4 ms·

What Gladwell is Missing: Institutional Memory

31 points by llimllib 17y ago

russell 17y ago
Gladwell's article says that the underdog can win by using unorthodox tactics. One of his examples is a team of undersized, unskilled 12 year old girl basketball players that made it to the Nationals by employing the full court press and running the other teams into the ground. The emphasis in their training was in conditioning. Another example was T E Lawrence's use of mobility to defeat the Turks in WWI. Mill criticizes the article by saying that no team has made it to the NBA championships by using the full court press. It seems that Mill has missed the whole point of the article: if you are going to lose, do something different. You can beat the incumbents by introducing disruptive technology.
- llimllib 17y ago
  > if you are going to lose, do something different. Rather, I say if you're going to lose, build for the future. Don't optimize for seventh instead of ninth place, try to win the championship a few years from now.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    That is true in a place like the NBA where equality among competing organizations is a goal of the governing body, i.e. the draft hypothetically helping the losers become equal to the winners. Just keep plugging along and eventually you will be bailed out. In something like business, or in Gladwell's example lower level sports, this is not the case. Small schools will always be small, they will always have fewer kids to pick from for their team and thus need to get unorthodox to gain an edge. In the business world, if I'm competing with 20 people vs 20,000 people I need to get unorthodox to shake things up, even if my solution isn't perfectly optimal.
    - llimllib 17y ago
      There's also more opportunity to invent a whole field in business than there is in NBA basketball. Totally agreed. Nonetheless, I think my point in the conclusion holds: if a company is not optimizing what you think they should be optimizing, you're more likely expecting the wrong goal than they are failing to optimize for the goal you expect.
- adamc 17y ago
  He didn't miss the point at all. What he said was that the Warriors aren't trying to win a few marginal games this year, they are trying to build themselves back into the kind of team that can win championships, and you don't get there by training a team to press. Dean Oliver used to write "The Journal of Basketball Studies" (http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/ http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/ ), and I recall him making the point that the press basically randomizes games. If you are a poor team, that _will_ help you win more games. But perhaps developing a culture that randomizes games isn't going to lead you to championships. Not sure I buy the argument, but it deserves more thought, and is certainly better than you are making out.
foulmouthboy 17y ago
All of these criticisms miss Gladwell's point. The point isn't the full court press. It's that the teams that were beaten by the full court press thought it broke some sort of unwritten rule of youth basketball that supposedly reads, "don't full court press". The whole point of the article is that in areas of competition or warfare, very often, one side lives (and sometimes dies) by obeying rules that don't actually exist. Goliath thought that, win or lose, the battle should happen hand to hand and David knew to use a sling and a rock to his advantage. When one side is playing by a certain set of rules that the other side doesn't have to acknowledge, then the side with fewer rules has an advantage. That's the point.
- trapper 17y ago
  As someone who has coached basketball I call B.S. You don't put on a press because if you are playing against a team that knows how to beat it you will get destroyed because they will run you into the ground. It's a suboptimal strategy because of this. What he is essentially saying is that in any two team dynamic system you can gain a short term advantage by playing the suboptimal strategy. In this case it's not going to work next year, because most teams will train how to beat it. It's like telling your military to charge the opposition. This may surprise them, and you might win, because the opposition isn't expecting it. But next time don't expect it to work.
  - foulmouthboy 17y ago
    I'm talking about the original Gladwell article. In the original article, Gladwell points out that there are rules that competitors limit themselves to despite the fact that they aren't explicitly laid out. The coaches of other teams were upset at this particular team because, as they put it, it's unfair to keep using a full court press against 12 year old girls. The other example Gladwell referenced was of a naval simulation primarily played by people well versed in military strategy. While most players used traditional strategies seen throughout history, one player found that the optimal strategy was something that would never work in real life, but was totally feasible within the rules of the game. The other players cried foul because he went against the "spirit" of the game, despite not breaking any rules. Again, the point of the article: The best way to win is to not limit yourself by rules that don't exist. [edit] I realize we're talking about two different things. I don't really have an opinion either way in regards to running the full court press more often at other levels of competitive basketball. I still think people are missing the point of the original article, and Gladwell isn't helping himself by going on about the full court press thing.
jpwagner 17y ago
Judging by the comments around here, quite a few of you seem to really want Gladwell's analogies to work. However, the story of David and Goliath is not one of trying new techniques after failed attempts with old ones, it is the story of an act of God (and possibly technology.) Additionally his basketball example doesn't work. I think his point is as simple as: "when what you're trying doesn't work, try something new." Terrific! But the objection is with the clarity of his examples.
- anamax 17y ago
  Actually, Gladwell's basketball analogy does work, it just doesn't work the way folks seem to think that it does. The basketball team didn't win because it decided to use a full court press. Reread the story. The kids trained so they could run a full court press the whole game. The other teams didn't have the athletic ability to keep up. You can't just play the game differently. You have to do what it takes to be successful playing the game differently.
  - jpwagner 17y ago
    So you're saying people misinterpreted Gladwell's argument? So his argument was unclear?
    - ahoyhere 17y ago
      I read it while suffering from the flu, meaning I was a bit out ofit, and that is the takeaway I had - not just the full court press, but the training, and the wearing the other team out. He says it explicitly. The guy who trained his girls to do it says it explicitly. "I have them running around for hours" etc. and that other coaches A) don't train their kids to have that level of athletic endurance, and B) don't respond to the use of the strategy by changing their routines. If people miss it, they are either bad at reading comprehension or deliberately wanting to misunderstand to lampoon Gladwell. I'm not a huge Gladwell fan. I felt totally ripped off by Blink. But I was pleasantly surprised by the essay.
    - anamax 17y ago

