As you no doubt know already, an urban myth is an immensely popular story or piece of information circulated as true but is in fact bogus. Two examples in ancient times: the earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese. Many talent managers still hold onto outdated models and theories — “urban myths” — that are in need of being revised.
Here is an excerpt from an article written by Kenneth M. Nowack for Talent Management magazine. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by Human Capital Media, please click here.
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It has been said that when human resource practitioners lock on to an idea or become a fan of a favorite model or assessment tool, they resemble abalones clinging strongly to the rocks they are attached to. Like an abalone, many of us find it difficult to pull away from what we believe, teach others or use in practice, despite evidence that suggests the contrary.
We all know that theories constantly evolve, that the half-life of technology is excitingly and particularly short today, and that new research continuously revises what we know. Yet, many of us continue to hold onto outdated models, theories and several very popular talent development urban myths that are in need of being exposed and revised.
[Here are the first two of five that Nowack discusses.]
Urban Myth No. 1: The 10,000-Hour Rule
Evidence: How long does it take to become an expert in one’s field? The answer most commonly cited is the “10,000-hour rule of experience.”
This myth has been popularized in books like Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated. These two books and others suggest it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a given field.
Even K. Anders Ericsson, the noted researcher whose original work Gladwell and Colvin base their argument around, came out against the “magic” of the 10,000 rule in a 2013 article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. He argues that the heritability of expert performance is currently unknown, that the sheer number of hours of practice is not as important as the quality of deliberate practice, and suggests that expert performance varies among individuals and domain.
Southern Illinois University researchers Elizabeth Meinz and David Hambrick in 2010 studied a wide range of piano-playing skill. They found that deliberate practice accounted for less than half the variance in performance, and that working memory capacity, which is highly stable and heritable, accounted for a significant proportion of the variance, above and beyond deliberate practice.
Recently, Miriam Mosing from the Karolinska Institutet studied 10,500 Swedish twins on music ability (rhythm, melody and pitch discrimination) and measured their practice time. Their findings not only suggested that music practice may not causally influence music ability, but also that genetic variation among individuals affects both ability and inclination to practice.
Finally, psychologist Brooke Macnamara from Princeton University conducted the largest known review of studies exploring the relationship between deliberate practice and performance in several domains. The research included 111 independent samples with a total sample of 11,135 participants.
It found that the percentage of total variance accounted by deliberate practice in each of these five specific domains was quite small overall and played almost no importance for professional development.
Moral: Deliberate, challenging and varied practice over a period of time will make one better — but up to some finite genetic set point for each individual. Taken together, it appears more realistic to expect that success and expertise in one’s field is truly the intersection between deliberate practice and innate ability.
Urban Myth No. 2: SMART Goal Effectiveness
Evidence: There is a large gap between intentions to change behavior and actual behaviors to change. Recent findings suggest that attempts to change people’s intentions alone may not always result in successful maintenance of behavior over time. For example, a recent review of health behavior — exercise, cancer screening, etc. — found that people translated their “good” intentions into action only 53 percent of the time.
We all know about SMART — specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely — goals, but do they really help facilitate behavior change? In a 2012 study, leadership training and research firm Leadership IQ studied 4,182 workers from 397 organizations to see what kind of goal-setting processes actually help employees achieve great things.
The firm discovered that people’s goals are not particularly helpful. In fact, the survey found that only 15 percent of employees strongly agree that their goals helped them achieve great things.
If SMART goals aren’t the answer, what is?
Nearly 200 published studies focusing on leadership, health, lifestyle and interpersonal relations have shown that deciding in advance under what conditions you will plan to implement a new behavior can significantly increase your chances of actually doing it.
Research from Peter Gollwitzer at New York University have confirmed that implementation intentions, rather than goal intentions, can result in a higher probability of successful goal attainment [Please see Figure 1 that accompanies complete article].
Implementation intentions are simply “if-then” plans that link situational triggers, or opportunities to practice specific behaviors or at specific times, with responses that are effective in attaining goals — “If situation X occurs, then I will initiate behavior Y to reach goal X.”.
So the truly “smart” way want to create new habits is to translate intentions into implementation plans.
Moral: Goal intentions weakly predict sustained behavior change. Implementation intentions are significantly more effective in actually building and sustaining new habits.
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Kenneth M. Nowack, Ph.D., is the president, co-founder and chief research officer of Envisia Learning.