Often how authority behaves becomes the model for how the people behave. Instead, he came through the desert on a 600 mile loop. Lawrence’s masterstroke was the attack on the port of Aqaba. Their advantage was speed and time (and not weaponry). Lawrence fought an unconventional battle against the Turks in the first world war. However, when he looked at those cases where the smaller country fought with unconventional tactics (such as guerrilla warfare), he found in these situations they won more time than they lost – in these situations the underdogs won in just under two-thirds of wars (63.6%). When he looked at one-sided battles (where one side had 10x the size of population to the other), he found the larger country won 71.5% of cases. Ivan Arreguin-Toft analysed all the wars over the past 200 years. Furthermore, to win as an underdog you need belief that you can win – and this often comes from having a higher purpose.
You rarely win against the Giants by playing to their rules – yet many ‘Davids’ assume the battle need to be played on their terms without even questioning it. But in reality, the same qualities that appear to give the ‘Giants’ strength are often their sources of weakness. But in real life, we often mis-read the odds, assuming they are heavily stacked against them. But most of the time underdogs don’t fight like Davids as they blindly accept the rules of the game as defined by the dominant players.Īdopt a different strategy to win – We are attracted to stories of lopsided conflicts – where the underdog battles through and wins against the odds. To win against the Giants, the Davids need to adopt different strategies. Trying to play the Giant’s game rarely is successful. Sometimes what we think is an advantage becomes a disadvantage – and vice versa (where a weakness becomes a strength as we learn to compensate against it). David & Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits and the art of battling giants by Malcolm Gladwell (summarised by Paul Arnold – Strategic planner, facilitator and trainer)
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