Strong Link Vs. Weak Link
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It’s Football World Cup time! And that might explain why as I heard a Malcolm Gladwell podcast the other day on philanthropy in education (‘My Little Hundred Million’) – the question that stayed on my mind at the end was this: Is the strength of a team determined by its weakest link – or by its strongest link? The answer, it turns out is, ‘it depends!’.
Gladwell points out that in a sport like football, it is the weakest link that impacts your chances of success. A superstar striker might make a few brilliant plays but may or may not succeed in scoring every time. And a weak teammate might make a mistake that hands the ball to the opposition resulting in a game-defining goal. Leicester City who won the premier league not so long ago – without any real stars – is probably a good case in point. So in football, it makes sense to strengthen your weak links.
Unlike say, in basketball where one star player could get control of the ball and do a slam dunk at the other end of the court, almost all by himself. One miss, one mistake doesn’t really hurt. That might explain why a player like LeBron James – with very little support from his teammates, almost single-handedly took the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA final play-offs. Basketball is a strong link sport.
As leaders, it might be useful for us to look at our own organisations and teams to answer the question: Are we playing a weak link sport or a strong link one? The answer might help us define our hiring strategy, as also our training and development agenda. So if you are an ad agency, it probably makes sense to hire – even at a high cost – a super talented creative hotshot. She will create those amazing campaigns that will set the cash registers ringing, win awards and bring glory to the agency. As opposed to say you are in a business trying to build a large customer service unit or a sales team. Having one superstar sales guy or customer service associate won’t have as much of an impact as perhaps lifting the average, and strengthening the weak links.
The strong link weak link theory could hold useful lessons for teams in the IPL too, as they prepare for the next player auction. How can they decide whether they should break the bank to get that marquee player to play for them? One way to look at it is that when it comes to batsmen, it is a strong link sport. One batsman can destroy the opposition, bat through a majority of the 20 overs and win you a game. So makes sense to bid for that superstar big-hitting batsman. But when it comes to bowlers, it’s a weak link sport. No matter how good your star bowler is, he can only bowl four overs. And often games are lost because of the number of runs given away by the fifth bowler. So making sure your fifth bowler is not a terribly weak link can be the key to success.
Food for thought. As you watch the football world cup, maybe a good idea to see how the strong link weak link theory might apply to your favourite team.
And to your team at work too.
