How to accelerate expertise, with Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments, chair of Starbucks
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
To move at the speed of opportunity, you need to accelerate expertise. Mellody Hobson is co-CEO of Ariel Investments, the first Black-owned asset management firm in the United States, as well as board chair of Starbucks. Her incredible entrepreneurial journey – punctuated by deep societal and business impact – has been fueled by an intense attention to learning from every mentor, every opportunity, and every mistake. Mellody discovered early on the power of adapting both quickly and well, that rather than trading off between speed and accuracy, she needed both. Becoming both a fast and deep learner is rarely something you're born with, but as Mellody's story demonstrates, it’s a practice we can all develop and rely on.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:34.0 | Say you are an investigator. |
| 0:40.0 | Looking at crimes, right? |
| 0:41.0 | You can't practice this in your living room. You have to be figuring it out |
| 0:46.8 | as you go. That's Brooke McNamara. |
| 1:03.0 | She's a psychology professor at Case Western, |
| 1:05.5 | and she studies how people in different fields learn. |
| 1:08.0 | You might say she's an expert on how to become an expert. |
| 1:12.0 | And she often puts conventional theories to the test. expert on how to become an expert. |
| 1:12.5 | And she often puts conventional theories |
| 1:14.2 | to the test, like one you may know as the 10,000 hours rule. |
| 1:20.1 | This idea that with practice, anybody can become an expert became very popular when Malcolm |
| 1:27.2 | Gladwell wrote his book, Outliers. |
| 1:29.3 | Ten thousand hours before you're an expert. where he claimed that with 10,000 hours of deliberate |
| 1:35.0 | 10,000 hours before you read good |
| 1:39.3 | where he claimed that with 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, a practice focused on improving, |
| 1:46.4 | anyone could become an expert at any task. |
| 1:51.5 | You may have read this book too, and if you did, it might have made you excited. |
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