What he's talking about is changing the rules of the game so they favor you rather than your opponent.

I worked for three summers as a counselor at a military summer camp in Northern Indiana. It's a 6-week program for about 1000 teenagers, boys and girls from around the world. The kids wear uniforms 24/7, compete in sports every afternoon, march to all their meals and prepare for exacting room inspections twice a day. While this may sound like a drag, once the kids figure out the rules of the place and realize that they're treated like responsible adults, they tend to open up and thrive. Sure, you have a lot to cram into every day, but you're also given more freedom than you'd get living at home.

Anyway, on the boys side, the kids are divided up into Companies of about 60 kids. These companies compete against one another all summer long in rowing, basketball, swimming, code flags, softball, track, sailing etc. It's intense and taken very seriously. When I was a kid, I loved every minute of it. Lots of opportunities for someone with a hacker mindset to boost his team's efficiency.

During my first summer as a counselor right out of college, I was given a group of kids who'd had a different counselor every summer for the previous two years. They didn't work very hard and there was no precedent for success in the organization. They lost just about everything that summer. We had fun, but that was rough.

My second summer, I assumed my kids would do better just because I knew more about how the camp worked and would have better relationships with the returning campers. Yes, they had more success in intramurals and military competitions, but still they were middle of the pack. Fun summer, but not as fun as it could have been.

A few days after that summer, knowing I was coming back one more time, I made a list of crucial factors in having a successful company.

1. Retention: The more older boys you had, the better you were at everything. You had more kids to keep the youngins' in line, stronger boys to run the football etc.

2. Building relationships with the event officials: The sailing and rowing races were always poorly officiated. The boat that appeared to win wasn't necessarily the boat that would be given first place points after the officials looked over the protests and complaints filed by counselors. I realized the counselors who'd been there longest consistently came out ahead in these squabbles. It's harder to screw over someone you see every day.

3. A structured approach to competition. The weekly and end-of-summer awards carried mystery with them. You had a sense of who would win, but no one ever knew, because no one but the judges was actively tracking point totals. We were competing in the dark oftentimes.

So during the "offseason" I started up a message board for my kids, so they could keep in touch and sent Christmas cards to every family. I helped low income families find scholarships so they could send their kids back.

That last summer, my kids became fixtures around the naval building, helping with odd jobs, litter clean-up etc. They got to know all the directors there really well.

And I created a massive spreadsheet that let us keep a running tally of how every unit was doing day by day.

That last summer we had 13 third-summer-campers while most of the other companies had 5-6. We came out ahead in several key naval event adjudications. We knew when we needed to win and when we could afford to lose or work for a tie. My "Bad News Bears" wound up winning just about everything.

So I can relate a bit. While other units had counselors with high school sports coaching experience (and they were bringing their best athletes to the camp with them), I was able to bring more kids back, leverage their likability and keep them more informed. I changed the rules of the camp from favoring the group with the best athletes to favoring the group that worked smarter.

Fallout: My kids had a great summer. My relationships with the other counselors were pretty much destroyed as they realized we had changed the rule son them.

But the camp directors loved that I was bringing more kids back through the doors.