The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness - Hardcover

Rose, Todd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241184231 ISBN 13: 9780241184233

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2016

Synopsis

Todd Rose draws on the very latest findings in the fields of psychology and sociology to show how, when we focus on individual findings rather than group averages, we are empowered to rethink the world and our place in it.

Why don't Meyers-Briggs personality tests really work? Why are HR tests for new employees often meaningless? Why doesn't BMI - body mass index - correlate to actual health or physical fitness?

Individuals behave, learn, and develop in different ways, but these unique patterns of human behavior get lost in massive systems that play to average performance and average abilities, instead of individual performance and abilities. These systems made sense almost two centuries ago at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but in today's globalized digital world they are outdated and inadequate. Yet, every single one of us is affected by these archaic systems. They are far more prevalent that you can imagine, and far more insidious: standardized tests, academic grading systems, job applicant profiling, job performance reviews, job training, even medical treatments. These systems ignore our differences and ultimately fail at measuring and maximizing our potential.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Are you above average? Is your child an A student? Is your employee an introvert or an extrovert? Every day we are measured against the yardstick of averages, judged according to how closely we come to it or how far we deviate from it.

The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don’t even question it. That assumption, says Harvard’s Todd Rose, is spectacularly—and scientifically—wrong.

In The End of Average, Rose, a rising star in the new field of the science of the individual shows that no one is average. Not you. Not your kids. Not your employees. This isn’t hollow sloganeering—it’s a mathematical fact with enormous practical consequences. But while we know people learn and develop in distinctive ways, these unique patterns of behaviors are lost in our schools and businesses which have been designed around the mythical “average person.” This average-size-fits-all model ignores our differences and fails at recognizing talent. It’s time to change it.

Weaving science, history, and his personal experiences as a high school dropout, Rose offers a powerful alternative to understanding individuals through averages: the three principles of individuality. The jaggedness principle (talent is always jagged), the context principle (traits are a myth), and the pathways principle (we all walk the road less traveled) help us understand our true uniqueness—and that of others—and how to take full advantage of individuality to gain an edge in life.

Read this powerful manifesto in the ranks of Drive, Quiet, and Mindset—and you won’t see averages or talent in the same way again.

About the Author

Todd Rose is the director of the  Mind, Brain, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where he leads the Laboratory for the Science of the Individual. He is also the cofounder of The Center for Individual Opportunity, a non-profit organization that promotes the principles of individuality in work, school, and society. He lives  in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241184231
• ISBN 13: 9780241184233
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256