Blink, triumphantly topping the nonfiction bestseller lists, is packed with fascinating nuggets for everyone, whether their interests are marriage, Mary Tyler Moore, minorities, Morse code, mind reading, or MTV. (And more!) Our interest here is managers, and HBS Working Knowledge readers will enjoy poking around the book for lovely examples—and cautionary tales—that they can apply to their work.
"The weird power of first impressions" that Gladwell delves into is everywhere in business life. Take chapter three, titled "The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall for Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men." How tall is your CEO? Gladwell polled "about half" of the Fortune 500 companies and saw that, lo and behold, most of these companies' chief executive officers were on the tall side, just slightly under six feet on average. So one big question is, how come? "Most of us, in ways that we are not entirely aware of, automatically associate leadership ability with imposing physical stature," Gladwell writes. The book also probes the question, certainly more important, of why most of the CEOs were white and male.
The sections on market research are also very telling. The New Coke debacle is infamous, of course, but it is also instructive to read about how an up-and-coming rock musician named Kenna, championed by music biz professionals including the manager of U2, Paul McGuinness, absolutely bombed when standard market research ran the numbers on his potential star power.
In sum, Blink is a fun read for managers but a serious one, too. It's likely to probe your management assumptions about products—and especially about human beings and the ways colleagues boost or undercut each other.—Martha Lagace
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