The never-ending sadness of the Cleveland Browns
No one understands chronic disappointment like a Cleveland Browns fan. I am not a Cleveland Browns fan, but I married one. It amazes me how, year in and year out, the fans expect to lose, but they still show up anyway.
At the other end of the spectrum, the New England Patriots. Those fans are rabid and show up every season too. But unlike other teams, they show up with the force of six Super Bowl Championships behind them. They expect to win, and they do.
Winners keep on winning
If you hate the Patriots (and statistically, most of you probably do), you are thinking, "Um, of course the Patriots win, they literally cheat!" You're not wrong.
The rational explanation for any long-time pattern of winning or losing is usually valid. For instance:
- The star employee who gets promoted every year, making it more likely they will get the best opportunities, which leads to further fast promotions
- The college marching up the national rankings, thus drawing more competitive applicants, which makes it more selective and further increases its ranking
- The restaurant that looks deserted from the sidewalk, making it more likely that other diners will avoid it, which further depresses the restaurant's business prospects
As in the examples above, there are often logical reasons why winners keep on winning and losers keep on losing.
But there is something else, too: psychological momentum.
Losers keep on losing
Have you ever been part of a team where everyone constantly complains about the culture? Even if people have good reason for complaint, no one wants to work in a place where people spend most of their time grumbling to each other about how bad the culture is; that is the definition of a bad culture.
In these cases, people might spot a legitimate problem, but the way they handle it makes them part of the problem, which makes the problem worse, which gives people more to complain about. This terrible cycle is textbook negative psychological momentum. Losers keep on losing.
Teams with winner energy
On the other hand, maybe you've been part of a team that wins a lot. The big project succeeds. The business grows. You have the hottest investment round in town. The press recounts your visionary work. You all get raises.
Winners often have structural advantages, but that's not the only reason they win. In fact, many teams with structural advantages lose. Just ask everyone involved with the 2019 reboot of Cats.
Every winning team I've ever been part of has one thing in common: they have a distinct identity that is loudly and defiantly expressed. Good leaders center this identity and use it build psychological momentum.
However, some team identities work better than others. For instance:
The scrappy underdog. Successful startups use this identity especially well. They are clear about their underdog status. The opponent is often a bigger incumbent player. The underdog says, "They won't see us coming until it's too late."
They're not wrong. The scrappy underdog often wins.
The willfully misunderstood. This works well for teams that intentionally break with convention. They launch new product categories or try weird operational experiments. Whatever the situation, they're trying something the rest of the market doesn't comprehend.
Rather than seeing market confusion as cause for concern, the willfully misunderstood see it as a proof point.
The pirates. Pirates work best inside big companies, where the common enemy is bureaucracy and the status quo. The team has a mission where timeliness and intensity matter, and they don't have time for red tape. They take pride in irreverence, speed, informality, and breaking institutional norms.
When pirates win, it's because they get more done.
The comeback kids. This identity does well after a pivot. Maybe the team was once dominant and lost its way, suffered a humiliating defeat, or nearly crashed. The shared identity comes from restoration. “They think we're finished. Let them.”
These identities work because the team has something to prove. The team has the motivation to win because doesn't make sense on paper. Remarkably, this often turns into real success.
I've also seen people try team identities that work less well. For instance:
- The elite squad, whose point of pride is that they're more talented than everyone else (and that is accomplishment enough)
- The killers, whose purpose is to destroy the opponent for its own sake (whether or not the game is important for the business)
- The family, where teammates show up more for each other than they do for anyone else (including customer commitments)
None of these work as well as the others above. In fact, all of these often lead teams to make choices that are not aligned with the team's core purpose: fulfilling its customer mission.
The bottom line: Building a team identity is an enormous tool for leaders. It gives your team a reason to believe they will win and the motivation to follow through.
Kieran
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