The Tipping Point – How little things can make a big difference

The Tipping Point – How little things can make a big difference (International Bestseller)

- Malcolm Gladwell ($ 5.00, 300 odd pages)

(Score 9/10: Pretty radical book that explains everyday phenomenon differently)

·         Three characteristics – contagiousness, little causes can have big effects and change happens not gradually, but in one dramatic movement – this is how epidemics happen. The name given to the last of the three – that change happens in one dramatic movement – is called the TIPPING POINT.

·         If I give you a piece of paper and I ask you to fold it over once and then over and over again, until you have re-folded the original paper 50 times, how tall will the final stack be? (The height of the stack will be approximately the distance to the sun)

·         Example of Tipping Point: When the number of incoming African Americans in a particular neighborhood reached 20%, the community would tip – most of the remaining whites would leave almost immediately. There is no significant migration from 0% to 19%, but then suddenly, the community will tip – thus change happens in one dramatic movement.

·         In general, people choose friends of similar age and race. But if a friend lived down the hall, then age and race become a lot less important. Proximity overpowers similarity. If you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he’ll say its because he and his friends share similar attitudes. In actuality, what they share is similar activities.

·         Connectors: These are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. Hese are people whose connections span many worlds – they may be lawyers who head the local municipal body with an active diamond business – that makes it 3 different worlds.

·         Power/ strength of weak ties – studies show that a majority of people find new jobs through weak ties (acquaintances or people you see rarely). You friends, after all, occupy the same world that you do. They live near you, go to same church, school or parties. How much then, would they know that you wouldn’t know? Your acquaintances, opn the other hand, occupy a very different world than you and are more likely to know something you don’t. Acquaintances, in short, represent a source of social power – the more acquaintances you have, the more powerful you are.

·         Mavens – these people are information specialists. They may not have the social network of connectors, but they sure are active collectors of information – they know the inside out of market place and know things that the rest of us don’t. Plus, they are socially includes to help others selflessly.

·         In a social epidemic, Mavens are data banks – they provide the message. Connectors are the social glue – they spread it. Salesmen have the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing. What separates a great salesman from an average on is the number and quality of answers they have to objections commonly raised by potential clients.

·         We normally think of expressions on our face as the reflection of an inner state. I feel happy, so I smile. I feel sad, so I frown. We think emotion goes inside out. But is equally true that emotion is contagious – that it goes outside in. This would mean that we have our spirits picked up by being around someone in a good mood. If you think about it, this is quite a radical notion. Therefore, smile before picking up the phone. It will liven up the caller.

·         Power of context: “Whether a person is honest or not depends on the situation he is in”. But this is NOT how we look at people. When it comes to interpreting other people’s behavior, we make the mistake of overestimating the importance of situation and context. This means that we don’t say “My friend Alice is wonderfully honest when it comes to her personal life, but at work, she can be very slippery”. You would say instead that your friend is honest. Put a person in an environment of graffiti and broken glass and he is much more likely to do a criminal act than if placed in a better social environment.

·         Groups – Neocortex is the region of brain that deals with complex thought and reasoning. To handle complexities of large social group, the neocortex needs to be bigger. Complexities here are keeping track of your relationship with others in the group and relationship between others in the group. Size of Human neocortex gives a group estimate of roughly 150 people. That is why army units are no bigger than 150 – below this number, men are sufficiently familiar with each other so that they can work together as functional unit. With a bigger size, you have to  impose complex hierarchies, rules and regulations to command and control. Thus, as the number of people goes up from 100 to 150, no change in group behavior is observed. When the number goes from 150 to 200, suddenly, there is a huge problem. The magic number 150 is the tipping point for groups. This gives an important idea about how to organize organizations. Possibly if the organizations are of size greater than 150, informal knowledge sharing slowly dies off and any work takes longer time to accomplish, since informal channels suddenly seem to break down.