David wins, again

When a boy named David slew a giant named Goliath, it was not the oddity we might think it was. So says Malcolm Gladwell in his book David and Goliath (2013). It happens all the time. The underdog upsets the champion. The outnumbered defeat superior forces. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan send the United States fleeing, just as the Colonies once did to the British.

With greater size, strength or experience often comes overconfidence and erroneous assumptions. David doesn't stand a chance, the thinking goes. Yet apparent weakness in the conventional sense can force someone to discover a hidden strength, just as David thought to use his sling, a wicked weapon at a distance, against a giant with a sword, a wicked weapon up close.

Gladwell gives several examples. A basketball coach with no experience and even less knowledge of the game led his group of untalented girls to the championship game. He did this by emphasizing defense and full-court pressure. Teams have just so many seconds to get the ball inbounds and so many seconds to get it across the half-court line. If they can't do that, your team gets the ball. These girls prevented this from happening again and again and again, rarely giving more talented teams opportunities to even take a shot. Their complete lack of ability, says Gladwell, "made their winning strategy possible." More talented girls would never have worked that hard.

Many top business leaders have dyslexia, Gladwell discovered. Even now, at the top of their professions, they still have difficulty reading. How did they do it? By listening carefully and remembering what they hear and what, with great effort, they are able to read. "Dyslexia — in the best of cases — forces you to develop skills that might otherwise have lain dormant," he writes.

There's more than one way to win a battle or a war. Swords — or bombs and heavy artillery — are one way. But slings — and guerrilla warfare and simply refusing to surrender — are another way. Passive resistance made the civil rights movement successful. Forgiveness can be more powerful than revenge. Attending a state college can be better for your career than attending Harvard or Stanford. Gladwell covers a lot of ground in a 300-age book, all of it fascinating stuff.