Raise your own game by building a great team
Forget everything you thought you knew about being your best. It’s not about your own skills or talents – real success comes from getting the most from the teams you build and the friends you make. You dramatically amplify your own potential by helping others realise theirs.
Shawn Achor is a Ted talk star and one of the world’s leading experts on happiness and success. In this book he provides a game-changing guide to greatness and outlines five simple steps you need to take. Packed with powerful stories, cutting-edge research and exclusive insights from Fortune 100 leaders, this book unlocks the secret of working with others to help you reach your Big Potential.
Shawn Achor is one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness, success and potential. His research on mindset made the cover of Harvard Business Review, and his TED talk is one of the most popular of all time with 16 million views. He has worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, the Pentagon and the White House, and lectured in more than 50 countries (from CEOs in China to doctors in Dubai and school children in South Africa). His Happiness Advantage training is one of the most successful corporate training programmes in the world. His research has been published in the New York Times, WSJ, Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Fortune. He is the author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness.
ALSO BY SHAWN ACHOR
The Happiness Advantage
Before Happiness
The Ripples Effect
The Orange Frog
For Michelle and Leo, two brilliant lights of joy who daily remind me love is the only way to see our full potential
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
When dusk slowly crept upon a mangrove forest lining a river deep in a jungle in Southeast Asia, a biologist far from his home in Washington State looked out over the lush, alien landscape lining the snake-infested waters. While drifting slowly in his boat, Professor Hugh Smith surely heard the calls of the nocturnal creatures uncoiling from their dens or taking flight from their nests and beginning their nightly hunts. I can envision how the water must have shimmered under the light from the stars, unspoiled by the light pollution that existed in the remote cities. What happened next on that humid day in 1935 is part of recorded academic history. Smith looked up at one of the mangrove trees, and suddenly the entire canopy glowed as if a lightning bolt had shot out from the tree instead of striking it. Then all went dark, leaving a burned image on his vision.
Then lightning, as it sometimes does, struck twice.
The entire tree glowed again, then went entirely dark again twice in three seconds.1 Then, in a reality-bending moment, all of the trees along the riverbank suddenly glowed in unison. Every tree on one side of the river for a thousand feet was flashing and going dark at exactly the same time.
Something deep inside me warms at the thought that such a patient, careful, and scientific observer, whose curiosity about the world led him so far away from his normal life in the Pacific Northwest, could be rewarded that night by such a magical moment of nature.
Once his capacity for mental reasoning returned, he realized that the trees were not, in fact, glowing; rather, they were covered with a critical number of bioluminescent lightning bugs, all illuminating at the exact same time. Upon returning home, Dr. Smith wrote up a journal article on his discovery of the synchronous lightning bugs. It seemed too good to be true, like something out of a storybook. I’m sadly unsurprised by the next part of the story. He was not believed. Biologists ridiculed his account, even calling it fabricated. Why would male fireflies glow in unison, which would only decrease their chances of distinguishing themselves to potential mates? Mathematicians were equally skeptical. How could order come from chaos in nature without a leader to direct it? And entomologists asked how millions of fireflies could see enough other fireflies to create the exact same pattern, given the limited visibility in the mangrove forest. It seemed physically, mathematically, and biologically impossible.
Yet, it wasn’t. And now, thanks to modern science, we know how and why. Turns out that this puzzling behavior actually serves an evolutionary purpose for the fireflies. As published in the prestigious journal Science, researchers Moiseff and Copeland found that when lightning bugs light up at random times, the likelihood of a female responding to a male in the deep, dark recesses of a mangrove forest is 3 percent. But when the lightning bugs light up together, the likelihood of females responding is 82 percent.2 That’s not a typo. The success rate increased by 79 percentage points when flashing as an interconnected community rather than as individuals.
