The advantages of disadvantages

There was a famous battle in ancient Palestine three thousand years ago. In the Israelite camp, a shepherd boy named David stepped forward and volunteered to fight with a Philistine giant Goliath, six feet nine at least, wearing a bronze helmet and over a hundred pounds of full body armour. With nothing more than a stone and a sling, David won the battle. How could David turn the mission impossible to possible?

This battle story gives us new perspectives on advantages. Goliath is not exactly what we think. Yes, he is tall and armed with heavy weapons - a javelin, a spear and a sword. But he only has advantages when his opponents come close to him for hand-to-hand combat. David, on the other hand, refused the King’s sword and armour and put one of his stones into the leather pouch of a sling, and he fired at Goliath’s exposed forehead in the distance. What happened next is a matter of legend.

Here, people thought Goliath had the advantage in terms of physical might, which he did, except that physical might would not be the deciding factor. Goliath’s advantages became disadvantages when David came running toward him, powered by courage and speed: he was too big and too slow for this kind of opponent.

The story illustrates that there are no absolute advantages or disadvantages. Advantages at a certain point will turn into disadvantages. As an old Chinese saying states, going beyond the limit is as bad as falling short.

One reason we are often confused about advantages and disadvantages is that we forget we are in a U-shaped world. The psychologists Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant said that there is no such thing as an unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have costs that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.

An inverted - U curve has three parts, and each part follows a different logic. There is the left side, where doing more or having more makes things better. There’s the flat middle, where doing more doesn’t make much of a difference. And there’s the right side, where doing more or having more makes things worse. For example, butter is gold in the morning, silver at noon, lead at night. In fact, nearly everything of consequence follows the inverted U. It makes more sense to identify where we are on the curve and then make strategies accordingly.

In this ever changing world, more and more disruptors have shaken the giants’ territories. Advantages may come in other forms and the old rules will be replaced with new rules. Be open!

Source: David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell

Photography credit: Reference for Business