Win an Unfair Game

How can a small company without enough resource to win over a big giant? In MLB, Oakland Athletics had proofed it under big competition from all-stars teams. And when I look back to where I had worked for in both big and small companies, it's quite interesting to make a comparison on how to survive in an "unfair" game.

In 2002, Oakland Athletics won 103 games, same as Yankee did, but A's spent only 1/3 of Yankee's player payroll. Led by team manager Mr. Billy Beane, A's kept having great winning record in 2002-2006 with very low spending than other MLB teams. Described in "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis's , while most MLB teams still traditionally trusted their sense, and were superstitious on high-pay superstars, Billy trusted "statistic numbers" and recruit low-wages players to fill in the positions he needed, and use the statistics to plan for pitcher-hitter match games. He is also a great negotiator to recruit great players under low tide, who was released by other team, with much less spending. (Even Today in this season, TB Rays with lots of young low-pay players takes lead in his league and will get the play-off ticket for sure, while all-stars Yankee is still struggling.) You might need to fight with giant with less resources, however you still have high chance to win this unfair game if you play the game differently.

Find out what is neglected

MLB team managers usually neglected those statistics by STATS because they thought luck affects a lot in the game, so statistics were useless. Billy took the advantage of the neglect and lead the low budget team to continuous success. Another well-known case of Southwest Airline, they successfully lowered their budget by using uniform aircraft and targeted only 2nd cities to make them become one of most profitable airline for 35 consecutive years.

Back in 1999 before .com burst, Internet Data Center(IDC) is booming for every ISP's, but lack of knowledge to build world class IDC in Taiwan because no any vendor can provide whole solution. I was then in a 4 staffs Cabletron Taiwan office with very limited marketing budget, and Cisco was just like Yankee to me that we had no visibility at all, but our UK team won a British Telecom project and they had some know-how. Learning from customer that Cisco hadn't yet a solution, we boldly held a big IDC solution exhibition event to attract 1200 attendees, and most importantly, sponsorship from 36 different vendors. We not only hosted the opening, key speech sessions, and publicity to get great awareness, but also we actually spent not a dime in the end due to those sponsorship.
At the same time, Cabletron released new L3 switch in the market and Cisco had trouble on his new L3 switch 8600, so we chose a small platform to target mid-size company market and then Taiwan became best selling in AsiaPac, which market was not a focus of Cisco at that time. After I joined Cisco and learnt that Cisco actually has lots of resources, alliance partners and great technology, but not every Country had support for new emerging technology and Taiwan then wasn't the 1st priority to support on IDC market.
From 2003, Cisco started focusing on Mid-size and SMB market, which was quite new and very price-sensitive market that it was really tough to penetrate into this blooding market; it seems an unfair game to me. However by leveraging existing channel system, business intelligence and well-planned sales coverage, Cisco had great growth rate during these years.

Wait for timing or leader's mistake

This year's new PGA champion and the 1st European winner since 1930, Mr. Padraig Harrington mentioned in the press conference after the game that, when he was still in 3rd place and there are only 3 holes left, he kept his pace to play steadily and waited for leader's mistake. The pressure of leader is usually higher than the followers. He played as he planned, and fortunately the leaders made several mistakes, so Padraig won.
There were once, while I was in Cabletron, Cisco channel team had a new policy that they would leave accounts open to every channel and offer same discount. Then I knew our opponent might make some mistake and it was our chance, so aggressively engaged with their 2nd tier resellers and had enjoyed several great quarters afterwards. Few years after, when I joined Cisco, the rule is changed to "Preferred Partner" policy to give favor to whomever invested, which luckily is what I believe. To change every one's mindset, it took me quite some time to write down "the rule of engagement" in details and communicated to our internal Sales and Channels. It would be easier for a small company to adopt new policy and ask everyone to execute accordingly. Internal communication and collaboration become very important in bigger organization to make things happened efficiently and effectively.

Fight a smaller field

As a leader, you're competing to yourself, but not competitors. Even resource are relatively big, you still need to focus on most important battle to have best return. So it would be hard for sales to focus on every product lines, and such it could become a weak point. Small company can find their smaller field to fight against giant, either certain product line or market, for example, the 2nd city market as Southwest chose to fight and focus on.
It was also same kind of unfair game for Cisco to get into telephony market, where the existing competitors had invested for 20+ years with big installed bases, whose market is usually quite close and conservative. We kept pushing with IP Telephony benefits( the only we have) and focused on Mid-size company market, who may appreciate Cisco branding and can make quicker decision than large enterprise, so we doubled our revenue in an year to a certain significant market share.
There are always many unfair games you have to face. Even for big company, they have to deal with more flexible, more dynamic, lower price competitors. Find out what has been missing and you'll find your winning points, then play the game differently.