On Grit
Ever since reading Angela Duckworth’s book Grit, I’ve been bothered by three aspects of her work. The first problem that I have with her work is a criticism of her methodology, namely that she uses a very homogenous population in which to evaluate the impact of grit The second problem that I have is more with the interpretation of her work by others, namely that “success” as defined by those in power can be achieved through sufficient grit without considering the barriers that one has to overcome. Finally, I think in how she writes the book, she doesn’t visit the dark side of grit and enumerate the places in which grit is harmful.
The basic premise behind Dr. Duckworth’s book grit is that hard work is one of the most powerful factors that explain an individual’s success in any endeavor. However, most of her research focuses on students who have been accepted to an Ivy League School and West Point. What this misses is the fact that the mere admissions process in these two institutions greatly homogenizes the incoming student body in qualities such as intelligence, creativity and/or physical fitness. Essentially, the one factor she claims predicts success is the only one that has not been actively selected for as part of the admissions process. Once she has established the fact that within a carefully controlled population of individuals shows a difference in outcome due to grit, the next question is the effect size of grit once the other factors have not been controlled for. For instance, if you look at the players that make the NBA, one of the factors that allowed Kobe Bryant to be successful was the amount of work he was willing to put in at his craft. However, this misses people who have not made it into the MBA such as people like me. The question now arises whether an individual standing 5’9” with the same amount of “grit” as Kobe Bryant would have a better chance of making it into the NBA vs. an individual standing 6’4” with an average level of grit. Likewise, looking at individuals who have been admitted to UPenn, these are some of the smartest individuals within their graduating high school class, and so differences in grit probably stand out. But if you compared individuals who have been admitted to Ivy League schools vs. less selective schools and controlled for grit, it would not be surprising if things like IQ, parental income play a bigger role in metrics such as income. By choosing a deliberately narrow population, Dr. Duckworth essentially minimizes all of the other factors that may play a role in an individual’s success. This fallacy is what gives rise to the sentiment that people should pull themselves up by their bootstrap. Individuals who feel that way are most likely from an environment in which there is very little variability in their peers with respect to education or socioeconomic class, and so they miss seeing all of the barriers that others may face.
The second criticism of the concept of grit, is one that has driven me batty as a primary school student which is the concept of busywork. Yes, people with more grit are more likely to tough it out through busywork, and are probably rewarded for it academically, but it begs the question of when you’re asked to do something stupid is it better to find another way of doing it, or to do it blindly. My mantra as someone who has worked quite a bit in Corporate America is that innovation comes from lazy people and not necessarily hard-working people. However, this puts the onus on managers to motivate and more importantly understand when it’s time to pull a project away from the person who was key in starting it for someone else to polish it up. As a manager, I’ve understood that there needs to be a mix of individuals on a given team, and I’ll generally try to find the bright but lazy individual to brainstorm a solution, but pull him/her away from a project at the point in which they begin to lose interest and I need a higher level of fit and finish. However, the reason that this is not more popular is that most managers are terrible and don’t want to do the work of managing. It bears remembering that every invention that we see around us required at one time someone being too lazy to do something manually.
Finally, I think there needs to be a better treatment of the dark side of grit. My roommate from college is probably the grittiest individual I’ve ever known. He’s set his mind on being a professor and at 39 he’s still struggling to earn his PhD. He’s sacrificed everything in his life from relationships to finance in order to achieve his dream of being a paid intellectual. In contrast, I also have a PhD and I earned it in 4.5 years in big part to my willingness to bail on my first advisor who wanted me as cheap labor. He’s always focused on the “what” and not the “why” and with a lot of gritty individuals, I see that as a common thread. They blindly pursue a goal without asking “why?” and it is these individuals who give excuses like, “I was just following orders.”