31 points by llimllib 17y ago

Gladwell's article says that the underdog can win by using unorthodox tactics. One of his examples is a team of undersized, unskilled 12 year old girl basketball players that made it to the Nationals by employing the full court press and running the other teams into the ground. The emphasis in their training was in conditioning. Another example was T E Lawrence's use of mobility to defeat the Turks in WWI. Mill criticizes the article by saying that no team has made it to the NBA championships by using the full court press. It seems that Mill has missed the whole point of the article: if you are going to lose, do something different. You can beat the incumbents by introducing disruptive technology.

llimllib 17y ago
> if you are going to lose, do something different. Rather, I say if you're going to lose, build for the future. Don't optimize for seventh instead of ninth place, try to win the championship a few years from now.
- krschultz 17y ago
  That is true in a place like the NBA where equality among competing organizations is a goal of the governing body, i.e. the draft hypothetically helping the losers become equal to the winners. Just keep plugging along and eventually you will be bailed out. In something like business, or in Gladwell's example lower level sports, this is not the case. Small schools will always be small, they will always have fewer kids to pick from for their team and thus need to get unorthodox to gain an edge. In the business world, if I'm competing with 20 people vs 20,000 people I need to get unorthodox to shake things up, even if my solution isn't perfectly optimal.
  - llimllib 17y ago
    There's also more opportunity to invent a whole field in business than there is in NBA basketball. Totally agreed. Nonetheless, I think my point in the conclusion holds: if a company is not optimizing what you think they should be optimizing, you're more likely expecting the wrong goal than they are failing to optimize for the goal you expect.
adamc 17y ago
He didn't miss the point at all. What he said was that the Warriors aren't trying to win a few marginal games this year, they are trying to build themselves back into the kind of team that can win championships, and you don't get there by training a team to press. Dean Oliver used to write "The Journal of Basketball Studies" (http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/ http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/ ), and I recall him making the point that the press basically randomizes games. If you are a poor team, that _will_ help you win more games. But perhaps developing a culture that randomizes games isn't going to lead you to championships. Not sure I buy the argument, but it deserves more thought, and is certainly better than you are making out.

foulmouthboy 17y ago

All of these criticisms miss Gladwell's point. The point isn't the full court press. It's that the teams that were beaten by the full court press thought it broke some sort of unwritten rule of youth basketball that supposedly reads, "don't full court press". The whole point of the article is that in areas of competition or warfare, very often, one side lives (and sometimes dies) by obeying rules that don't actually exist. Goliath thought that, win or lose, the battle should happen hand to hand and David knew to use a sling and a rock to his advantage. When one side is playing by a certain set of rules that the other side doesn't have to acknowledge, then the side with fewer rules has an advantage. That's the point.

trapper 17y ago
As someone who has coached basketball I call B.S. You don't put on a press because if you are playing against a team that knows how to beat it you will get destroyed because they will run you into the ground. It's a suboptimal strategy because of this. What he is essentially saying is that in any two team dynamic system you can gain a short term advantage by playing the suboptimal strategy. In this case it's not going to work next year, because most teams will train how to beat it. It's like telling your military to charge the opposition. This may surprise them, and you might win, because the opposition isn't expecting it. But next time don't expect it to work.
- foulmouthboy 17y ago
  I'm talking about the original Gladwell article. In the original article, Gladwell points out that there are rules that competitors limit themselves to despite the fact that they aren't explicitly laid out. The coaches of other teams were upset at this particular team because, as they put it, it's unfair to keep using a full court press against 12 year old girls. The other example Gladwell referenced was of a naval simulation primarily played by people well versed in military strategy. While most players used traditional strategies seen throughout history, one player found that the optimal strategy was something that would never work in real life, but was totally feasible within the rules of the game. The other players cried foul because he went against the "spirit" of the game, despite not breaking any rules. Again, the point of the article: The best way to win is to not limit yourself by rules that don't exist. [edit] I realize we're talking about two different things. I don't really have an opinion either way in regards to running the full court press more often at other levels of competitive basketball. I still think people are missing the point of the original article, and Gladwell isn't helping himself by going on about the full court press thing.

jpwagner 17y ago

Judging by the comments around here, quite a few of you seem to really want Gladwell's analogies to work. However, the story of David and Goliath is not one of trying new techniques after failed attempts with old ones, it is the story of an act of God (and possibly technology.) Additionally his basketball example doesn't work. I think his point is as simple as: "when what you're trying doesn't work, try something new." Terrific! But the objection is with the clarity of his examples.

anamax 17y ago
Actually, Gladwell's basketball analogy does work, it just doesn't work the way folks seem to think that it does. The basketball team didn't win because it decided to use a full court press. Reread the story. The kids trained so they could run a full court press the whole game. The other teams didn't have the athletic ability to keep up. You can't just play the game differently. You have to do what it takes to be successful playing the game differently.
- jpwagner 17y ago
  So you're saying people misinterpreted Gladwell's argument? So his argument was unclear?
  - ahoyhere 17y ago
    I read it while suffering from the flu, meaning I was a bit out ofit, and that is the takeaway I had - not just the full court press, but the training, and the wearing the other team out. He says it explicitly. The guy who trained his girls to do it says it explicitly. "I have them running around for hours" etc. and that other coaches A) don't train their kids to have that level of athletic endurance, and B) don't respond to the use of the strategy by changing their routines. If people miss it, they are either bad at reading comprehension or deliberately wanting to misunderstand to lampoon Gladwell. I'm not a huge Gladwell fan. I felt totally ripped off by Blink. But I was pleasantly surprised by the essay.
  - anamax 17y ago