This somewhat controversial book written by Malcom Gladwell that provides a bold reminder of a fundamental life lesson; that the underdog has a chance and can win.
Gladwell is a long time staff writer at The New Yorker and has received well-placed media attention with this release. Gladwell also addressed the Association of Consumer Research (ACR) North American Conference, held October 3-6, 2013, in Chicago, Illinois at the prestigious Palmer House to the 1,200-strong audience. Journalists interviewing Gladwell seem to consistently highlight the weak arguments and long shots he chooses to tie together. In each appearance however, Gladwell takes the jabs in his stride, dismissing the critical comments by suggesting this latest book, David and Goliath, is not scientific research and he can write what he likes.
Having now read this book, I can report that David and Goliath does indeed comprise some weak links but that aside, Gladwell tells a powerful story and provides a timely reminder in these challenging times. The powerful story that Gladwell presents is that the battle between the underdog and the giant is worthy of the fight because even though victory is improbable, victory is indeed possible and miraculous if it happens. More specifically, Gladwell challenges how we think, and that is uncomfortable to some. He shows how suffering and adversity becomes beautiful and important. He does this by combining history and psychology, and the outcome is powerful storytelling.
Part of what Gladwell challenges in contemporary thinking is our interpretation of the giant. He suggests that “Giants are not what we think they are” (p. 6) and that as a society we misinterpret the value of conflict. As Gladwell explains, the David and Goliath metaphor depicts an intimidating and highly armored character taken out by a lowly peasant; a slinger. In this line of thinking, society assumes size defines power and, therefore, the underdog victory is improbable. Gladwell challenges these societal assumptions and goes on to explain that David’s skill as an experienced and agile warrior enables David to recognize and attack Goliath’s weakest points. These weak points include unarmored areas, but Goliath’s weakest point is his lack of mobility. In contrast to Goliath, David is small and unhindered by heavy armor, but David is also a fast, accurate and agile warrior. The premise of the book, therefore, is that we make assumptions about power that are limitations and, therefore, we need to look past and move beyond these limiting assumptions to take on and beat the so-called giants of the day.
Gladwell presents his book in three parts. The first part argues the advantage of disadvantage; Part 2 presents a theory of desirable difficulty; and Part 3 boldly announces the limits of power.
In arguing the advantage of disadvantage, Gladwell opens Chapter 1 with the story of Vivek Ranadivé coaching his daughter’s basketball team to the national championships. As a novice coach and definite underdog, Gladwell explains Ranadivé’s two coaching principles as never raising his voice combined with a full court press. Ranadivé’s team of “little blonde girls” (p. 20) was not tall, could not shoot or dribble but won regardless, with a gentle voice and the hard-work strategy of the full court press.
From this opening vignette, Gladwell jumps into the many and varied wars that have occurred over the past 200 years and argues that size does not matter. While we might assume the bigger stronger armies are the typical victor, Gladwell shows the underdog as the favorite if the underdog is strategic enough to leave behind limiting assumptions and show up to the fight with intent and acumen rather than arms and mass. Gladwell discusses the case of Lawrence of Arabia, who defeated the formidable Turks with speed, endurance and courage. The Turks wrongly assumed that Lawrence’s band of unskilled warriors would not come at them from the desert. Quite audaciously, however, they did, and it worked. They attacked Aqaba and, in doing so, achieved the impossible.
This juxtaposition of time period and context is carried throughout the book in an almost rhythmic writing style. However, this aspect of Gladwell’s writing is part of what critics have queried. He ties together seemingly unconnected events and encounters. In effect, Gladwell presents a breadth of discussion and intriguing exploration of the consequences of assuming who the giant is and what the advantage point is. The argument made is to strategically supplant ability with effort. But, paradoxically, this exploration of the limitations of assumptions and the repeated demonstration of the point then arrives at the question as to why Vivek Ranadivé’s full court press has never become popular. Good question – but Rick Pitino watched and learned!
Pitino was on the sidelines during the famous games between Fordham and University of Massachuetts, where the full court press was enacted. He eventually became the head coach at Boston University (BU) at just age 25. His full court press took BU to their first NCAA tournament in 24 years. He did the same for the “entirely devoid of talent” (p. 33) Providence College and finished one game away from the championship. In effect, Gladwell shows that Pitino achieved far beyond expectations with just a fraction of the talent. As Gladwell states (p. 33):
He [Pitino] is now the head basketball coach at the University of Louisville, and Louisville has become the Mecca for all those Davids trying to learn how to beat Goliaths.
