The Accidental Guru

Hiring is one area where we tend to fall into the "dark side" of rapid cognition, says Gladwell. He conducted a study to showcase how we often succumb to what he calls the "Warren Harding error" (Harding being, he says, "one of the worst presidents in American history," who nevertheless radiated "all that was presidential"). Polling about half of the Fortune 500 companies, Gladwell discovered that the vast majority of their CEOs were at least 6 feet tall (only about 14.5% of all American men are 6 feet or taller). What does this say about the way we hire? "We have a sense of what a leader is supposed to look like," he writes. "And that stereotype is so powerful that when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other considerations."

"Similarly dangerous is how first impressions cripple breakthrough ideas and innovation. Gladwell tells the story of furniture maker Herman Miller Inc. in the early 1990s, when it created a new office chair. It was made of plastic and mesh, and while it was created as the 'most ergonomically correct chair imaginable,' he says, it was just plain ugly. Focus groups, facility managers, and ergonomics experts all despised it. Why? 'They said they hated it,' writes Gladwell. 'But what they really meant was that the chair was so new and unusual that they weren't used to it.'
Gladwell argues that it's a mistake to rely on the first impressions of customers who are inherently biased against the unfamiliar. Herman Miller execs went against the market research, stuck with their instincts, and created the Aeron, which eventually became the company's best-selling chair ever. 'What once was ugly has become beautiful,' he writes. Unless you're willing to take that kind of leap, he says, you're condemned to doing knockoff, me-too chairs."

An interesting read ...