I had seen this TikTok video a few months back and remembered about this again when I saw this LinkedIn post by Dr Paige Williams about the importance of knowing about positive deviance and how leaders worth following know when to apply this concept of positive deviance.
In this TikTok video, Arielle Schmitt shares the strategy adopted by the Chinese team in the Youth Olympics.
One of the athlete (the gold winner) adopted a unique strategy to win the race. The winner did something that has never been done before in such a race. The runner up (also Chinese athlete) did surprise everyone else and ended up winning the Silver medal (in tandem with the gold medalist).
They went past the conventional wisdom (which was that you start slow, stay with the pack until about 4-6 laps to go and then go all out for victory) and the winner broke out from the pack, when she was least expected and in the end won the race easily.
The effort which everyone else put at the far end of the race and compete with everyone else, she put in at the very start of the race and coasted to a win easily at the end.
Here are the lessons I learnt from this entire saga:
- Knowing when to go and going against conventional wisdom can yield outsized benefits, when done with proper deliberation and planning (Zigging when everyone is Zagging). This can be used in many spheres of our lives (beating competition in sports, while investing, while creating go-to-market strategies, etc).
- Effort spent upfront on any activity can lead to a significant impact on the stress and the ease at the far end of the activity. The total effort usually remains the same.
- Team work wins. I am pretty sure that both the Chinese athletes knew what the other was doing and did win the Gold/Silver medals in tandem.
- Sometimes, the one who is winning the race seems to be just behind us. It takes presence of mind and situational awareness to realize this and adapt to the situation.
In conclusion, I would only say that there are times when going against the conventional wisdom can result in outsized impact. Knowing when to apply this strategy requires instinct and wisdom, which comes from experience and expertise.
