Wednesday, May 15, 2019

The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle was an excellent book that preceded The Culture Code by Coyle, with the first written in 2009 and second in 2018. Coyle in the beginning notes how The Talent Code was in part a search for talent hotbeds, whether in the favelas of Brazil or successful classrooms, and he covers both three drivers of talent and the substance in the body that strengthens and grows as talent increases.

Part One - Deep Practice

Coyles covers well the importance of deep or targeted practice, iteratively working on something, breaking it down to component parts to find and eliminate errors and developing mastery to the point of unconscious action. The idea is to struggle with something, work at it, then get it as intense focus and concentration is what ingrains a lesson. It requires someone being willing to be bad at something, and to go slow and take things one step at a time, and then chunking together learned skills.

Part Two - Ignition

Ignition is how motivation is created and sustained, and acts is a signal to someone they can do something, often something either previously thought of as unachievable or simply not thought of at all. It's about future belonging, or hopeful future belonging, and covered in this section is how ignition often comes via groups, with the example given of KIPP schools, and the ignition cue that's brought up again and again of going to college, with activities and statements made to the students all around the of everyone being part of a group working together towards the shared goal of attending college.

Part Three - Master Coaching

Coyle delves into the concept that a great coach or teacher thinks about what each individual needs and teaches to that, not focusing on lofty oratory to all. Most of successful coaching is about connecting individually with someone, modeling what should be done, and having people gets reps doing things the right way. A quote from the book "skill is a cellular process that grows through deep practice, ignition supplies the unconscious energy for that growth, and master coaching combines those forces in others." Coyle also notes how these three things combine towards the growth in the body of the neural substance myelin, a living tissue that gets stronger as we build muscle memory and develop talent, and then is maintained through targeted practice.

Monday, May 13, 2019

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin was a solid memoir by the historian who wrote bestsellers on Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

In Wait Till Next Year, the 76-year-old Goodwin recounts her childhood growing up in New York in the 1950s, with the book about her family, friends, and passion for the Brooklyn Dodgers. It's covered how she became a fan at the age of six in 1949, from her father teaching her how to write down the action from a baseball game on the radio. He would return home from his job as a bank examiner for the State of New York and she recount the day's Dodgers game to him out of her scorebook, something that she notes instilled in her the power of narrative storytelling.

At this time there were three New York baseball teams, the Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees, and Kearns Goodwin as a young girl met the players and noted how they largely nice people, with her favorite player Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 had become the first African-American in the Major Leagues. Baseball was a a thread of shared experience through the community, with in school, the principal or teacher at times letting all the students listen on the radio to a key playoff game, and in 1955, Vin Scully announced the game when the Dodgers won the World Series.

Kearns Goodwin wrote of how she got a love of baseball from her father, love of books from her mother, someone beset by illness and a voracious reader who would also read to her in bed each night, and love of family from both. Additionally, there were so many shared experiences by all in the neighborhood, and it noted how when she young, it seemed that people were in things together. As she grew up, Kearns Goodwin noted that "television, once a source of community became an isolating force," and then in high school the civil rights movement began to swirl in the country and she saw the hate in people, but referenced having great teachers during her later adolescent years.

To write the book, Kearns Goodwin went back and reported on her childhood, interviewing many people whom she hadn't been in touch with for decades, and it helped create a good book about a very different time.