Over the course of this article I will introduce you to the power of the “Nobody Believes in Us!” mindset, explain why it’s been so successful in sports, and demonstrate how it could be the key to achieving your product team’s stretch goals. Further, I will lay out a framework that you can implement with product leadership in your own organization. It may be true that your product org has an efficient prioritization process, talented engineering skills, and support from leadership, but unless your team is uniquely motivated to prove a common enemy wrong you will never see truly exceptional outcomes.

In 2016, the Leicester City Foxes won the Premier League Football title as 5000 to 1 underdogs. To say this was shocking is to trivialize the very definition of the word. Leicester City was a minnow in the shark infested water that is the English Premier League. In the previous season they narrowly avoided relegation to a lower soccer tier (i.e. they were so bad they nearly lost their spot in the league.) So, how on earth did the Cleveland Browns of English Soccer overcome the greatest odds in sports to win the title? They tapped into the power of “Nobody Believes in Us!” which, in all likelihood was quite easy, since no one did. It was almost entirely by chance that they assembled a team of the overlooked, the undervalued, and the misunderstood. By the end of the season, after they had literally achieved the impossible, the team alluded to a togetherness that was born out of rejection. They called it “The Revenge of the Barefooted Men.” (Like “Nobody Believes in Us!” but in an English Football sort of way.)

What does this tell us? Samir Nurmohamed at Wharton School of Business argues that examples such as these demonstrate that by telling people they’re not expected to succeed you are able to position them as underdogs, thus creating the necessary mentality for them to get scrappy — and win. It is a surprising truth that an uphill battle is often the one that people are most excited to fight. In a study Nurmohamed conducted among job seekers, researchers randomly tasked some of them with telling a story of how they had been underdogs against the odds. The results showed that putting them in this mindset almost doubled their chances of landing a job in the following month. In another study, Nurmohamed had people fill out a questionnaire about their negotiating skills and then randomly told them they were either the favorites, evenly matched, or the underdogs based on their answers. Those who were told they were the underdogs actually reached more creative solutions and performed better in their negotiations. When asked why, they said that all they could think about was proving the researchers wrong.

How to Harness the Power of “Nobody Believes in Us” in your Product Teams

Step 1: Find a Problem Worth Solving

When Tom Brady was an NFL prospect he turned in one of the most unathletic and embarrassing NFL combine workouts in league history. He ran the 40 like a banana slug, jumped like he was tied to the ground, and a shirtless picture of him in athletic shorts gave the impression that he had spent more time in the library than the gridiron. After his pathetic showing, no one believed in him and he slipped all the way to the 6th round of the NFL draft. He became, quite literally, an afterthought.

Following the draft, Brady seethed with the injustice of the situation. He couldn’t believe that the skills he considered the least important to being a successful quarterback were the very reasons why teams across the league didn’t believe in him. When he set out to prove them wrong, he didn’t ask himself what he had to do to remain on a team. Rather, he asked himself what he had to do to become the greatest of all time. The clarity of this ambitious end goal, paired with a massive born-out-of-rejection chip on his shoulder, allowed Brady to achieve a maniacal focus on the skills that could set him apart. Six Super Bowls and three MVP’s later, Brady is nearly universally considered the greatest quarterback of all time. And I think it’s safe to say that he succeeded in proving his skeptics wrong.

As Brady demonstrated after the draft, the power of “Nobody Believes in Us!” cannot be used on the conventional or incremental. The goal has to be considered seemingly impossible, or at least, just beyond the company’s reach, to inspire the right underdog mindset. Without a worthy goal then the magic will not materialize. You can’t tell a product team that nobody believes they can streamline sales stages in Salesforce, or improve click thru rates on the homepage by optimizing button colors, and expect to see the level of ingenuity necessary to inspire truly innovative efforts. Don’t get me wrong — this is important work. But the goal here is to move beyond work that is essential to create work that is exceptional.

