The Little Book of Talent

"Small actions, repeated over time, transform us."

— Daniel Coyle

Coyle is a journalist and the author of The Talent Code and The Culture Code, and since 2013 has advised the Cleveland Guardians, a Major League Baseball team. For The Talent Code he visited the places that produce talent disproportionately, like tennis, soccer and music academies, and studied the science behind them. This book distills that research into 52 short tips, designed to be used as a manual and not read only once.

The underlying idea is that talent is not a gift you either have or don't. Skills are built with a kind of practice Coyle calls deep practice: attempting something a little beyond what you can do today, failing, correcting and trying again. The book is organized in three parts, and each leaves concrete lessons.

To get started, the book recommends:

• Look often at who you want to become; keeping the best in your field in sight lights up motivation.
• Spend a few minutes a day observing an expert in detail and imagining yourself doing the same.
• Shamelessly copy the concrete techniques of those who are better than you.
• Keep a notebook to record what you practiced and what you learned.
• Distinguish the type of skill: hard skills are practiced like a careful carpenter, slowly and precisely; soft skills like a skateboarder, testing in different situations.

To improve, the lessons are:

• Break the skill into small parts, master each one and then connect them.
• Practice every day, even a little; five minutes a day yields more than an hour a week.
• Go slower than you think necessary; slowness makes mistakes visible.
• Address each mistake in the moment, and end every session with a repetition done well.
• Teach what you're learning; explaining it forces you to understand it.

To sustain progress, the book warns:

• Give yourself at least eight weeks before judging whether a practice works.
• When you plateau, change something: the speed, the order or the context.
• It's easier to build a new habit on top of the old one than to try to erase the old one.
• Practice with a blue-collar mindset: show up and work even when you don't feel like it.

The concept to master is the sweet spot. Coyle distinguishes three zones: the comfort zone, where everything goes well and little is learned; the survival zone, where almost everything goes wrong and little is learned too; and the sweet spot, right at the edge of your ability, where you succeed roughly between half and four out of every five attempts. That's where the uncomfortable feeling of "I almost got it" lives, which is precisely the sign that you're learning. Most people practice in the comfort zone because it feels productive, and that's why they stop improving.

Coyle also devotes tips to the person who teaches, which apply directly to an executive: connect with the person first, give short, concrete instructions instead of speeches, and aim for your people to learn to correct themselves. A good coach, according to the book, isn't the nicest, but the one who demands, watches closely and loves the fundamentals.

How to apply it? Choose a single skill that today limits your work as a founder, like presenting to investors, negotiating or giving feedback. Break it into three parts, and for eight weeks practice one of them ten minutes a day in the sweet spot, noting in a notebook what went well and what didn't.

As a founder it will help you design how your team learns, from training a new salesperson to developing leaders, and to stop hiring only for visible talent when what matters is the capacity to practice. And it works just as well for supporting your children in sports, music or school.