Mental Pivot #59: Obstacles and Opportunities
Good strategy and a 1965 ice hockey showdown, the utility of expected value, and musings on beneficial rivalries.
The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.
―Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way
Strategy is a simple concept, but one that I often forget or just plain get wrong. Richard Rumelt’s book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, explores the subject of effective strategy in detail and contains lessons I think about regularly (see: my book notes). As Rumelt notes, “the core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.”
In my experience, many of us tend to focus on the latter part of Rumelt’s strategy equation, the coordinating and focusing actions, and less so on the initial phase, identifying the critical factors in a situation. Individuals who neglect this critical part of the strategy puzzle risk being relegated to the dustbin of bad strategy.
I encountered a wonderful example of “good strategy” while listening to the ”Bookmarks 2021” episode of the excellent CBC podcast, “Under the Influence” (a program about the business of advertising). It vividly illustrates Rumelt’s point.
In the podcast, host Terry O’Reilly recounts the story of an ice hockey game between the Montreal Junior Canadiens (the farm team to the NHL Canadiens) and the Soviet National Team in 1965.
Although hockey is the national sport of Canada, the outcome of the matchup was uncertain. The Soviets were a dominant force in hockey at the time, having won gold at the Olympics in 1964 and the 1965 world championship. Even though the game would take place in Canada, it was believed that the Junior Canadiens were outmatched by the Soviets and would face a humiliating defeat in front of their home fans.
To improve their chances, the Junior Canadiens added a handful of minor league players as well as the recently retired goaltender Jacques Plante to their roster. Plante had never played against the Soviets and was eager for the challenge. He came out of retirement for the express purposes of playing this one game. He was both the oldest and most experienced player on the ice that night.
Fortunately for his teammates, Plante had an idea on how his underpowered squad could beat the Soviets.
Per O’Reilly’s account:
Jacques Plante had a strategy for winning. He got his defensemen together and drew on a chalkboard to show how he wanted them to play. He told them the Soviets were great passers, but poor shooters. So, when the Soviets approached the net on a two-on-one rush, Plante wanted the defensemen to protect against any potential pass. Plante would go head-to-head with the shooter.
Everyone was in awe of the Soviet team’s ability to pass on the ice. But that incredible finesse masked a weakness that Plante detected. It was a radical strategy because Plante was essentially telling his defensemen to force the Soviets to shoot on goal. He was confident he could stop them at the net.
At the end of three thrilling periods, the Canadiens skated off with a 2-1 victory over the Soviets.
To make his point crystal clear, O’Reilly elaborates:
The solution is always found inside the obstacle. When Audi couldn’t build a faster engine than their competitors in order to win the 24-hour Le Mans race, they won by building an engine that needed fewer pit stops. The obstacle was engine speed; the answer was fewer stops. The solution was inside the obstacle.
As Plante observed, the Soviets passing was dominant, but their shooting was weak. Choke the passing, force the shooting.
No doubt Richard Rumelt, champion of good strategy, would approve.
Now onto this week's recommendations…
Thinking Tools:
A Neuroscientist Prepares for Death: David J. Linden writes about his terminal diagnosis and the perspective it has given him. His insights on the experience of inhabiting contradictory mental states (e.g., anger and gratitude), the subjectivity of the human experience, and the constant need for the brain to make predictions about the future (which, in part, prevents us from properly coming to terms with death) are well worth contemplating.
Explain Things Simply: Andrew Yeung exhorts us to communicate clearly and concisely. He offers a handful of strategies for honing our message such as ELI5 (“explaining like I’m five”—a way to break a concept into an explanation a child could understand), TL;DR (“too long, didn’t read”—a way of summarizing information in one or two sentences), and the SEE-I Method (state, elaborate, exemplify, and illustrate).
How to Become a Better Listener: A practical set of strategies aimed at business leaders (but applicable to all walks of life). Among the tips: repeating the words of others, being attentive to rephrasing (and potentially misrepresenting), asking more questions than you think you need, minimizing distractions, and monitoring your emotions.
Poker, Speeding Tickets, and Expected Value: Shane Parish considers the utility of expected value in decision-making and surveys a broad set of its applications and benefits.
Reading Enrichment:
The Dirty Work of Cleaning Online Reputations: “In the same way that paying hostage takers can inadvertently create a market for hostage taking, the booming market for reputation fixing appears to be encouraging more online defamation and an ecosystem to manage it.”
The Most Influential Work of Political Philosophy in the Last 50 Years, Briefly Explained: A concise overview of John Rawls principles of justice that “that 1) all people should be guaranteed equal basic liberties (to free speech, assembly, religion, etc.); and that 2) economic and social inequalities can exist, but only 2a) when compatible with equality of opportunity and 2b) when those inequalities help the least advantaged in society.”
Tech Questions for 2022: Benedict Evans ponders the “centre of gravity in tech” in the coming years. Will it be crypto, augmented reality, virtual reality, the “metaverse,” gaming, or personal transportation? Unlike prior technology eras (e.g., the PC, internet boom, and mobile computing), there is no single, clear-cut breakthrough driving innovation today.
The Waste Age: We tend not to think about the role of waste in modern culture, but this article argues that it is not a peripheral byproduct, but rather a key output of an economy fueled, in part, by convenience, planned obsolescence, and disposability. On the bright side, the opportunities to minimize waste through better design solutions or make use of that waste through upcycling are abundant.
You Don’t Need a Mentor—Find a Nemesis Instead: Musings on rivalries: how they drive innovation, improvement, and meaning. Does a good nemesis truly bring out the best in us?
Odds & Ends:
100 Ways to Slightly Improve Your Life Without Really Tryingis a fun catalog of small and even trivial changes that can boost your happiness, health, and mood.
The Cartoon Bank is the official online archive for the New Yorker. Since its inaugural issue in 1925, the weekly magazine has published more than 80,000 cartoons. The cartoon bank also includes an additional 40,000 unpublished cartoons. A handy keyword search lets you find cartoons for a wide range of topics.
The Museum of the World is a collaboration between the British Museum and Google that offers an “interactive experience through time, continents, and cultures.” Via the website’s unusual interface, users can learn about fascinating cultural artifacts from history, such as a clay tablet from Mesopotamia (circa 3000 BC) that exhibits some of the earliest extant writing (it documents the daily beer rations of workers).
Cross-Promotions:
10+1 Things is a weekly curated newsletter by engineer and autodidact, Rishikesh Sreehari. Favored topics include technology, business, sustainability, personal development and art (in other words, it’s perfect for Mental Pivot readers).
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