Society teaches that it’s better to be the only bright light than be in a forest of bright lights. After all, isn’t that the way we think about success in our schools and companies? We want to graduate at the top of our class, get the job at the best company, and be chosen to work on the most coveted project. We want our child to be the smartest kid at school, the most popular kid on the block, the fastest kid on the team. When any resource—be it acceptance to the most prestigious university, an interview with a top-ranking company, or a spot on the best athletic team—is limited, we are taught that we have to compete in order to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the pack.
And yet, my research shows that this isn’t actually the case. The lightning bug researchers discovered that when the fireflies were able to time their pulses with one another with astonishing accuracy (to the millisecond!), it allowed them to space themselves apart perfectly, thus eliminating the need to compete. In the same way, when we help others become better, we can actually increase the available opportunities, instead of vying for them. Like the lightning bugs, once we learn to coordinate and collaborate with those around us, we all begin to shine brighter, both individually and as an ecosystem.
But pause to think for a moment. How did lightning bugs even do it? How did they all coordinate their flashing lights so perfectly, especially given their limited visibility and vision? Researchers Mirollo and Strogatz from Boston College and MIT found in the Journal of Applied Mathematics that, amazingly, the fireflies do not have to see everybody to create coordinated action; so long as no group of fireflies is completely out of sight of any other group, they can sync up with one another’s rhythms.3 In other words, it only takes a few nodes to transform the entire system.4
Our new understanding of “positive systems” teaches us that the same is true for humans. As you will discover in this book, by becoming a “positive node” in your workplace, company, or community, and helping those around you improve their creativity, their productivity, their abilities, their performance, and more, you are not only helping the group become better; you are exponentially increasing your own potential for success.
There is one final important detail to this intriguing story. Biologists who have explored these jungles now know that the glow emanating from those mangroves can be seen for miles. This means it is even easier for other fireflies to find their way to the light. So the brighter it shines, the more newcomers join and add their light. This is true just as much for humans as it is for fireflies: The more you help people find their light, the brighter you both will shine.
When George Lucas originally wrote the script to the billion-dollar Star Wars franchise, the most iconic line in movie history—“May the Force be with you”—was not in it. Instead, the earliest versions read, “May the Force of Others be with you.” What does this arcane piece of movie history have to do with the science of potential? As the children’s book author Roald Dahl wrote: “The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.” And I believe that hidden in this tiny line lies both the problem undergirding our broken pursuit of potential as a society and the secret to exponentially increasing our success, well-being, and happiness.
Our society has become overly focused on the “power of one alone” versus “the power of one made stronger by others.” Of course, Hollywood glorifies individual superstars; where else are the streets literally paved with their names? But when we adopt this script in our companies and schools, focusing only on individual achievement and eliminating “others” from the equation, our true power remains hidden. But what is hidden can be revealed.
Three years ago, as I was researching the hidden connections that underlie success and human potential, I had a break-through. I became a father.
When my son, Leo, came into the world, he was quite literally helpless. He couldn’t even roll over by himself. But, as he got older, he became more capable. And with each new skill he picked up, like any good positive psychology researcher would, I found myself praising him, saying, “Leo, you did that all by yourself! I’m proud of you.” And after a while, Leo began parroting it back to me in a soft but proud voice: “All by myself.”
That’s when I realized: First as children, then as adults in the workplace, we are conditioned to disproportionately value things we accomplish on our own. As a father, if I stopped my praise and guidance there, my son might come to view independent achievement as the ultimate test of our mettle. But in reality it is not. There is a whole other level.
The cycle begins at a young age. At school, our kids are trained to study diligently and individually so they can best others on exams. If they seek help on projects from other students, they are chastised for cheating. They are given multiple hours of homework a night, forcing them to trade time with others for more time working in isolation. Over and over they are reminded that their future success in the workplace hinges on individual metrics, including their grades and standardized test scores. Statistically it doesn’t, but this approach to learning does do one thing: It dramatically raises their stress levels while robbing them of social connection, sleep, attention, happiness, and health. Yet, instead of questioning the system, we judge those who can’t keep up with this feeding frenzy for individual achievement. By the time students finish school they are frazzled, fragile, and lonely, only to find that the success and happiness they had been promised did not lie at the end of that rainbow.