In Chapter 2, Gladwell takes to the education context and presents economic evidence that suggests the push for smaller classes is an assumed advantage but possibly a limitation. Gladwell argues this assumption has resulted in more teachers being trained and hired, escalating spending per student but not improving learning outcomes. From the strength of this argument, Gladwell cuts and jumps into the parenting paradox, where struggling families are forced to conserve resources and grab opportunities, which breeds productive and responsible citizens who understand the value of money and the meaning of hard work. However, the paradox sets in when these hard working, typically well-established adults breed families of their own who are then brought up in quite different circumstances with different consequences that are not always positive. On p. 49, Gladwell clearly states the argument: “Money makes parenting easier until a certain point – when it stops making much of a difference”.
Here, Gladwell introduces the inverted-U curve and explains the three parts that each follow different logic. The left side of the curve entails more effort and better outcome, the middle plateau entails doing more makes little difference, and the right side of the curve entails more effort means worse outcome.
The headline title and subtitle of Chapter 3 introduces Caroline Sacks, a young and aspiring scientist. Faced with the dilemma of which college to attend, Caroline laments her choice not to attend University of Maryland, and the negative consequences she now endures. However, before Caroline’s story unfolds, Gladwell opens the chapter with the Parisian Impressionists of the nineteenth century. The struggles faced by the Impressionists concerned their non-acceptance by the artistic authority of the day, the Salon. For the Impressionists to have their works hung at the Salon, they had to conform, and this meant compromising on what they considered meaningful art. They considered starting their own artistic movement. But the dilemma then became: did they want to be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond?
From there, Gladwell jumps back to Caroline’s story about where to attend a university and demonstrates that choosing Brown University over Maryland University goes with the assumption that prestige will deliver the advantage. But that is not how this story goes. Rather, just as with the Salon, the exclusivity and the prestige of Brown also generates problems. Taking too many classes and striving for a possibly unrealistic high academic standard, Caroline was a little fish in a big pond, and this experience belittled her and discouraged her to the point of exit. Gladwell refers to this experience as “relative deprivation” (p. 77). Caroline was in a class of high-achieving students, and so the stiff competition negatively impacted her confidence and motivation. Gladwell further highlights the commonality of this story with more than half STEM students dropping out after their first or second years. Gladwell argues, therefore, that the little pond maximizes chances rather than the big pond and, in effect, Harvard is costing the world.
In Part 2, Gladwell premises the next three chapters with an exert from the Corinthians that says: “When I am weak, then I am strong”, and this is the platform for his theory of desirable difficulty. Chapter 4 discusses various afflictions considered disabilities, such as dyslexia, and argues there are desirable difficulties as per Bjork and Bjork, psychologists from University of California. In making this argument, Galdwell takes the reader on a journey that entails the world’s shortest intelligence test, as well as IKEA’s brand personality and the London Blitz. These extreme juxtapositions are put forward to suggest that a high number of entrepreneurs with dyslexia, such as Sir Richard Branson, learn to overcompensate for their shortcomings, and this makes them stronger. Essentially, they learn to be comfortable with failure, which is an excellent preparation for the demands of the business world. Similarly, Gladwell argues that the Big Five factors of personality as applied to IKEA shows a high level of openness by way of outsourcing, conscientiousness through micromanagement, as well as being highly disagreeable by way of bucking the trend and highly creative by way of flat-packing furniture. This combination is a recipe for success, but the elements within are borne from difficulties, and the challenges in overcoming those difficulties.
In Chapter 5 Gladwell explains how the London Blitz generated an unexpected atmosphere of not only courage but more so, indifference. This surprising outcome happened due to more remote misses than near misses, and fatalities. The argument is that there is more than one reaction to a terrible/traumatic experience. While there were many fatalities in the London Blitz, there were also many near misses but far more remote misses. Similarly, while there are many individuals with dyslexia who become overwhelmed by this condition, there are also others who thrive with a little luck and a supportive environment. On p. 149, Gladwell writes, “Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times” and therefore courage is something acquired.
