book, "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance"--

today is the official publication day, right?

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Today is the official publication day.

BEN FRIED: Congratulations.

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

BEN FRIED: And incredibly gracious of her

to fit time in at Google with a really, really busy publicity

tour, which I was getting exhausted just hearing about it

a few minutes ago.

So for those of you who aren't familiar with Angela

Duckworth's work, I'll try to briefly read a biography.

Angela Duckworth is professor of psychology

at the University of Pennsylvania

and the founder and scientific director of the Character

Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is

to advance the science and practice of character

development.

In 2013 Angela was named a MacArthur Fellow in recognition

of her research on grit, self-control,

and other non-IQ competencies that predict success in life.

It's a very impressive resume.

Prior to her career in research, Angela

founded a summer school for low income children

that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study.

She's been a McKinsey management consultant, a math and science

teacher in the public schools of New York City, San Francisco,

and Philadelphia.

She has degrees from Harvard, Oxford,

and the University of Pennsylvania

in neuroscience and in psychology.

Did I mention she's a MacArthur Fellow, 2013 MacArthur Fellow?

All right, I'll stop there.

And "Grit" is her first book, it says.

So welcome again, Angela.

Thank you for coming.

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Thank you, Ben.

Thank you for having me.

I'm delighted.

Thanks.

[APPLAUSE]

BEN FRIED: So let's get right into it.

If you're not with her work-- the TED talk, the book--

I guess, hopefully it's fair for me to summarize the thesis

as that the power, as you put it,

the power of passion and perseverance

are at least as strong indicators and contributors

to success or achievement as things like IQ

and talent, which are what societally at least

we've traditionally focused on.

And that resonated enormously for me,

because I think at Google we spend

a lot of time thinking about talent, IQ, raw talent.

It's kind of baked into this crazy hiring process

that we have.

And which brought me to the first question I had for you,

which was, do you think that-- I mean,

from what you know about Google-- do you think that we

or do you think that organizations in general

select for the wrong things in the hiring process?

And would organizations be better off

if they looked for grit plus fit,

as opposed to attempting to measure innate talent?

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: You know, I think the interests that we all

have in talent-- and it's not just Google, it's me too.

I wish I were more talented.

Talent's great.

And if you could give me five more IQ points, I'd take them.

So I don't think it's wrong to think about talent.

I don't think it's wrong to think about potential.

I do think it's useful to think about what we really mean

when we say the word talent.

And if you force yourself to write down

on a piece of paper in a sentence that

ends with a period, talent is, it's really hard

to actually fill in.

What do I mean?

Potential?

I mean, we start to use metaphors.

Here's my definition of talent, and I

think it reveals that I do think it's important.

Talent is the rate at which you increase in your skill

with effort.

Some people are going to increase their skills faster

than others.

And I think it's legitimate to say

those are the quick studies.

Those are the talented people.

I think it's legitimate for Google to look for them.

Why not?

Why not try to hire the more talented people?

But in my data I find two things.

One is that more talented individuals don't always

keep showing up.

Woody Allen famously once said, "Eighty percent of success

in life is just showing up."

He was later asked by William Safire of "The New York Times"

how he got to the number 80.

And Woody Allen, who is not exactly a scientist,

said, "Well, you know, I was going to say 70,

but it had one extra syllable."

BEN FRIED: [LAUGHS]

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Nevertheless, 70, 80.

I think his point was is that his experience as a writer,

which was the context of the quote, there

are many people who could write a great book

or who are talented in the sense that when they write,

they get better faster, but they'd never

finish what they begin.

And so what I find in my data is that talent

is no guarantee of actually showing up and finishing

the things that you start.

The second thing is, characteristic

of high achievers really in any domain,

whether it's Google or outside Google,

is this kind of daily discipline of trying to get better.

BEN FRIED: Yes.

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: In sometimes microscopic,

infinitesimally trivial ways.

All those little details add up to excellence.

And it's not always the people who

are the quick studies who are willing to put

in those hours and hours of behind the scenes unglamorous

work.

So sure, Google should hire talented people.