Suddenly, those same people who tested so well individually struggle when they need to work with others to bring a product to market or get their team to hit a target. Meanwhile, the people who rise to the top are not those who try to do everything all by themselves, but, rather, those who can ask others for help and rally others to grow. Parents who support a balanced, connected approach to pursuing success for their children are rewarded for their persistence, while parents who urge individual achievement at the cost of connection find themselves unprepared for their child’s burnout or loneliness.
We spend the first twenty-two years of our life being judged and praised for our individual attributes and what we can achieve alone, when, for the rest of our life, our success is almost entirely interconnected with that of others.
Over the past decade I have worked with nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies and traveled to more than fifty countries to learn how people everywhere approach the concepts of success, happiness, and human potential. One thing I’ve found to be true almost everywhere is that the vast majority of companies, schools, and organizations measure and reward “high performance” in terms of individual metrics such as sales numbers, résumé accolades, and test scores. The problem with this approach is that it is predicated on a belief we thought science had fully confirmed: that we live in a world of “survival of the fittest.” It teaches us that success is a zero-sum game; that those with the best grades, or the most impressive résumé, or the highest point score, will be the ONLY ones to prosper. The formula is simple: Be better and smarter and more creative than everyone else, and you will be successful.
But this formula is inaccurate.
Thanks to groundbreaking new research you will read about in this book, we now know that achieving our highest potential is not about survival of the fittest; it is survival of the best fit. In other words, success is not just about how creative or smart or driven you are, but how well you are able to connect with, contribute to, and benefit from the ecosystem of people around you. It isn’t just how highly rated your college or workplace is, but how well you fit in there. It isn’t just how many points you score, but how well you complement the skills of the team.
We often think if we can just work harder, faster, and smarter, then we’ll achieve our highest potential. But scientifically in the modern world, the biggest impediment to your success and realizing your potential is not lack of productivity, hard work, or intelligence; it is the way in which we pursue it. The pursuit of potential must not be a lonely road. The conclusion of a decade of research is clear: It’s not faster alone; it’s better together.
By clinging to the old formula for success we are leaving enormous amounts of potential untapped. I saw this firsthand during my twelve years at Harvard as I watched students crash upon shoals of hyper-competition, then get stranded on the banks of self-doubt and stress. Realizing that they were no longer the only superstar, many panicked. They pushed themselves harder, sequestering themselves so they could go faster, trying to be the brightest light shining. The result was darkness. A staggering 80 percent of Harvard students report going through depression at some point in their college life.
Now that I have done this work all over the globe, I know this is not a problem reserved for Ivy League students. The average age of being diagnosed with depression in 1978 was twenty-nine. In 2009, the average age was fourteen and a half.5 Over the past decade, depression rates for adults have doubled, as have hospitalizations for attempted suicide for children as young as eight years old.6 What could possibly have changed so much to account for this? And, more important, what can we do to fix it?
Our emphasis on individual achievement has gone into serious overdrive, fueled primarily by two significant shifts. First, the rise of technology and social media allows us to broadcast individual accomplishments 24/7, constantly feeding competition while simultaneously stoking insecurity. Second, the astronomical pressure and competition in our schools and companies in pursuit of higher individual success metrics are driving longer days, less sleep, and more stress. Luckily, a better way has begun to emerge.
This exciting new path was inspired by my initial work studying happiness. In The Happiness Advantage, I wrote how you can significantly increase your own happiness by doing things such as gratitude exercises, practicing optimism, and meditating. But at some point, if you make these things only about your happiness, you reach an invisible limit where happiness can neither be sustained nor grow. The only way to lift that ceiling is to use your own happiness as a fuel to make others happier. Ultimately, I realized that while happiness is a choice, it is not just an individual choice; it is an interconnected one. This is because when you choose to act with gratitude or joy, you make joy and gratitude easier for others, who in turn give you more reasons to be grateful and joyous.
