Wharton’s No. 1 professor: 'Never
give up is bad advice. Sometimes quitting is a virtue.'
Catherine Clifford
When it comes to success,
unwavering determination is often revered as the secret to achieving your
dreams. If you have grit and just never give up, then you will, eventually,
win.
Not so, says Adam Grant, the No.
1 professor at top-tier business school Wharton, best-selling author and
management consultant to the likes of Facebook, Google, Goldman Sachs and the
NBA. Grant says there's a time when grit will get you nowhere but stuck further
in a hole.
"Never give up is bad
advice. Sometimes quitting is a virtue," says Grant in a speech he
delivered to Utah State University graduates.
Grant researched graduation
speeches before giving his and learned that most extol the importance of living
with generosity, authenticity and grit. And while he doesn't argue that these
are values worth respecting, he also offers a warning.
"If you're too obsessed with
any of these virtues, you might undermine your own resilience," he says.
"Virtues can be a little bit like vitamins. Vitamins are essential for
health. But what if you get more than your body needs? If you take too much
Vitamin C, it won't hurt you. If you overdose on Vitamin D, though, it can do
serious harm: you could wind up with kidney problems."
Grant does not dispute that great
success often requires determination in the face of rejection.
"Persistence is one of the
most important forces in success and happiness," says Grant. "There's
the author whose novel was rejected half a dozen times. The artist whose
cartoons were turned down over and over. And the musicians who were told
'guitar groups are on the way out' and they'd never make it in show business.
If they had quit, Harry Potter, Disney and the Beatles wouldn't exist.
"But that's only half the
story," he says. "For every J.K. Rowling and Walt Disney and Lennon
and McCartney, there are thousands of writers and entrepreneurs and musicians
who fail not for lack of grit, but because of how narrowly they apply it.
"Sometimes resilience comes
from gritting your teeth and packing your bags," says Grant.
For example, when Grant was
young, he wanted to be a basketball player. He dreamed of being in the NBA, he
says. And yet, despite his gallant efforts practicing as a kid, Grant didn't
make the seventh grade team or the eighth grade team. And when he got to high
school, he still wasn't even five feet tall.
He dropped his basketball dreams.
Instead, he picked up diving.
And while he wasn't an instant
champion — "My coach told me I walked like Frankenstein and his
grandmother jumped higher than me" — he did excel with time and hard work.
Grant qualified for the junior Olympic nationals twice and competed at the NCAA
level in diving.
"Grit doesn't mean keep
doing the thing that's failing. It means define your dreams broadly enough that
you can find new ways to pursue them when your first and second plans fail. I
needed to give up on my dream of making the NBA, but I didn't need to give up
on my dream of becoming a halfway decent athlete."
He also didn't have give up being
an author just because his publisher didn't want the first book he wrote. Grant
scrapped the original rejected draft — all 102,000 words — and started over
nearly from scratch. His new draft became "Give and Take," which went
on to be a New York Times bestseller translated into 30 languages.
"Don't give up on your
values, but be willing to give up on your plans," he says.