Win by Building on Strengths, Not by Fixing Weaknesses
Every preseason starts the same way. You sit down with your new roster, five names full of potential.
You start imagining what the team could become. There are endless paths forward. Skills to improve, systems to build, ideas to test.
You have your way of understanding the game, your version of how it should be played. But only a couple of the players see it the same way. You have to figure out how to get everyone on the same page.
Two questions that define your season before it begins come to your mind:
Do you make the five players adapt to your way of understanding the game, or do you leverage their understanding and skill set?
Do you try to fix what’s weak, or do you double down on what’s strong?
These questions sound simple, but the answers decide whether your team grows fast or spends the split running in circles.
Let’s focus on the second question.
3s and 7s
Every professional has strengths and weaknesses. Some things come naturally and others don’t.
I like to describe this using a 1–10 scale. The weaknesses are 3s, and the strengths are 7s.
Most people in high-performance environments spend too much time trying to fix their 3s. They believe that if they can turn a weakness into a strength, they’ll become complete. It sounds logical, but in practice, it’s often the slowest path to growth.
Focus on Turning Strengths Into Win Conditions
You don’t win by turning 3s into 5s. You win by turning 7s into 9s.
When I work with teams I always see the same pattern. Coaches obsess over player’s flaws while ignoring what already makes them good. Weaknesses are uncomfortable. They attract criticism and attention. But when you focus too much on them, progress slows down.
Strengths give direction. When you double down on what you already do well, you move faster. Confidence builds because you’re working in areas that energize you. You start to see results earlier, which matters in competition.
Winning early isn’t just about results. It’s about momentum. And once momentum starts rolling, everything changes.
When to Work on Weaknesses
You shouldn’t ignore weaknesses completely, but you need to be smart about it.
I’ve seen many teams fall into the trap of trying to improve too many things at once. They want to be adaptive, flexible, and well-rounded. It sounds good on paper, but when coaches focus on covering every weakness, the team becomes average at everything and exceptional at nothing.
Timing matters.
During the season, only work on a 3 that block a 7 from becoming a 9. You don’t have enough time or emotional bandwidth work on non-critical 3s.
If you’re lucky enough to work with a player for multiple years, use the off-seasons to polish fundamentals and improve those 3s. But don’t overdo it, one at a time is enough.
And sometimes, you never touch them. Some 3s are part of a player’s core design. You don’t try to make a basketball player grow taller. You accept it, manage it, and move on.
The Power of Structural Limits: Build Identity, Not Balance
Years ago, I coached a talented top laner who refused to play tanks. He wasn’t bad mechanically, but he hated the style. It went against his instincts. He wanted to outplay, fight, and carry.
I had two choices. I could force him to learn tanks and spend weeks fighting his nature, or I could build the team around what he already did well. I chose the second.
We shifted jungle pressure to top, and bot lane prioritized played weak side. We drafted compositions that gave him agency. From the outside, it looked narrow and predictable. Enemies knew what we will do. Inside, it created clarity. Every player knew the plan and how their role contributed to it.
At the time, it went against the conventional wisdom that teams should be balanced and flexible. But in hindsight, that decision was obvious.
That year, we won LEC twice, including a perfect 18–0 regular split.
That experience taught me something lasting. Your 3s define your limits. Your 7s define your path. Accepting those limits gives structure, and structure creates clarity.
The goal is to turn your 7s into 9s so no opponent can overpower your identity. Early in the season, when everyone is still figuring things out, the team with the clearest identity usually wins.
Don’t You Become Exploitable This Way?
Many coaches worry that being one-dimensional makes them exploitable. But in reality, opponents rarely have enough information to truly exploit you. You know everything about your own team. They only see fragments, small patterns, pieces of your style.
You can even use that against them. Analyze what games they’ve seen and what patterns they might think exist. Then, slightly tweak your gameplay to make their read on you wrong.
In this battle of asymmetric information, you have two advantages:
They can’t know what they haven’t seen.
What they think they’ve seen can be used against them.
And even if you are somewhat predictable, they still have to execute better than you to win. If you’ve mastered your style, most teams can’t exploit you.
This is why it’s better to go deep than wide.
Going deep means mastering your style. You develop efficiency. You learn faster because each repetition builds on the last. Going wide scatters your focus. You spend time learning things you rarely use, and your identity gets diluted.
Mapping 3s and 7s
Start simple. Ask each player to list their biggest strengths and weaknesses. Then do the same from your perspective. Compare both.
You’ll learn a lot about how players see themselves versus how you see them. The differences are often revealing.
Do this for your staff too. A coach’s 3s and 7s shape the team’s ceiling as much as the players’.
Once you have this map, ignore the middle ground. It’s not useful. Focus on the extremes and ask:
Where do natural synergies exist?
Which weak points are blocking the strong ones?
If we ignore these weaknesses, how many ways can we combine the strengths?
As a coach, do I believe we can win long-term this way?
Perfect synergy doesn’t exist. This exercise always ends the same way: your 7s show where your potential lives, your 3s mark your limits. Together, they form the crooked path that creates the first imperfect version of the team identity.
This last question is the hardest. Your belief system as a coach determines whether you see potential or problems. It’s easy to miss something exceptional because it doesn’t fit your mental model.
The Power of Clarity
Working on strengths changes team psychology. Players are more motivated when they feel good at what they’re doing. They’re more open to feedback, less defensive, and more confident.
The hardest part of this philosophy isn’t the logic. It’s the belief. You have to truly believe that focusing on strengths will lead to better results. Players will doubt it. Coaches will panic after a few losses. The temptation to “fix everything” will always be there.
But if you stay committed, the results come.
When I coach coaches now, I see how difficult it is for them to fully buy in. Rationally, they understand it. Emotionally, they hesitate. They fear being too limited or one-dimensional.
But those limits are what create structure. Structure creates clarity. Weaknesses define your boundaries, and boundaries define your identity. Without them, you drift.
The Real Path to Growth
The best teams I’ve worked with weren’t balanced. They were sharp and flawed. They knew exactly who they were.
If you can identify your 7s, turn them into 9s, and get your players to believe in that process, you’ll win faster, learn faster, and build a stronger identity than almost anyone else.
You don’t win by having no weaknesses.
You win by being exceptional at something.
