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

Rose, Todd

4.05

4,043 ratings by Goodreads

9780241184233: The End of Average: How to Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241184231 ISBN 13: 9780241184233

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2016

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Why don't Meyers-Briggs personality tests really work? Why are HR tests for new employees often meaningless? Is there another way of ranking students' performance?

We all behave, learn, and develop in different ways, but these unique patterns of human behaviour get lost in massive systems that play to average performance and average abilities. From academic grading methods to job applicant profiling and even medical treatments, these systems ignore our differences and ultimately fail at measuring and maximizing our potential.

The End of Average 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.

'Fascinating, engaging, and practical.' Amy Cuddy

'Transforms our understanding of who we are and what's important.' Seth Godin

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Review:

Fascinating, engaging, and practical. Todd Rose dispels the myth that our success can be divined by a simple number or average, whether a grade, a score in a standardized test, or a ranking at work. The End of Average will help everyone-and I mean everyone-live up to their potential. (Amy Cuddy author of Presence)

Todd Rose will change the way you see culture, school, work and everyone around you. Taylorism is officially dead. With compelling stories and an engaging style, he transforms our understanding of who we are and what's important. (Seth Godin author of Tribes)

Todd Rose has taken the latest findings from a new area of science, the science of the individual, to show that our one-dimensional understanding of achievement - our search for the average score, average grade, average talent - has seriously underestimated human potential. This book is readable, enlightening, and way above average. (Daniel H. Pink author of Drive)

A cogent rebuttal of assumptions about averageness (Jonathon Keats New Statesman)

Heartening . . . a worthwhile read for the aspiring nonconformist (Iain Morris Observer)

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.

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