To pinpoint one of these projects, start with the C suite. What keeps them up at night? What KPI, if dramatically improved, would change the economics of the company? What is going on with the competition that scares them? The best way to draw out the right type of conversations is to put your leadership in the underdog mindset as well.

You can do this by challenging them to identify their number one competitor and then ask them to pretend they now work at that company. What advantages would they leverage to put you out of business? This gives leadership permission to talk about the things that might be verboten. You are taking advantage of a mindset shift in which they are now wearing the hat of their competitor. They don’t have to worry about inter-company politics and norms, and they are permitted to be much more honest about the weaknesses of the company and how they can be exploited. If done right, not only will you get an avalanche of unique and creative ideas, but you will also energize your leadership in a way they never have been energized before.

As they instinctually begin to contemplate how an arrogant competitor is going to try to crush their hopes and dreams — envisioning their rivals laughing at the country club, shaking their heads between mouthfuls of caviar, in disbelief over how easy it was to crush your company — they will experience the very endorphin rush that only the “Nobody Believes In Us!” drug can produce. They will visualize the uphill battle. They will see themselves as 6th round draft picks with no speed or jumping ability and, as a result, they will be inspired to change it.

Step 2: “Give me your disgruntled, your dissatisfied, your huddled black sheep” — written on the hypothetical Statue of “Nobody Believes in Us!”

In February 1980, in addition to facing the greatest hockey team that the Soviet Union had ever assembled, the U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey team was also confronting the existential threat of the Cold War. It was a seemingly impossible endeavor to ask a bunch of unproven college kids to pose any formidable threat to​ ​a tactfully crafted team of experienced Soviet professionals — a team so dominant that they had easily defeated a group of NHL All-Stars just months before the Olympic games. In contrast, the US ​​team and their coach, Herb Brooks, were a group of disgruntled black sheep. Nobody believed in them — ​and that is precisely why they won.

Herb Brooks was an underdog himself. As a hockey player, Herb had made the 1960 Olympic team, travelled to the games, sat for the team picture, and was removed from the team at the 11th hour when a “better” player became available. Herb intimately understood what it felt like when nobody believed in him, and he knew how to leverage that feeling to build the only hockey team that stood any chance of beating the Soviets. When Herb held tryouts, he did not pick the nations best hockey players. Instead, after grueling tryouts specifically designed to expose grit over skill, to prioritize drive over experience, Herb found the athletes who had the most to prove, those with chips on their shoulders from being passed over — players most like himself. Even before the historical game took place, after months of overachieving, Herb emphasized that if “we played them ten times, they might win nine.” Herb did everything he could to preserve the underdog mindset before the biggest game of their lives, and in doing so, he pulled off the greatest upset in the history of the Olympics.

Once your leadership team has chosen a problem worth solving, it is time to put on your Herb pants. As the coach, you need to decide who you should put on the team. It is tempting to recruit all of your “A” players but, as we learned from Herb Brooks, drafting a bunch of all-stars doesn’t mean you’ll end up with the best team. Furthermore, indexing for the best and brightest might be setting you up for more incremental “this is how we have always done it” thinking, which ultimately works against the creativity produced by “Nobody Believes In Us!”. Those “all-stars” have probably already designed many of the solutions and processes that run your company. They have had a voice in those discussions. They don’t feel maligned, frustrated, or disgruntled. In truth, they aren’t underdogs.

When assembling your product team, you want to look for those PMs, engineers, and stakeholders who talk way too passionately about how something doesn’t work while you are riding with them in the elevator, the people who roll their eyes during team meetings, or ask really tough questions in slightly unproductive ways. These people are having trouble sleeping at night. They can’t believe that certain things are done the way they are. They may even be underperforming because the current way of thinking at the company is too tedious to comply with. They are literally begging to solve problems that irk them on a daily basis and are desperate for an outlet for that frustration. These people want to take on the Soviets and it is up to you, as a product leader, to put them on the team.

