In business organizations, market share is a key measure of success. Apple may have a single-digit share of the PC market, but it's increasing, and users of Macs, iPods and iPhones are proud to be part of that struggle. Similarly, brand loyalty is actively encouraged in cosmetics, athletic shoes, automobiles, and credit cards. It's us versus them, and we're better.
Sometimes, though, the competitive spirit emerges inappropriately and counter-productively. Executives in charge of different product divisions within a company vie for investment capital to develop or promote their own product. The allocation may favor the most enthusiastic and compelling advocate, but in the end the over-all company profits may suffer.
We understand this well in the context of a basketball team: the flashy player may make more baskets than the others, but the team as a whole may lose the game. Our team is competing with their team, but if we compete within the team, we lose the game. So we need to cooperate within the team in order to compete successfully with the other team.
Athletic teams and businesses competing for market share are in a win-lose environment. Mathematicians who work with this call this a zero-sum game. One and minus one equals zero. If they lose, we win. But there is another type of game structure, which they refer to in less elegant terms: The non-zero sum game. If we both work together in an appropriate and relevant way, we can both win.
Our pre-historical ancestors knew that they must compete with other predators in order to eat. They also learned that they could work together and get a big prize--coordinate their spears and bring down the mastodon. The knowledge of both strategies--competition and cooperation--is carried deeply within our instinctual psyche and shared culture.
But the experience of each is very different. Competition is adrenaline-based and exciting. Cooperation is deliberative and interdependent. It requires more patience, tolerance for frustration, and awareness of the big picture.
In a role-play activity I have used, two teams are instructed to discuss whose company will get the chance to buy a special crop of Valencia oranges, until they reach a decision. If they don't reach a decision within a prescribed time, neither team will get the crop, and it will be sold elsewhere. Most groups bog down in heated debate, growing more polarized, guarded, and narrow. Eventually, some teams disclose enough about their "private" instructions to discover that one company needs the oranges to make a highly prized juice for market. The other company needs the oranges for their excellent zest, which they will use in a gourmet baking formula.Their understanding of the game they're involved in thus magically shifts from win-lose to win-win. The newly-discovered option emerges as if by magic--beyond their preconceived assumptions. What enables that shift is an attitude of curiosity and openness, courageous self-disclosure about your own interest, and respectful inquiry about the other's. The creative conclusion then becomes easy and self-evident.
Yes, some situations really are zero-sum games. But many are not, unless we assume they are. Our expectations, themselves, can create antagonism and polarization. Win-lose behavior then often leads to lose-lose outcomes. But if we pay attention, invite collaborative inquiry, and generate inclusive options, we are able to discover the amazing truth: we can all win.
9 comments:
Without disclosing private or proprietary information, can you briefly describe a situation within a community or organization, where people were behaving as competitors? And what might happen if they cooperated?
Can I suggest that a slightly different example of collaborative behavior from primitive cultures might be more thought-provoking? Hunting big game with spears evokes (for me) images of masculinity and masculine primacy. North American aboriginal use of fire seems to me perhaps a more subtle and thought-provoking example (less provoking to people who hold their feminist principles very close, and more disorienting (in a good way) to people who idealize Native Americans as people who lived so gently on the land that they did not alter it). If I'm not terribly misinformed, fire management involved men, women, children, old people. Here's one web page (with a reference to a management journal, no less!)
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/fire_poster/nativeamer.htm
Your role-play about Valencia oranges reminds me that extended value chains is an important meme for understanding today's business world and succeeding in it. It was an important topic of conversation at the SocioTechnical Systems Roundtable I attended (at your suggestion) in December in Ottawa, and it is a topic of conversation in that practice group.
http://stsroundtable.com/
People were talking about "The Extended Enterprise: Gaining Competitive Advantage through Collaborative Supply Chains" by Davis and Spekman.
Thanks very much, Bo, for these helpful observations and suggestions. I had a twinge about using the spears example, too. I wonder, though, if it's true that it was the men who used spears, while the women picked berries. There is evidence of pretty competent women warriors and hunters, too. Still, I do like the example of keeping the fire as something that required the whole family or group to pay attention to and work on together.
And yes, managers who understand the principle of extended value chains, especially in our competitive globalized business environment, are able to take advantage of cooperative opportunities across organizations and industries.
This year's conference of the STS Roundtable, by the way, will be in Memphis, in October. It will be a good one!
I'm reminded of trying to work with another chapter in my organization to coordinate an ask to a shared donor who had interests in both of our areas. Each of us had the support of this donor individually. You see he worked in the Bay Area but lived in Sonoma County.
It was highly probable that we could get a much larger gift if we asked him collectively. The problem was we didn't trust each other. Neither of us had the courage to make the first move toward collaboration. It meant revealing too much about the relationship we had with the donor.
Finally, I decided to share it all. Curiously, after I revealed everything about my relationship with the donor and his interest in what we were working on the other chapter fundraiser let down his guard, too. It took many conversations and a few face-to-face meetings to build rapport and trust with each other. Ultimately we prepared a proposal to the donor and we received more than double what we were getting individually after we divvied up his gift.
It takes great courage to give up information and control. Although one never really has control over a donor. It just felt like I was giving up control. The donor was going to do what the donor was going to do.
Seems like childish behavior at the end of the day, doesn't it?
Pamela, I appreciate the wisdom in this example. You point to an essential component of collaboration--courage. One can have the vision of great possibilities for mutual gain by working together, but there is often the possibility that if I "put my cards on the table" the other person won't, and I will lose out. To quote a current political candidate for president, what is required in this situation is the audacity of hope!
I wonder if openness and sharing of interests is what moves groups from storming to norming and performing. Such sharing implies vulnerability and in turn may create trust. Any ideas on other possible catalysts of transition from storming to collaboration and performing?
Alexander, this is a good observation--openness does convey a willingness to be vulnerable, and this can shift the nature of a conflict from one that is about mutual destruction toward a passionate disclosure of each side's concerns and interests. Practicing mindful openness can be a good discipline, for personal development and for relationship development. What must go along with your own self-disclosure, though, is an expression of interest in the other's experience and concerns. It's always about supporting the needs of both parties, and the health of the relationship.
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