p.149
Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether our work fulfills us.
Work that fulfills those three criteria is meaningful.
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
p.192
What was required of Ratwatte was that he communicate, and communicate not just in the sense of issuing commands but also in the sense of encouraging and cajoling and calming and negotiating and sharing information in the clearest and most transparent manner possible.
p. 216
Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation” - that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously.
But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said.
p. 220
When we understand what it really means to be a good pilot - when we understand how much culture and history and the world outside of the individual matter to professional success - then we don’t have to throw up our hands in despair at an airline where pilots crash planes into sides of mountains. We have a way to make successes out of the unsuccessful.
Why are we so squeamish? Why is the fact that each of us comes from a culture with its own distinctive mix of strengths and weaknesses, tendencies and predispositions, so difficult to acknowledge? Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from - and when we ignore that fact, planes crash.
----- OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell