Interesting article in last week's New Yorker about underdogs and how and why they manage to win against seemingly unbeatable opponents.  According to author Malcolm Gladwell--an author with a knack for the innovative, emminently sum-up-able observation of human behavior--underdogs win by changing the rules of engagement.

An all-white suburban girls' basketball team with little height, few skills, and lousy shooting manages to prevail against taller, more skillful players by using a full-court press--a style of play that tends to break the rhythm of teams playing the standard game; T.E. Lawrence's ragtag army scores unbelievable victories against the Turks by being mobile, adaptable and ruthless; David defeats the bigger, stronger Goliath by shunning armor and steel in favor of his weapon of choice, the trusty slingshot.  In each case, the stronger side is undone by convention and habit, and the weaker side prevails creativity.  

Gladwell wonders why the full-court press--in which defending players scrupulously guard against any advancement downcourt, rather than yielding all but the space around their basket, as in conventional play--isn't used more often, and he points to a winning college coach who has successfully honed the press to a fine art as an example of how it can be implemented beyond the 12-year-old girl level.  

But not everyone agrees with Gladwell's take on the game:  this guy and others suggest that "every Goliath has his own David."  The press, in other words, will defeat certain types of teams and lose to others.  Pit Achilles against any warrior in Ancient Greece and he'd win; ask him to fight an army of heel-biting bobies, and he'd be in big, big trouble. 

I'm not enough of a basketball fan to be able to evaluate Gladwell's reasoning, but his overall point in the article is an interesting one.  As ever, he leaves the extrapolation to us:  there are certainly suggestions that terrorists, who, like Gladwell's plucky team of 12-year-olds, are willing to work harder, sweat more, and play more aggressively than their opponents, have a pretty darn good fighting chance against conventional armies. 

Less ominously, though, he implies that most of us, in business, sport, life in general (?), are operating under Goliath's rules, and that the key to becoming a victorious underdog is to play our games in ways that exploit both the conventional thinking of our enemies and our own unique strengths. 

No problem, right?

The David on the left:  Spends his days chasing sheep over hillsides, perfecting slingshot skills on hungry coyotes and other predators.  Pictured here before famously kicking Goliath's ass.  Much admired by legions of female art-history majors the world over.  The David on the right:  Eats and thinks conventionally.  Easily outrun by three-legged sheep. Much admired by his mother, who, when pressed, will still admit he could stand to lose a few pounds.  Pictured here before being eaten by Goliath.  

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Great video by Dave Tate on tmuscle about bench pressing.  Don't play it with your mother in the room.