1-2-3 Inner Game

The Rodman Problem

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Dennis Rodman couldn't score. By every traditional measure, he was an incomplete player. No coach draws up a system around a Rodman. No GM builds a franchise on him.

But on a team with Jordan and Pippen, Rodman was the highest-value player in the building.

Not because he was the best. Because he was uncorrelated. He did things no one else could or would: rebounding, defending, disrupting. None of it overlapped with what everyone else was already doing. His weirdness wasn't a liability. It was the asset. One Rodman on a great team changes what the team can become.

There's a concept in finance that explains why.

Alpha is the return you generate above the market. If everything goes up 10% and you go up 15%, the extra 5% is your alpha. It's your edge. The thing you did that the average player didn't. Beta is different. Beta is your exposure to the market itself. You go up when things go up. You go down when things go down. Beta gives you the ride. Alpha gives you the advantage.

Rodman was pure alpha. Low beta, high edge. He made the team's portfolio of talent more valuable precisely because he wasn't like everyone else.

Here's where this gets uncomfortable.

Most founders and leaders I coach built something real on alpha. They moved fast. They trusted instinct when the data wasn't there. They made the call that looked wrong and turned out right. They were willing to be the Rodman in a room full of scorers. That difference is what got them from zero to something.

Then they grew. They hired people. They built process. They added structure. And structure did what structure does: it reduced volatility. Fewer chaotic weeks. More predictability. Better systems.

What no one tells you is that process doesn't just lower volatility. It lowers alpha too.

The unconventional move gets codified. The instinct becomes a procedure. The procedure becomes the norm. The norm becomes what everyone else does next. You traded your edge for consistency without realising what you gave up.

I see it regularly. A founder comes in sharp, a little dangerous, willing to say the true thing in the room. Two years into building, they've smoothed out. They're more professional. Their operation runs better. But something got sanded off along the way. The thing that made them interesting to work for. The thing that made clients trust them with the real problem, not the polished version.

A significant part of my job is to help them find that thing again and stop treating it like a liability.

The question I will start asking is this: where does your alpha actually live? Not in general. Specifically. Because it's rarely where people think.

It's not usually in domain knowledge. Everyone has that. It's in how you see problems before the frame is set. It's in your relationship with uncertainty, the ability to act before the answer arrives. It's in the willingness to name what's in the room when everyone else is pretending it isn't there.

Process doesn't touch that. Unless you let it. Unless you start optimising for consistency in the places that were never supposed to be consistent.

The work is not to avoid process. You need process. Bloom, scorecards, quarterly reviews: these exist because structure frees up energy for the things that actually matter. But you have to know which parts of you are alpha and protect them deliberately.

Not every edge should be smoothed out.

Zero to one, you win by being different. One to ten, you build the infrastructure to deliver without the genius move. But somewhere in that transition, the highest-leverage thing a leader can do is stay clear on what made them dangerous, and refuse to let the system take it.

One Rodman on a great team changes everything.

Ten Rodmans and you have chaos.

Zero Rodmans and you have a good, predictable team that loses to the one with a Rodman.

Know which one you are. Protect it.

🧠 1 Insight

The room doesn't remember how you first reacted. It remembers how long it took you to come back.

Every leader gets knocked off center. Bad news. A conversation that didn't land. Someone pushing back hard in the wrong moment. What happens in the next hour is what people carry out of that meeting.

Recovery speed is a form of credibility. The leader who returns to steady within minutes signals something different from the one still visibly processing it two conversations later.

Most people work on the first reaction. The recovery is where the real work is.

🪞 2 Reflections

Where am I taking longest to return to center after being knocked off?

What does my team see in the first 60 seconds after I get bad news?

🧭 3 Moves to Practice This Week

Name your tell. Identify the one signal that shows you've been knocked off — voice drops, you go quiet, you over-explain. You can't shorten what you can't see.

Build a reset gap. Put five minutes between a hard conversation and whatever comes next. Walk, breathe, write one sentence. Prevent the spill.

Run a 60-second debrief. After your next high-pressure moment: how long did it take to get back, and what helped? One honest answer beats any framework.

If you're an entrepreneur, or know one who would benefit from creating clarity, aligning their team, building momentum, and growing their business with the Bloom Growth system, I'd love to connect.

Until next week:

Alpha is what got you here. Protect it.

Recovery speed is leadership credibility.

Return to center faster than they expect.

— Dhiren