Claude Monet, Soleil Levant, 1872

Last week in my article When Disadvantage Gives You Advantage I wrote about how writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book David and Goliath explored how sometimes dyslexia can be a “desirable difficulty” – a major challenge that requires a person to adapt and learn new behavior in order to survive and thrive.

In several sections of his book Gladwell writes about how often successful people come from “outside” the establishment of a particular industry. He told of how Impressionist artists finally emerged on the art scene in the 1870s only after they broke-off and started their own gallery and art show in Paris. Before then they were shunned by the art establishment and largely hidden from public view – they were considered illegitimate.

Gladwell wonders if the rejection some people with dyslexia felt in school has helped them because they learned to be an outsider. They built-up a type of rejection resiliency – a capacity to ignore the social pressures that come with being criticized or shunned.

To help us understand, Gladwell explores the personalities of innovators and entrepreneurs. He references the Five Factor Model, which social scientists use in some form to evaluate us. This Model, which is now sometimes remembered using the acronym OCEAN, may look familiar to some of you because it is the foundation for the Myers-Briggs and PI assessments.

Table by the Author, 2016

Jordan Peterson, a psychologist referenced by Gladwell, suggests that successful entrepreneurs and innovators tend to have similar profiles. They are on the high side of Openness (sees new ideas) and Conscientiousness (persistence) and on the low side of Agreeableness (detached and able to take social risks) and Neuroticism (secure). And they might be anywhere in the Extraversion factor area.

The key point for understanding Gladwell’s point about dyslexia, though, is that having a kind of rejection resiliency makes one more detached and able to take social risks – a key success factor for entrepreneurs and innovators. Let me share two examples – Ingvar Kamprad and Gary Cohen.

Photo from IKEA Website

Ingvar Kamprad – Founder of IKEA. Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 in Sweden and is now the world’s largest furniture company. IKEA (an acronym of Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd – the farm where he grew up, and Agunnaryd – his hometown) was founded by Kamprad on the idea that he could greatly reduce shipping expense, and furniture prices, if he could ship and sell furniture unassembled.

By the late 1950s, however, IKEA had grown so much in Sweden because of their low prices that the rest of the furniture industry was dying. So they pushed suppliers and boycotted IKEA. Unable to get product, Kamprad could either buckle under the social – economic pressure and raise prices or look elsewhere. He looked elsewhere – across the Baltic Sea to Poland. He saw that Poland had plenty of raw material and skilled labor.

What Kamprad did not see in the early 1960s was that Poland had no infrastructure, no stable government, and was then caught in the middle of the Soviet block and a victim of the growing Cold War. But he persistently micro-managed the complexity that came with developing Poland as a product resource.

Kamprad had the openness to be creative and think of shipping furniture unassembled and he had just the right level of disagreeableness to reject his Swedish furniture society and the global anti-Soviet feelings. Perhaps Kamprad had developed this capacity because he grew-up with dyslexia.

Gary Cohen. When Gary Cohen was growing up in Cleveland, Ohio he was expelled from elementary school when he was in the fourth grade. He had been misbehaving and so the teacher put him under her desk and periodically kicked him. He finally pushed her away, hit the teacher, and ran out of school.  Cohen had dyslexia, couldn’t read, and since everyone thought he was an “idiot” he acted out to create some self-esteem.

His parents moved him from school to school where he had equally difficult experiences. Cohen was building-up a form of rejection resiliency – an ability to ignore what others might think of you and to keep fearlessly moving forward.

Gary Cohen, Photo from Bloomberg.com

What is interesting about dyslexia is that it only affects reading and has no impact on math or how the brain processes numbers. And Cohen had a gift for numbers.

After finally graduating from high school and college, Cohen found a job selling aluminum siding and windows. On a sales training trip to Long Island, he took a Friday off to visit Wall Street, a dream of his since a summer internship at a small brokerage firm back in Ohio. He told himself on the way to Wall Street that he was going to get a job there somehow.

Cohen then tells the story that right as the market closed he saw a successful-looking broker running out of the stock exchange trying to catch a taxi to LaGuardia airport. At the curb he managed to get next to the guy and asked if they could share a cab. The broker said yes and Cohen knew he had one hour to get himself a job.

On the airport ride he learned the broker was high up in a Wall Street firm and had just taken over the firm’s new business of buying and selling options. The broker asked Cohen if he knew anything about options and Cohen lied. Of course he did. The broker admitted he knew very little and asked Cohen to call him on Monday. Cohen called, was interviewed a few days later, and got the job starting the next Monday.

In between the first meeting and his start date Cohen crammed by reading a book on trading options. He read 22 pages in six hours and focused on learning about the numbers behind trading options. Cohen’s job was to stand behind his boss and give him buy and sell directions. His boss and the firm made a great deal of money.

Gary Cohen is now the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Cohen told Gladwell, “My upbringing allowed me to be comfortable with failure. The one trait in a lot of dyslexic people I know is that by the time we got out of college, our ability to deal with failure was very highly developed. And so we look at most situations and see much more of the upside than the downside. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my dyslexia. I never would have taken that first chance.”

Kamprad and Cohen overcame dyslexic obstacles and developed a rejection resiliency that teaches us there is upside to being outside.