Step 3: Find a Common Enemy

There is perhaps no better pinnacle of the “Nobody Believes in Us!”mindset than Micheal Jordan, an athlete who constructed a perception of being underestimated and then used the idea of being doubted to drive himself to exceptional heights. So consumed was Jordan by this mindset that he used his now infamous Hall of Fame speech to call out his high school coach who passed over him for another player on the varsity team when he was a Sophomore. He even invited Leroy Smith, the player who took his spot on that team, to his Hall of Fame speech. It is interesting to note that Jordan’s underdog story is a myth both created and perpetuated by Jordan himself. The truth is that while Jordan’s high school coach recognized him as an exceptional talent, the varsity team lacked height. The decision to keep the 5’10” Jordan on the JV team and play the 6’7” Leroy Smith on varsity was purely tactical. This fact, however, made little difference to Jordan. True or not, Jordan believed he was doubted. His coach, and anyone else he perceived as underestimating him, became his common “enemy” and he became the greatest player of all time because he devoted the rest of his career to never being doubted again.

It is truly remarkable that when being recognized as not only the greatest basketball player ever, but one of the greatest athletes of all time, Micheal Jordan remained obsessed with creating a reality that he was underestimated. I have no idea if this is true, but after that speech I pictured Jordan going home to his massive house, all alone, and shooting 1000 jumpers on his personal basketball court muttering to himself while his friends and family celebrated at the HOF afterparty.

The power of “Nobody Believes in Us!” can only be unlocked if a common enemy is discovered. You have to find who, exactly, doesn’t believe in the team. The enemy doesn’t have to be a person. It can be a mindset, a presumption, a system. It can be a trend in your industry, or the company culture. Whatever you decide the enemy is, you have to be able to put it in front of people and immediately inspire a collective emotional response. You want to say, “I don’t like X. X is really annoying. Nobody thinks we can change X, but I do. Who’s with me?” If people aren’t fired up and ready to storm the castle, if there isn’t fist pumping or high fives, then you haven’t found the right enemy.

The key to finding the right enemy is credibility. If you pick someone or something that the team really respects, then the team is at risk of internalizing and believing the criticism. It’s one thing for a bunch of track coaches to tell Tom Brady he can’t play in the NFL — it’s another if Bill Belichick actually didn’t believe in him. The same was true with Jordan. He must not have found his Sophomore coach credible, which made it easier for him to believe that he could prove him wrong. If Phil Jackson had passed him over it may not have had the same effect.

So, if you are rallying a product team, choose a common enemy that isn’t knowledgeable about their domain. Tell them you talked with a sales team who said they didn’t think you could sell more deals through your website than they can, or tell them a bunch of suits in the C suite don’t think the team can automate a massive chunk of your business, or pick on your board members. You can say “The board mentioned that none of their other companies were able to achieve Y, but those other companies aren’t us.” If you have an emotionally intelligent leader at the company they can also play the role of the enemy. Invite them to the team meeting and have them emphasize that they support what the team is doing, are inspired by the team’s passion, and want to make sure the team has everything they need to succeed, but have them slip in their monologue that they remain skeptical. It seems like a hard problem, they aren’t sure anyone can solve it.

The fine line you have to toe here is making sure the team has fully bought into the “Us vs. Them” mentality without making them feel abandoned or unsupported. This requires that you consistently check-in to ensure the team is committed to the company and its mission. They need the right levels of feedback and support on a constant basis to remain engaged. Remember, it’s the faceless enemy that doesn’t believe in them, not their manager or peers. If taken too far, or if the selection of the “enemy” is careless, then you might see the very people who hold the key to unlocking the next big thing at your company leave for greener pastures.

So what is the existential threat at your company? What is your Cold War Soviet Union? Find the right problem to solve. Find the right people to solve it. Find the right enemy for the team to rage against. These three things combined are the key to inspiring your product team to achieve the impossible.

PS: This article was written because a previous colleague didn’t think I brought enough thought leadership to my team. Hopefully this post is the first step to proving them wrong.