Today’s Focus: You should be weirder

Unusual can be your advantage

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How are you going to surprise them?

I saw this great video about baseball player Greg Maddux the other day, and it got me thinking: how can you surprise the competition? How can you surprise others? What’s your secret, weird talent that you have yet to deploy?

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The video struck my strategic brain that doing something unusual and atypical can be a massive competitive advantage: Maddux won a World Series, and multi Cy Young Awards (for being top pitcher in the league).

Others, like Randy Johnson and Tim Wakefield used being “unusual” or “weird” to their advantage: it helped them against the opposing teams.

Are you using your weird to your advantage?

What unique talents are you using (or not), whether as a person or as an organization? For me, I’ve always had a great ability to understand things rapidly and help clients think about things in a different way: that usually saves a lot of time and money.

In terms of organizations, Netflix’s example of moving digital (early) was a fascinating way of thinking (and being weird, or contrarian) in a day when Blockbuster was the dominant player. Marc Randolph’s story here was telling: Blockbuster assumed dominance was enough to overcome weird: they were clearly wrong…

And it was going great. They were leaning in. They asked good questions. Until they asked the most important question of all: “How much?”

Now, we had rehearsed this. We figured we were $50 million in the hole… so let’s go with that! Reed leaned forward confidently and told them: “Fifty Million Dollars.”

There was perfect silence. Their words were “we’ll consider it,” but we could tell they were fighting to suppress laughter. After that, the meeting went downhill fast.

Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or, as my father used to tell me, “sometimes, the only way out is through.” We knew there was no easy way out. We struggled for years. But we eventually did make it through. We had our IPO. We passed Blockbuster in revenue.

And today, the company that Blockbuster could have purchased in 2000 for $50 million, has a market cap exceeding $150 billion. And that company with 9000 stores? Now it’s got just one.

Marc shares at the end:

If you are unwilling to disrupt your business, there will always be someone willing to do it for you.

Weird often has negative implications. But, being bold, unique and different has its advantages!

I once heard of a company that targeted a key executive as a customer: they knew the general path this person took to work, and they bought billboards (along with other offline strategies) to help them become aware of the brand. There’s a line between weird and creepy (they were probably close), but, they were willing to try new things. Do you think they won the business?

PayPal paid customers to join, Dominos let you order by tweet or emoji (ALMOST A DECADE AGO!), and Uncle Yaris was some weird Uncle that turned out to be a car from Toyota (which no one knew for a while).

To riff on a delivery line, “What could weird do for you?” How can you change the paradigm so no one knows your next pitch?

Being weird might just be a superpower that you haven’t tapped into yet: I encourage you to do that!

Person with orange hair and bold makeup.

“Don’t be afraid of being different. Be afraid of being the same as everyone else.”
— Unknown

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What to Do With Contrarians?

“Generally, organisations don’t know what to do with contrarians – employees whose ideas or mindset don’t fit the mold. On the one hand, giving contrarians too much credence or authority strikes most leaders as a risky move. When in doubt, it’s seemingly much safer to follow the wisdom of the crowd. At the same time, smart leaders are aware that genius often looks like weirdness to ordinary souls. Being out of step could be a sign of a superstar. But without a simple, reliable way to distinguish the savant from the crackpot, most leaders let their innate conservatism lead. Contrarians are sidelined.”