Armed with this discovery, I dug into the new research, and it became clear: Happiness was only the tip of the iceberg. Now, thanks to the advent of Big Data, I could finally see the connections that had previously remained hidden. Before, we could only ask questions like “How smart are you?” or “How creative are you?” or “How hard do you work?” But now, we can ask the bigger questions: “How smart do you make others around you?” “How much creativity do you inspire?” “How much does your drive become contagious to a team or family?” “How resilient do you make others?” And when we do, we see that our greatest successes don’t exist in isolation. As the research begins to emerge, we seem to be learning that almost every attribute of your potential—from intelligence to creativity to leadership to personality and engagement—is interconnected with others. Thus, to truly thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we need to change our pursuit of potential in the same way we need to change our pursuit of happiness: We need to stop trying to be faster alone, and start working to become stronger together.
By creating hyper-competitive environments in which only individual achievements are celebrated, companies and schools are leaving enormous amounts of talent, productivity, and creativity on the table. Overemphasizing the individual and removing others from the equation places a “soft cap” on our potential, an artificial limit on what we can achieve. But the good news is that I call this a soft cap for a reason: Because it can be lifted. Because when we work to help others achieve success, we not only raise the performance of the group, we exponentially increase our own potential. This is what I describe later in this book as a Virtuous Cycle—a positive feedback loop whereby making others better leads to more resources, energy, and experiences that make you better, fueling the cycle again. Thus, making others better takes your success to the next level. Thus:
SMALL POTENTIAL is the limited success you can achieve alone.
BIG POTENTIAL is the success you can achieve only in a Virtuous Cycle with others.
In this book, I describe eight original research projects I have conducted with others as well as cutting-edge research from academics that unites neuroscience, psychology, and network analysis to shape the new field of positive systems research. But I know you did not come to this book looking simply for a review of research; there are better books for that. Instead, you want things you can start to implement today. So I have spent the past three years crafting a practical approach to Big Potential based on this science and my work at NASA, the NFL, the White House, and elsewhere, as well as my conversations with highly successful people, including Will Smith, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Strahan, who are living the principles of Big Potential.
This path consists of five stages, what I call the SEEDS of Big Potential: SURROUND yourself with a Star System of Positive Influencers. EXPAND your power by helping others lead from every seat. ENHANCE your resources by becoming a Prism of Praise. DEFEND the system against negative attacks. And SUSTAIN the gains by fueling the Virtuous Cycle. Seeds are the perfect metaphor for this research, because a seed cannot grow alone, without the help of the sun, soil, and water. In the same way, you can grow your potential, but you can’t grow it alone. The biggest growth is achieved when you tap into the potential of those around you.
We can no longer be content competing for the scraps of Small Potential; we must seek new frontiers of human potential and invite others to follow. A challenging world demands that we put “the force of others” back into our formula. And it all starts by finding the hidden connections between flashing bugs, nudity at Harvard, featherless chickens, and an awkward dance with Oprah.
FLASHING AT HARVARD
On a snowy night in January during my freshman year at Harvard, I was up late cramming for exams. It was the end of the two grueling weeks called Reading Period, during which there are no classes, ostensibly in order to give students time to “read” in preparation for exams. But in reality, that period is when professors dump all their biggest papers and projects on the students on top of all that exam preparation. The stress is palpable in the libraries and dining hall as students prepare to battle to display their individual potential.
At a few minutes before midnight one evening, bleary-eyed from staring at textbooks for six hours straight, I looked out my window and took in an odd sight. Hundreds of students had suddenly assembled in front of my dorm. Then they did something odder: They started taking off their clothes. In my study-induced brain fog I wondered if this was actually happening, or if the pressures of Harvard had cracked my brain. Then they began to scream.
A moment ago we talked about the lightning bugs of the mangrove forests who lure their mates by synchronously flashing their luminous light into the dark night sky. Well, I was about to experience a collective “flashing” of a rather different kind.
