A Tip From Me

Posted September 2nd, 2005 by jhuny

I haven’t finished this book yet but I’m so intrigued by what it says that I just had to write about it. (Also, at the moment, we’re in Sale and it is so boring I had nothing else to write about!)

Malcolm Gladwell – The Tipping Point

Like the previous book I read, James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, this book draws from many different perspectives to illustrate a simple point: that little things can have a big effect. Obviously this isn’t true all of the time, there are special conditions that allows this to happen. When it does occur, Gladwell likens the effect to an epidemic – a change that has a seemingly insignificant beginning but spreads like a contagious virus.

To illustrate this point, Gladwell goes from talking about Sesame Street to The American Revolution (specifically, how Paul Revere rode through the night to alert the local American militias to the coming of the British Regulars). To explain the former, Gladwell talks of the intricate connections of people, and how these networks are centred on special people, and the subtle forms of persuasion that some people have to incite people to action. For Sesame Street, Gladwell points out how it’s creators were able to grab the attention of young TV viewers for educational purposes, in a sense making the action of learning contagious. Further, there is one more condition, which is basically about the environment or the context that allows the epidemic to occur.

The subject of this book is basically about psychology but it’s the way that this information is presented that makes it interesting. In the words of Gladwell, this book is sticky. As Sesame Street uses fantasy and advertising techniques to be addictive viewing, this book reads like a blockbuster thriller: it begins with a sensational mystery and then introduces characters and situations in an attempt to solve the puzzle. Though I’m only halfway through I presume from the Table of Contents that there are two climactic conflicts before the puzzle is completed. In solving the puzzle, Gladwell himself becomes a Connector, Maven and Salesman; he collects and aggregates the information from all sorts of people that he connects with, and then writes about it in a very persuasive way.

As I was reading this book I started to think about how this relates to me as a dancer. When Gladwell describes a Salesman, it sounded to me like a good performer: his power is his ability to establish an emotional connection with the audience and to be persuasive in telling the story or the idea of the dance. A dancer goes through a lot of training and explores a wide range of movement disciplines and draws from these experiences to dance well which, in a sense is what a Maven does but with “dance information”. And the best dancers have worked with a wide range of people (consider Narelle Benjamin, who has worked with just about every major contemporary dance company in the country and even with the Australian Ballet).

Anyway, back to the book. I’m flying through it at a pretty rapid rate. It’s such a fascinating read and definitely recommended. (Damn if that was a really crap conclusion but I just ran out of words. Just read it!)

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