Malcolm Gladwell always makes you think about things in a different way, forcing you to revise your opinions and question your habits and preconceptions, writes Andy McNab, ex-SAS serviceman and director of recruitment company ForceSelect.

Malcolm Gladwell always makes you think about things in a different way, forcing you to revise your opinions and question your habits and preconceptions, writes Andy McNab, ex-SAS serviceman and director of recruitment company ForceSelect.

After Blink and The Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw is a compendium of his columns from The New Yorker that provide a fascinating observation on the modern world and how we operate within it.

Early on, Gladwell says, ‘Curiosity about the inner life of other people’s day-to-day work is one of the most fundamental of human impulses, and that same impulse is what led to the writing you now hold in your hands’. That’s a lesson I learnt early on when serving in the armed forces, particularly when on tours of duty.

In life and in business, the more we listen to other people and their needs, the more we engage with a wide variety of different elements in the world, the more we have a chance of being a success.

Another chapter talks about hiring the right person for a job, something that is very pertinent to my new role with ForceSelect, which helps military service leavers adjust to civilian life.

It deals with scouting for footballing talent in the US. Interestingly, he cites an example of one of the chosen footballers making a mistake when under pressure. One of the things that sets military service leavers apart is that they tend to be superb under pressure because of the high level of training and the intense experiences that they have gone through – and this can only be good for British industry.