The Key to Success? Grit: Passion and Perseverance
I have been mesmerized by Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED talk, which I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen until recently and her new book entitled Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. I had the pleasure of working alongside Angela during my stint at McKinsey, both of us in the NY office, back in the late 1990’s, so I was delighted to discover the work she’s done since then. Duckworth is not only an accomplished woman who took a fascinating career path, but she also has created a powerful study of the key factors in achieving success. She speaks of the concept of ‘grit’: the determination to persevere in the pursuit of long-term goals irrespective of failure. Her TED talk and book are gifts not just to educators and parents, but also to entrepreneurs who face the challenges of starting, failing and starting again
From the Boardroom to the Classroom
Angela’s journey to studying motivation and success is a rather unusual one, and started after she left management consulting to teach math to 7th graders in a New York City public school. This in itself is admirable and inspiring, but her teaching proved to be just the first step toward much deeper discoveries.
After spending her first year of teaching completing regular math teacher tasks, she was struck by the results of the end of year exams she administered. Those students who should have performed well, based on high IQ scores and/or talent didn’t necessarily meet expectations, while others with lower natural abilities over-delivered on their predicted results. Angela was surprised by this, and over the next several years of teaching, as she continued to observe the same results repeat themselves, came to the conclusion that educators needed to know more about student achievement and the relationship with motivation.
The Psychology of Success
As her book tells us, Angela was so fascinated by the seeming unpredictability in student achievement, that she left teaching and returned to school to obtain an advanced degree in Psychology. She began to study adults and children in a variety of very challenging settings, searching for the answer to one question: “Who is successful and why?” In all situations, the one factor that consistently played a role in the success of the student or individual was ‘grit’—passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit, she says, “is living life like it is a marathon and not a sprint.”
The quote from her book that in particular I haven’t been able to get out of my head is the following one by Actor Will Smith.
“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple, right?
It feels more applicable than ever to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.
Other very interesting findings Angela Lee Duckworth shares are outcomes from a Stanford University study called “Broad Mindset.” The study found that when students were shown how brain mass changes according to certain challenging activities, they came away with visual evidence that failure is not a fixed condition. They understood that with perseverance they can change their personal outcomes, and were more motivated to persist in the face of adversity.
As an entrepreneur, it could be that you have an idea, product or service that will jump out of the gate and be an immediate success. But more often than not, your business will take time to become recognized, to carve out its unique share in the marketplace, especially in today’s crowded, global online world. Starting a company can come with many disappointments and failures, so how do we pick ourselves up again and again? By remembering that failure is not a permanent condition. By having grit—living our life and pursuing our goals as if we are running a marathon, and having faith that the long-distance race will pay off.