As the Norway Winter Olympic Team once again topped the Games medal table, consider these long-term small-population overachievers:

• Norway have won 32% more gold medals in the history of the Winter Olympics than anyone else
• The All Blacks have the highest all-time win percentage in all professional sport
• The Basque Country in Spain is the birthplace of world-leading football coaches Mikel Arteta, Unai Emery, Xabi Alonso, Julen Lopetegui and Andoni Iraola

What unites these success stories is not expensive facilities or the plunging of resources into a small number of high-potential talents. It is instead a culture that permeates an entire ecosystem, rooted in an identity and unifying set of values and norms. 

This drives participation and behaviours that the system rewards and reinforces. 

These norms are a form of what we call ‘Organisational Intelligence’. Whether a nation or a club, overachievement is possible with this embedded in the system.