With yet another jump, Chapter 6 is about the American civil rights movement when Martin Luther King Jr brought the campaign to Birmingham. Gladwell presents this contextual story as a perfect example of acquired courage. As the most racially divided city in America, Birmingham had become known as Bombingham, and King was no doubt the underdog. Gladwell explains the background to a famous and powerful photograph of a teenage boy being attacked by a police dog. This photo was published in The New York Times as well as many other newspapers and depicts a young black boy seemingly leaning into the dog with limp arms and a calm stare. From this controversial picture, Gladwell weaves together issues related to Dyslexia, history related to African-Americans, along with the Brer Rabbit fairytale. The point made is that paradoxically, the lived experience of difficulties generates the development of skill and attitude that are in effect advantageous and desirable. In essence, there is an “unexpected freedom that comes from having nothing to lose” (p. 173).
Gladwell explains the fight for civil rights as comprising a triumvirate with King as the moral absolutist, Shuttlesworth the face of the movement, and Walker the pragmatist who was more willing to living in the political shadows. As Gladwell writes, Walker and King were aiming to set up that picture, which they did. With the illusion of more supporters than they had, along with some savvy public relations management, the media was well played. Gladwell’s argument therefore is that the trickster is not by nature but necessity.
In Part 3, Gladwell presents three chapters that underline the argument of the limits of power. Chapter 7 opens with an anecdote from the summer of 1969 about Rosemary Lawlor as a newlywed Catholic in among the chaos of Northern Ireland. Gladwell makes the point that a mass of soldiers and weaponry does not necessarily win the war and this point is touched upon intermittently throughout the chapter. In the meantime, Gladwell embarks on a long-winded explanation to arrive at the principle of legitimacy, where authority is argued to comprise three components: voice, predictability and fairness. To demonstrate the theory, Gladwell tells the story of a crime ridden neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, where a program called J-RIP (short for, Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program) was implemented by a specialized task force. Rather than a heavy-handed approach, this task force distributed 125 turkeys to kids at risk for Thanksgiving. Members of the task force also played basketball with the young offenders, even driving them to doctor appointments and lining them up with summer jobs. This soft approach resulted in reduced robberies and arrests and Gladwell emphasizes that those in authority are required to consider the world through the eyes of those whom they are ordering about. Power therefore has an important limitation: power has to be seen as legitimate; otherwise it is counterproductive.
Chapter 8 headlines Wilma Derksen, but then in typical Gladwell writing style proceeds to introduce the chapter with a story about Mike Reynold’s daughter Kimber. Kimber was just 18 when she was murdered by two meth addicts on a stolen motorcycle attempting a mugging. With strong support from the local community and the backing of a reality TV show, Mike Reynolds assumed that penalties for crime were too low and chronic offenders such as the two who killed his daughter. In 1994, Reynolds garnered support for a statewide referendum known as Three Strikes. At the time, there were 80,000 people incarcerated and within ten years that number doubled and crime significantly fell. However, considering the inverted-U curve, beyond a certain point, the Three Strikes legislation no longer had a positive effect, and even worse, it had a negative effect. More specifically, prison has a direct effect on crime and an indirect and negative effect on families because any child dealing with a parent being sent to prison is exposed to increased chances of juvenile delinquency. Consequently, taking a hard line on crime backfires in the long term because incarceration in many ways perpetuates criminality. After reinforcing this point and canvassing the various schools of thought regarding the Three Strikes legislation, Gladwell returns briefly to Wilma Derksen.
Wilma Derksen also lost her daughter to murder some 20 years before the offender was brought to trial and Wilma Derksen could have been another Mike Reynolds but chose a different path. Unlike Mike Reynolds, Galdwell argues that finding the strength to forgive in among full blown grief turns the world upside down. But at this late stage in the book Gladwell’s brevity of this highly emotional issue leaves the reader somewhat wanting.
The final chapter, Chapter 9 opens with a vignette about André Trocmé as a local French pastor assisted the Jews during the second World War. Lead by the boldness of Trocmé, Le Chambon became a safe haven for Jews that the Nazis left alone. The argument made by Gladwell with this final story is that the powerful may not be able powerful as they seem, nor the weak as weak. The story of Le Chambon entails along held rebellious history with the Huguenot movement being banned thousands sent to the gallows or imprisoned. This reign of terror lasted more than a century and consequently, those who remained were forced underground. Evasion and disguise were part of their survival and they learnt that the greatest fear is fear itself, just as did those who experienced the London Blitz. Effectively, rather than wiping out the Huguenots, the French created a tight knit group where were fearless. On the back of this story, Gladwell raises the question (p. 273), “If you are Goliath […] how do you defeat someone who thinks like that?” To finish the book, there is some attempt by Gladwell to tie the loose ends together but this attempt leaves the reader hanging. Maybe purposively to ensure the reader is thinking.