Every year, on the midnight before exams begin, Harvard students take part in what’s called the Primal Scream, a venerable tradition that some attribute to our clearly not-so-puritanical forebears. While Founding Father John Adams was making his mark upon history by signing the Declaration of Independence, his son Charles was earning a mark of distinction for being caught streaking with his friends in Harvard Yard.1 They were thrown out of the school, then later readmitted (clearly if your father is a Founding Father you get at least one get-out-of-jail-free card), and their chilly tradition continues today. More than three hundred years later, the bravest and/or most intoxicated students gather in front of Mower Hall, where they proceed to disrobe. Then the half-frozen, fully naked students begin to jog in a tight pack over the icy ground of old Harvard Yard, huddling together for warmth as hundreds of onlookers come streaming out of their dorms. And for a few brief moments, the anxiety of failing to reach one’s potential on exams is replaced by the (very real) fears of potential frostbite—not to mention potential embarrassment in front of one’s peers.
This was my first exposure—if you will excuse the pun—to Primal Scream. Now, let me pause for those of you who don’t know me to give you two salient facts. First, prior to arriving at Harvard, I had lived most of my life in Waco, Texas, where not only was wearing clothes heavily encouraged, but where streaking in the snow would have been unheard of—because there is no snow. Second, I’m shy. I’d never been to a club, never approached a girl in a bar, and never gone skinny-dipping. And yet, as I watched the spectacle that night from my first-floor dorm window, I worried that I was truly missing out on college. Here I was, cloistered in a dorm, reading about life in Rome under Augustus, while my peers were actually living their lives to the fullest. So I decided to join.
My fatigue-addled brain decided the best strategy would be to undress in my room, then simply wait for the rest of the group to pass by on their way to the Yard, and then just stealthily slip into their ranks under the cover of the dark. As the door banged shut behind me, I immediately realized my first mistake. Being from Texas, it hadn’t occurred to me that shoes are pretty crucial for a run—naked or otherwise—in the snow. Then I realized my second mistake: I had left my ID card, needed to re-enter the building, in the pocket of my pants, which I of course had left crumpled up on the floor of my dorm room. That’s when I realized my third, and perhaps biggest, mistake. I was alone. There was no way I was going to be able to slip into the crowd without drawing attention to myself. After all, if you are flashing people in a group, yours is just one face in the crowd. If you try to streak solo like Will Ferrell in Old School, everyone knows it is you.
As I stood there in the dead of winter, thinking about which extremity I would least like to lose, an equally shy, library-bound dorm mate walked out with an armful of books. She squeaked, then we both resorted to an age-old strategy: If we pretend not to see something, we can convince ourselves it never happened. Red-faced and blue-toed, I snuck in the door, entered my room, and re-robed as fast as humanly possible. For the remainder of the four years I was there, she never mentioned my aborted attempt at a three-hundred-year-old tradition: My naked run ended two feet from my door. And I certainly didn’t mention that she was the only girl to see me naked during my undergrad years at Harvard.
Now, this book is rated PG-13 for nudity, scientific language, and occasional adult situations. But I tell this story not because of its prurient details, but because it so powerfully demonstrates a cold, hard truth: There are certain things in this world that require the support of other people and that should never be attempted alone. Pursuing potential alone is a bit like being that shoeless freshman who never actually made it to the naked run at the Yard; it’s cold, it’s lonely, and you’re not likely to get very far. Running in a pack, however, is more like what happens when you tap into the power of Big Potential; you can make it much farther—even in extreme conditions—than you can on your own.
Reid Hoffman, the cofounder and chairman of LinkedIn, sums it up well: “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” Steve Jobs, the late founder and CEO of one of the most competitive and powerful companies ever built, said, “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” Navy SEALs during training sometimes link arms when they do push-ups to promote going through stress “together,” rather than in isolation. And the SEALs have a great saying: “Individuals play the game, but teams beat the odds.”
