{"id":63199,"date":"2022-03-16T15:31:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T19:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=63199"},"modified":"2022-03-28T10:26:30","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T14:26:30","slug":"underdog-advantages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/underdog-advantages\/","title":{"rendered":"Underdog Advantages: Win Even When You’re Small"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Are you the underdog? Do you feel out-gunned by the competition, whether in business or in life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you first start out on any conquest, chances are that your enemies will have more resources than you. However, this isn\u2019t necessarily a problem. Robert Greene points out that smaller armies are more mobile and easier to conceal. And, if you don\u2019t seem large enough to pose a significant threat, your opponents might simply ignore you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more to learn about underdog advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t Let Small Size Hold You Back <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Greene suggests that there are certain underdog advantages. You can leverage your smaller size by building up your empire from many small conquests. You suddenly take possession of something that, by itself, is not worth your opponents\u2019 time or energy to fight over<\/strong>. Then bide your time, building up your strength and waiting for others to forget about your recent conquest. Once they\u2019ve forgotten about it, you can repeat the process. Greene asserts that over time you can quietly take over a large territory without anyone realizing what you\u2019re up to until it\u2019s too late for them to stop you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to learn how to be competitive<\/a> in business or life even when you’re small, understand two strategies: avoiding pitched battles and fighting a guerrilla war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conquer Niche Markets<\/strong>

In Crossing the Chasm<\/em><\/a>, Geoffrey Moore presents a business application of Greene\u2019s strategy of building up an empire from pieces that, individually, your opponents don\u2019t consider worth fighting for.

Moore\u2019s strategy begins with identifying a niche market<\/a> for your product. He emphasizes that the first market you target must be small enough for your company to dominate. This is important for two reasons: First, it makes it feasible for you to become the market leader<\/a> in that niche, which helps you make sales<\/a>. Second, and more to Greene\u2019s point, if the market is small enough for a startup company to dominate, then it\u2019s not worth enough for larger, established companies to bother fighting over. 

Moore advises that, once you\u2019ve established yourself as the market leader in your target niche, you select another niche to expand into. Thus, you build up your market share one niche at a time until you dominate the whole market. In light of Greene\u2019s discussion, part of the reason Moore\u2019s strategy works is that by the time the old market leaders that you\u2019ve displaced realize what\u2019s happening, you\u2019re already too well entrenched in too many market sectors for them to take back much of your market share.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Avoid Pitched Battles <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Greene points out that head-to-head battles are costly and often indecisive<\/strong>. Thus, it\u2019s better to avoid them, especially when you\u2019re small and don\u2019t have resources to spare. To gain victory efficiently, Greene advises you to work your way into a situation where your strengths are pitted against your opponent\u2019s weaknesses, and where their strengths and your weaknesses are less relevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene says that when a large, powerful opponent moves to engage you head-on, your best bet may be a strategic retreat. Not only does this avoid the massive losses of a pitched battle and buy you more time to prepare, but it typically provokes your opponent to chase you, allowing you to lead them to a place where you can fight them on your terms. For this reason, Greene says that the defender in any conflict is statistically more likely to win than the aggressor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use Blue Ocean Strategy to Avoid Pitched Battles in the Business World<\/strong>

Blue Ocean Strategy<\/em><\/a> might be interpreted as a business application of Greene\u2019s strategic retreat. As we\u2019ve discussed, with a blue ocean strategy you provide a unique product to create a new, uncontested market.<\/a> W. Chan Kim and Ren\u00e9e Mauborgne argue that this is more profitable than direct competition because the new market gives your business more room to grow. In Greene\u2019s terms, choosing to market a unique product<\/a> is like retreating out of your competitors\u2019 territory instead of fighting them head-to-head. 

Eventually, your competitors will realize that your product has reshaped the market, but by the time they give chase (in the form of introducing new products to compete directly with yours), they\u2019ll have to fight on your terms because you already have experience in the new market. You\u2019ve developed procedures for producing and marketing the product efficiently, as well as supply networks from which you source your materials. Meanwhile, to adapt to the changing market, your competitors will have to retool, which is slow and costly. In terms of Greene\u2019s strategy, you\u2019ve drawn your competitors away from their familiar territory into terrain where you have the advantage.

Although Kim and Mauborgne don\u2019t refer to their strategy as a retreat, per se, they do emphasize the non-combative nature of their approach. At the time they first published Blue Ocean Strategy<\/em><\/a>, this differentiated it sharply from most other business strategy books, which emphasized combative business competition<\/a>. Viewed as a strategic retreat, it\u2019s actually both combative and non-combative: You avoid combat up-front, but you gain an advantage over your enemies in the long run.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fight a Guerrilla War<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Greene explains that guerilla tactics are ideal for fighting a large, powerful enemy with a small force. Stage small attacks on your opponent\u2019s weak spots and plunder their supplies to supplement your resources. Even though a single guerilla raid won\u2019t hurt your enemy much, the effect of numerous small raids accumulates over time. This wears your enemy down without ever giving them the chance to defeat you in a pitched battle. It also shows them that they can\u2019t push you around with impunity, even if they\u2019ve put you into retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use Guerrilla Tactics to Conquer Your Habits<\/strong>

As Greene points out, guerilla tactics work because you can stage small raids relatively easily, even with limited resources. However, these tactics aren\u2019t only useful in battle\u2014other authors suggest applying these same principles to kick bad habits and cultivate good habits.

In Tiny Habits<\/em><\/a>, behavioral scientist BJ Fogg argues that the key to cultivating productive or positive habits is to find the \u201ctiny\u201d version of the habit you want to create, something so easy that it doesn\u2019t take much motivation to do it. He bases this on the Fogg behavioral model<\/a>, which predicts that, given the opportunity to do something, you\u2019ll do it whenever the combination of your motivation and ability (basically how easy it is) exceeds a certain threshold. Fogg observes that since your level of motivation naturally fluctuates and is difficult to control or predict, manipulating your ability to do something changes your behavior more than trying to manipulate your motivation.

Similarly, in Atomic Habits<\/em><\/a>, James Clear argues that if you focus on making small positive changes to your habits, these small changes get compounded over time, and add up to massive improvements.<\/a>

Combining these two ideas gives you a battle plan for optimizing your habits through a kind of internal guerilla warfare: Even if your arsenal of mental energy<\/a> is small, you can use it to make small changes to your behavior, and over time these changes will add up to defeat bad habits and replace them with good ones. <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you the underdog? Do you feel out-gunned by the competition, whether in business or in life? When you first start out on any conquest, chances are that your enemies will have more resources than you. However, this isn\u2019t necessarily a problem. Robert Greene points out that smaller armies are more mobile and easier to conceal. And, if you don\u2019t seem large enough to pose a significant threat, your opponents might simply ignore you. Read more to learn about underdog advantages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":63202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,79,275],"tags":[593],"class_list":["post-63199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-entrepreneurship","category-politics","tag-the-33-strategies-of-war","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nUnderdog Advantages: Win Even When You're Small - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Robert Greene argues that there are certain underdog advantages. You can leverage your smaller size and compete to win. 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