The End of Average: How to Succeed in a World that Values Sameness by Todd Rose

Here we meet three companies that use individualism to their advantage. Costco features a turnover rate of 17% compared to Walmart’s 40%. They look for opportunities to promote workers so they have a career path, give them good wages, and treat them with dignity. They care less about grades and degrees and look for ways that employees can fit in.
Zoho is an IT company in India. As a small company, they couldn’t hire graduates from top colleges. Sridar Vembu, the founder, decided to hire people who couldn’t afford college and train them himself. He started Zoho University, which trained well-rounded programmers in only eighteen months. The instruction is self-paced with no grades and projects that get feedback. Students are paid while they learn and are offered a job when they finish. Most accept. Sridar is fond of saying: “You are in big trouble if you think about individuals as numbers. Treat individuals with respect, and you will get out more than you put in.”
Morning Star processes about 40% of the tomatoes in the US. There are no managers and no hierarchy. Workers don’t have job titles and are allowed to experiment with expensive equipment as long as their peers approve. Each employee has to draft their own mission statement and get approval from their peers as well. Their motto is: “People are happier when they have control over everything that’s important.”

As it stands, students can only control the universities they apply to and what they choose to major in. The school controls most of the courses they take and how much seat time they need to log. Todd proposes changes that will give the student more control and more options at less cost.
Todd recommends credentials in place of diplomas, competencies instead of grades, and giving students the ability to define their own paths at their own pace. You could do one class a week, a two-week intensive course, or study online at your own pace. If you change your mind, the added flexibility will result in less extra time. Now if you change majors it’s likely to cost you a year. Employers would have input regarding competency exams and students could have unlimited retakes like the bar exam for attorneys. Students could combine competencies from multiple schools and schools would have to compete on cost as competencies would be the same across schools.

While striving for equal access beats racism, cronyism, and classism, what we really need to strive for is access to equal fit where the systems we create allows every individual the ability to fit it. Our educational experiences need to allow for a self-paced approach and multiple pathways for individuals to follow.
We need to overcome the barriers of one-dimensional thinking, essentialist thinking, and normative thinking as institutions value the individual over the average. Our dream needs to be becoming the best we can be and living a life of excellence as we define it. We need to break free of conformity and not be limited by the average.

Todd is an American author, scientist, and social entrepreneur whose personal journey perfectly mirrors the thesis of his books. He is best known for his work in the “science of the individual” — the study of how to recognize, develop, and maximize unique human potential rather than trying to measure people against an arbitrary “average.”
He dropped out of high school and relied on welfare while raising a family and earning his GED. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he earned both a Master’s degree and a Doctorate in Human Development. He went on to become a faculty member at Harvard, where he directed the “Mind, Brain, and Education Program” and led the “Laboratory for the Science of Individuality.”

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