NEW YORK Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell told attendees of CUNA’s America’s CU Conference a little guy may enter a fight as an underdog, but the underdog can overcome with constant pressure, what is known in basketball as a “full-court press.”
Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink,” recounted of how an untalented group of 12-year-old girls used the full-court press to take their team all the way to a national championship. The group of girls, daughters of Silicon Valley software engineers who were not athletically gifted, instead leveraged traits such as hard work, endurance, courage, intelligence, knowledge of the community and the willingness to be disagreeable into success, explained Gladwell.
Their coach asserted that if his players were willing to work hard enough to run a full-court press for an entire game, their efforts would negate any offensive strategy.
“What appeals to me most about that story is it appeals to so many of our attitudes about underdogs,” Gladwell said. “We misunderstand what is so powerful about underdogs.”
“A lot of our intuition about what an advantage is and what a disadvantage is, is wrong,” Gladwell said. “Bigger isn’t always better and being powerful in a marketplace doesn’t ensure future success.”
“Underdogs,” said Gladwell, “do win.” He noted in military conflicts in which one country is much smaller than the other over the past 300 years, if smaller opponents do not play conventionally, they win 63% of the time.
“The full-court press is hard. That’s a crucial point. So often, when we look at any competitive situation we assume that what is rare is talent,” said the best-selling author.
He related the full-court press to the credit unions versus banks battle. He urged credit unions to embrace the fact they will never be as big as big banks, “and that’s a competitive advantage,” he said. When a credit union emphasizes small size, it should add that it works harder to please members as a result, he said.