But I do believe that you want people

who are going to stick with things when they're hard

and who are going to daily submit themselves

to the Japanese principal of kaizen, continuous improvement.

BEN FRIED: So on that subject, continuous improvement,

you talk in the book about practice

and the difference between-- I think

you use the words directed practice

versus regular undirected practice.

And it reminded me of in running there's a phrase junk

miles, which maybe indicate-- I've never actually

been a runner, so I can only hypothesize what it means.

But I guess it means kind of running that doesn't really

contribute to your improved conditioning.

And what is the difference between direct practice

and undirected practice in this spirit of kaizen

and self-improvement?

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: So let's keep running as actually

the perfect example.

So when I started to try to understand

the science of achievement beyond bumper sticker

wisdom-- what do we really know as a science about experts

and how they got that way-- I quickly

found myself at the doorstep of Anders Ericsson, who's

the world expert on world experts.

He studies what experts do that make them

different from the rest of us.

It's a great job.

He goes to the sudoku tournaments

and he studies World Cup soccer players.

And he refers to it actually as deliberate practice.

BEN FRIED: Right.

Deliberate practice, yeah.

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: And he would like

to say that deliberate practice is different from anything else

that we do in four important ways.

And I'm going to come back to running as an example.

But the first thing when you're doing truly deliberate practice

is that it's extremely intentional.

It's problem solving something in particular.

Not like I'm going to come into Google

and be a better CEO, whatever it is.

It's like I'm going to say that the first 15

seconds of my presentations are going to be a little sharper.

I mean, it's extremely, extremely precise.

That's the first thing, a very specific goal

that you're working on.

And often it's a weakness, not a strength.

Second is 100% focus.

Or as some coaches would say-- like Pete Carroll

at the Seahawks-- practicing with great effort.

Third is feedback.

Ideally, right away and ideally information rich.

And fourth, the kind of refinement that you reflect on

and you try the whole thing over again.

In fact, these four things are incredibly straightforward.

And you might wonder why only world class experts do it.

But let's come back to running.

So when I heard about this research on deliberate

practice, I asked Anders, why is it

that I have gone running pretty much every day for years

and I'm not a second faster than I ever was?

Isn't that evidence that you're wrong,

that it's not thousands and thousands of hours of practice?

He started asking me questions like, well,

when you go out for a run, do you have a goal,

like a certain time?

Or are you trying to run hills?

No, no.

I'm taking the same route every time

I go out around my neighborhood.

And he said, OK well, that's great.

What do you do when you're running?

I was like, well I listen to NPR and any other podcasts

because I'm trying to distract myself.

And he said well, that's interesting.

Because people who are trying to improve

their running are actually concentrating

on their running and their strides and their breathing.

All right.

And he said, so how are you getting feedback

on your running?

I mean, are you keeping your times?

Are you measuring your heart rate?

Do you have a coach who's looking at your form?

No.

No.

And no.

BEN FRIED: [LAUGHS]

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: And then he said, are you

going back every time when you run

and thinking to yourself, what can I refine here?

Before this next repetition what is there

that I can do differently?

No.

And he said, well, then I can tell you why you're not

getting any better at running.

And that is, those thousands of hours

are not thousands of hours of deliberate practice.

So I think this idea that we should be getting better

at things, we can unpack that a little.

It's not just going out and trying hard.

It's actually trying hard in those four very specific ways.

BEN FRIED: So on the subject of deliberate practice

and coaching, I thought it's an interesting question.

In the organization, do you have theories

about what roles managers can play in helping

people develop in the same way?

Or do you have opinions on how professional development works

in organizations versus how it should work?

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: One of the things

that's really important to know about human beings

is that it's not that we stop growing up when we're 18.

And if you look at the etymology of the word parent,

the word parent really means to bring forth.

So after we leave our own parents who've

tried to bring forth our-- we leap

into other situations which frankly,

are parenting situations.

I mean, I had teachers, I had professors.

I still do, you know, mentors who, in a very authentic way,

are parenting me.

All right, now what does it really mean?

What does it look like?

I think that really, really great leaders

do a couple of things.

One is they model the character that they

want other people to emulate.