Challenging the 10 000 hour 'rule'

The 10 000 hour rule implies that experience is a proxy for capability. Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile on Unsplash

You may have heard of the 10 000 hour rule for becoming an expert. That is that it takes 10 000 hours of practice to become an expert in any particular field. This was popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers referencing other research (more on that next week!).
 
I'm not a believer in this myth (or at least the popular interpretation of it) and I actually think it may do you more harm than good for teams. Let's start with why I don't believe...
 
The central tenant of the 10 000 hour rule is that it is the quantity of practice that matters. If we do enough practice, we will improve and get better. Think about who you think would get better faster between Person A and Person B below:

• Person A practices guitar for 10 000 hours by themselves without any external help.

• Person B practices guitar for 2 000 hours with a plan, getting professional lessons and with other more experienced musicians

There is no doubt that Person A would improve their guitar skills, and almost definitely, Person B would be improve both quicker and further.

The amount of practice matters for improving at anything. The type of practice is at least equally significant.

Here's why I think that it can do more harm than good...

The main challenge that the 10 000 hour rule is that it can easily lull people into a false sense that any practice is good practice. In actual fact, what lots of practice does is to reinforce the patterns that are practiced. That means that if we are not changing the practice that we do, we simply get better at the skills that we already had in the settings that we apply them. We don't develop new skills or learn how to apply them in different scenarios.

In the context of teams, this can give people a false sense of mastery. Simply because you have been in a lot of teams doesn't mean that you are good at being in teams. Just because you have been a leader for decades doesn't mean automatically mean that you are providing the leadership that your team and organisation needs in its current situation. The opposite is often true - who amongst us hasn't observed a living example of the Peter Principle (where leaders rise to the level of their incompetence)?

The 10 000 hour rule implies that experience is a proxy for capability. It can convince people that they are experts as a result of their tenure or that people with less experience are inherently worse at a role. These are dangerous assumptions in our teams.

Some questions for you to consider this week:

1. How does your team get better at operating as a team?

2. Have you ever observed someone's experience holding them back from improving?