'They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside  the box, maybe it was  the box that needed fixing'. 


The book in many ways need a second reading, maybe not all the chapters but at least a few chapters which are indeed the purple patches of the book.