The Intangibles: Underdogs Embrace the Unconventional

Underdogs. We revel in them. We identify with them. Their stories become ours. They are the clever ones who find innovative ways to achieve victory over the bigger and stronger.

The methods of the underdog apply equally well to the private companies and innovators seeking to compete with their much larger brethren. For those CEOs and management teams seeking extraordinary outcomes, the methods of the underdog may be their most effective method for competing.  

Underdogs do not win by replicating the strategies of their larger competitors. They don’t have the money, market share, brand, teams, or domain expertise at their fingertips to go toe-to-toe. Instead, they must find a competitive edge. They need a unique angle. They need to hone the ‘intangibles’ within their competitive arsenal. 

In this episode, Chris shares his experience having grown up and played with athletes that reached the heights of the NFL and NBA, as well as others who now coach at the highest levels of competition in NCAA football and basketball. He also shares some of his experience growing up in rural Iowa. In each of the stories, the competitive strategies of the underdog are revealed that enable them to out-compete those that were bigger and stronger. 

Key lessons in this episode include:

• Underdogs lean into and hone their ‘intangibles’, those subtle but profound factors that give them advantage, including their vision, anticipation and intuition, as well as the cadence and rhythms of their team; 
•   The intentionally curate their decision-making processes so that they are optimized for those critical moments in which they will be under pressure, the situational context is shifting, and the confusion is greatest. It is in these moments in which they can turn adversity into opportunity; and 
•   CEOs, like coaches or managers, must curate an environment in which they are overtly working to improve the intangibles, including the ability of their teams to work under pressure, manage through confusion, effectively anticipate how their competition will behave under similar conditions and come to trust one another’s decision-making and actions under new and challenging circumstances.  

Transcript

Do not try to go toe-to-toe with your competition. 

I work with a lot of decision-makers who go out and survey the competitive battlefield in front of them. They come back a little bit fatigued and frustrated. What they see are competitors that are bigger, have more market share, have more momentum, have more money. They're not going to win. They're going to lose. 

The strategy here is that you have to find unconventional ways to win. Do not go toe-to-toe. 

This theme came up in a recent conversation that I had with Dr. Chris Boyhan. I thought I'd share it here. You'll probably also pick up a few nuggets also about where I come from and why I love an underdog. 

• "This is an interesting thesis, and it comes up a lot in my work right now. We are always looking for ‘the edge’? What is that competitive edge that we can find? Maybe it strikes all the way back to the way Dad farmed, which is you are not gonna win by spending a lot of money on farm equipment. We had things that were cheap and broken, and then had to go find an edge. The edge was fixing these assets to make them valuable, creating value from ingenuity. I think the same applies in the competitive world of athletics. You may not have the best athletes. But, if we have the best play design, or the best scheme, or the best teamwork, or the best plays, or cadence, or we read the defense better, that's where we start finding the edge."

Both Chris and I played with some great athletes. They weren’t the ones with the strength or the speed. They weren't the Goliaths. Instead, they were the ones who were more clever, more creative, and they worked hard to get where they are. They were always overlooked. And they went on to be in the NFL Hall of Fame and to win an NBA World Championship. Others now lead Top 20 collegiate football programs and Top 20 collegiate basketball programs. 

• "I think there's another dimension to it as well, which builds on something that you're alluding to, is that the gap between great and good isn't that farsometimes. Some of those people that you played with or I played with, we were on the same field together. They were special. But if you put in the work, you could make that leap from good to great. It's not unachievable. Like when you're actually standing side by side with them, you're like, ‘This is attainable. I think we can get there.’ This is about just studying a little bit harder, working a little bit harder to learn the plays, understand where the angles are, or being a little bit more intuitive. That's where we find the edge that gets you there.”

When you don't have blazing speed or brute strength, you have to find ways to win that are unconventional. And this oftentimes roots down into finding “the intangibles". These are about how you perceive, react, and think about the problems before you.  It is about how you make decisions under pressure. 

A lot of times, when I'm working with decision-makers, this is expressly what we're trying to improve:  

How do we build ‘the intangibles’? How do we see things differently? How do we get a team to think about the problems and move together with trust? 

It's about how we curate the environment to encourage the unconventional, the differentiated, the new, the never been tried before. This is where we find the way to win. When you can get ‘the intangibles’ to really hum, then you can fight like an underdog and win. 

This is your assignment for today… again, we're trying to provoke a-ha's. 

How well are you curating an environment which really strengthens your ‘intangibles’? 

If you're doing this well - you'll win. 

• “I think that's one of those things that I hope comes through to my kids, and the people I work.  We can compete at a higher level. We're closer than we think, that is, if we find the edge.”