The 10,000-hour mastery rule of running a successful business

Last weekend, I did something I had never done before. For the first time in my career I played the role of a marriage counsellor.

A business friend called and told me that he had a serious domestic issue which threatened to tear apart his marriage.

It involved money and business. At first I was relieved that it had nothing to do with infidelity and physical abuse. But then I remembered reading somewhere that statistics show that about 80 per cent of all divorces are caused by issues related to money.

This implies that all problems that pastors and counsellors say could spell doom to marriages such as infidelity, alcohol abuse and so on are responsible for only 20 per cent of break-ups.

This means that spouses are more at home handling the ‘for better, for worse, in sickness and in health’ part of the vow than handling for ‘richer, for poor’ part of it.

In brief, my friend has been in business for the last six years, but according to his wife, the business does not seem to be heading anywhere near paradise as she was promised when they began it. The wife who has a good and stable job feels that she has sacrificed enough for the family and business, and she was not ready to put a cent more, or be part of it.

She was bitter for supporting the business and shouldering almost all family responsibilities with her salary. She went short of blaming her husband for being a non-performer. She felt they could be better of economically without the business.

The man on the other side maintained that the business is on course and requires a little bit of time and funding to cross the valley and reach Canaan, something that annoyed the wife more.

I drew my lessons from the Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success in all areas of life. Using numerous examples of highly successful people like Bill Gates, he comes with what he calls a 10,000-hour rule.

The 10,000-hour rule simply states that one needs at least 10,000 hours to gain mastery in any field. This resonates very well with another study conducted by John Hayes, a cognitive psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Professor Hayes investigated the role of effort, practice, and knowledge in top performers. He based his study on thousands of musical pieces produced between the years of 1685 to 1900, with core objective of establishing how long after one becomes interested in music it takes to become world class.

He concentrated on 500 pieces popular conceded to be the masterpieces, frequently played to the world and studied 76 composers who created them.

Quite remarkably, he established that almost all the masterpieces were written after 10 years of the composer’s career. Out of 500 there were only three exceptions, which were written in years eight and nine.

The discovery that not a single person produced incredible work without putting in a decade of practice first, not even genius like Mozart, is quite remarkable breakthrough in the study of personal development.

Prof Hayes called this period, 10 years of silence. It is a tough period which is manifested by hard work, hardly any gain and little recognition.

Both 10,000-hour rule and 10 years of silence figuratively underscore the element of time in success. It may take less or more for any business or person to achieve mastery that can be appreciated by others.

Most business failure and stress springs from expecting too much within a short time. This may be a serious issue especially in a set up where parties who are not involved in the day-to-day running such as spouses, financing partners have high hopes on quick returns.

Mr Kiunga is a business trainer and the author of The Entrepreneurial Journey: From Employment to Business

E-mail: [email protected].