The Primal Scream ritual at Harvard is evidence that in times of stress, we need others to link arms with more than ever. This conclusion was borne out by a study published in Nature that found that, based on analysis of eighty thousand interactions among college students, the highest achievers were those who formed the most social connections and shared information in more ways.2 And in incredible research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the researchers found that if you are looking at a hill and judging how steep it is, the mere presence of social support around you transforms your perception. In fact, if you look at a hill while standing next to someone you consider to be a friend, the hill looks 10 to 20 percent less steep than if you were facing that hill alone.3 That is a stunning finding. Perception of your objective, physical world is transformed by including others in your pursuit of achievement. This result holds even if the friend is three feet away, facing the other direction, and silent! This makes evolutionary sense. Other people provide resources and support. So, mentally and physically, mountains seem more climbable, successes more achievable, and obstacles more surmountable with others beside us.
So why do people in the midst of stress at work retreat into their offices, sequestering themselves from colleagues in order to get their work done? Why do college students respond to pressure and stress by withdrawing from friends, fleeing to a secluded corner of the library, or consuming copious amounts of caffeine, Adderall, and antidepressants? When I read the admission files of hundreds of students as a freshman proctor at Harvard, the number of students requesting a single dorm room as opposed to one with roommates was staggering. This wasn’t because the single rooms were bigger or nicer; it was because they mistakenly believed that the presence of people around them would distract them or blunt their competitive edge. But in doing so, these students were missing out on the one thing that really predicts long-term success and well-being: others. Which is why Harvard so desperately needed a class called Psych 1504.
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar was way ahead of the curve. He began to teach positive psychology at Harvard before anyone had even heard it was a subject. Not long after my failed flashing experiment, an experimental seminar was being taught by one of the most thoughtful and authentic professors at Harvard. The following year, Tal invited me to join him as the head teaching fellow for Psych 1504, which would open up positive psychology to the whole university. On day one, the crowds were a fire hazard even though Harvard had given us the biggest room on campus. Over the next two years, one out of every five Harvard students ended up taking the course; it seemed that Harvard students were particularly eager to learn about how to improve emotional well-being in a hyper-competitive environment.
During that time, I designed and ran one of the largest studies of human potential that have been done at Harvard. Sixteen hundred Harvard students filled out a battery of validated psy-chometric tools and other questions that took almost an hour to complete. My goal was to determine the matrix of individual attributes that would predict who would be happiest and most successful at Harvard. In other words, could I predict the perfect Harvard student? The data set was so big that my puny, inexpensive laptop kept crashing. I had information on everything from students’ family income, their high school GPA and SAT scores, and the number of hours they slept to how many classes they were taking, how many clubs they were involved in, and more.
But as I started doing my analysis, I soon noticed a problem. The individual attributes of these students had almost no correlation with their performance and success! Statistically, the students who had perfect SAT scores could also be getting all C’s. Students with almost no money were equally happy and had the same grades as their rich peers. The number of friends on Facebook was predictive of nothing, not even extraversion. Just as I was becoming increasingly frustrated at having gone to all the work only to find virtually no significant correlations, I finally stumbled on a massive exception: social connection.
Using the most famously validated scale that measures how interconnected and socially supported an individual feels in their life, I found that social connection was, hands down, the greatest predictor of thriving both personally and academically at Harvard. It was the strongest predictor of emotional well-being and optimism, the greatest buffer against depression, and it also predicted how much stress one felt in the face of exams and academic competition. And it turns out, once someone leaves college, it becomes one of the greatest predictors of long-term performance in their careers. The evidence seemed to suggest a wild conclusion: Success at Harvard was less about the individual attributes of a student and more about how they fit in with the culture and with their peers. Or, put another way, the potential to succeed at Harvard had less to do with “survival of the fittest” and more to do with “survival of the best fit.”
While it would seem that those who would succeed were the superstars who could shine the brightest, in reality, the flashes of brilliance were actually coming from those who had found their place within a constellation of stars. And, as I would soon learn, this concept is equally true well beyond the walls of Harvard, with powerful implications for how we think about potential within our companies, our teams, and in our lives and careers.
A year before writing this book, I was invited to speak at a conference at Google called re:Work. This conference was designed to “open source” good ideas for organizational change. The night before my talk, I attended a dinner at a dimly lit, cedar-wood-paneled vegan restaurant (which was exactly what I expected from California and from Google), where I was seated next to a smiling man whom I didn’t recognize, but who asked some very interesting questions about my research. It wasn’t until the next morning, when that man got onstage, that I learned he was not only the leader of the conference but also one of the most respected business leaders in the world.
Laszlo Bock was the head of the world-renowned People Operations department at Google. He possesses a mix of kind leadership and focused brilliance that has surely contributed to his success in making Google the number-one company to work for year after year, and earned him the distinction of “HR Professional of the Decade.” As he describes in his bestselling book Work Rules!, the lynchpin of the company’s uncanny ability to consistently hire the most creative and high-potential employees lies, perhaps not surprisingly, in Google’s practice of collecting enormous amounts of data about pretty much everything.
“Big Data” is the term used for the massive digital data sets generated each time we visit a website, use social media, make an online purchase, and so on. This concept has gotten a lot of attention over recent years, as the sophisticated algorithms we can now use to mine that data for trends and patterns have allowed us to reach powerful insights into human behavior. Big Data is changing everything, from how companies do business and how governments understand population trends to how doctors and public health workers detect disease. But what is less known is that Big Data is also one of the best tools we have at our disposal to help us understand Big Potential. Now that we have so much data at our fingertips, we aren’t limited to merely measuring individual attributes such as intelligence, creativity, or happiness. We can now evaluate our impact upon others’ intelligence, creativity, and happiness.
So a few months later, when Oprah’s team asked me to find her five leaders to interview for our course on happiness, I jumped at the chance to call Laszlo in the hopes of learning how one of the most successful companies in the world predicts greatness and potential. In other words, I wanted to know about Project Aristotle.
To crack the code on true potential, the data scientists on Google’s world-famous People Analytics team launched a Big Data initiative with the not-so-secret code name Project Aristotle. Here was their initial mission: Build the perfect team. On the surface, that task might seem straightforward. If you are going to build a dream team, simply fill it with the highest performing individuals, right? So the next question is, what specific qualities would you look for? High IQ? Fluency in several languages? The ability to quickly solve quadratic equations in one’s head? Essentially that is what Project Aristotle was utilizing the greatest algorithm technology in history to find out. By analyzing incredible amounts of data—including tens of thousands of responses across 180 teams—on everything from introversion to skill set to intelligence to personality to backgrounds, Project Aristotle sought to create the profile that would make for the perfect performer in the workplace. The conclusion was astonishing and challenged everything you might think you know about potential.
They found there is no profile of a “perfect performer.” Project Aristotle reached more or less the same conclusion as my study at Harvard: When it comes to potential, individual traits and aptitudes are poor predictors of success on a team. One of the leaders in Google’s prestigious People Analytics division, Abeer Dubey, put it succinctly: “At Google, we’re good at finding patterns. There weren’t strong patterns here. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.”4 Wow! Take that in for a moment. The company that has become the best at searching for patterns in all of human history could not find a pattern in which individual skills, honed in isolation, predicted the success of an individual in a team. In other words, it isn’t how smart you are, how many degrees you have, what your personality is like, or what grades you received; it isn’t how many AP courses you took, how creative you are, or how many languages you can read. It is, to take us back to the beginning, “survival of the best fit.” As I had found at Harvard, and as Google confirmed using the best data technology available, those are the wrong variables to be measuring when trying to calculate success and potential. Why? Because they were individual attributes. The “who” of the equation, in other words, measures only your Small Potential. And Small Potential doesn’t come anywhere close to predicting your full capacity for success at work and in life.
And yet, that “who” is what we mistakenly focus on in admission files, on job applications, in interviews, and in other forms of evaluation. Similar to how Dr. Smith’s discovery about the synchronous fireflies led scientists to question everything they believed they knew about animal behavior, Google seemed to be questioning something equally fundamental about the nature of potential. How could skill sets and intelligence and personality and background not have a statistical advantage in predicting achievement?