We're caught in the squeeze between good and bad

Excerpted from Transcompetition, by Harvey Robbins & Michael Finley, McGraw-Hill/Business Week Books, 1998

(c) by Harvey Robbins & Michael Finley

The modern world is a world of continuous struggle, in which every moment assigns us to either the winners or the losers column. And we seem to accept this. We are for it.

Indeed, we spend every day of our lives doing something to make ourselves more competitive. We see our task in our careers and in our lives is to press the competition throttle even harder, to become better at what we do, to master tricks to triumph over our rivals. We undergo weeks of training every year toward this end, we attend motivational seminars to fan the competitive flame inside us. We work 70-hour weeks to hone our competitive edge. We shell out money for everything from MBA degrees to give us credentials against our opponents, to athletic shoes to make us "more like Mike" -- to gain that extra step, that extra jolt of confidence that will allow us to win at will the way Michael Jordan seems to do.

The Dark Side of Competition

But there's a shadow side to competition that can't be dispelled. Say competition and one part of you feels excitement and fulfillment. It can be very beautiful and compelling. But there is another part of you that feels sorrow and dread.

For every individual who swears by competition, saying it is the law of nature, and the only way any person or any organization has ever amounted to anything, there are scores of others who swear at competition, saying it is the cause of a horrible lot of brutality and suffering, in the world and in the workplace.

But people don't attack competition much. The deck is stacked to be pro-competition; everyone in power got there by competing. Alfie Kohn's book was unique in taking on the topic. And he was often put in a very uncomfortable position, as if he were attacking America or defending communism or belittling masculinity. As Phil Donahue asked Kohn, "Aren't you just against competition because you are a loser?"

Here's a laundry list of the good things we attribute to competition. The list is long, and is interspersed with the side effects accompanying each competitive virtue. So this may be a good time to go make yourself a nice sandwich.

• It motivates. Everyone performs better when something is at stake. "The best essay will be pinned on the school bulletin board." "Team Blue came up with the plan we wound up adopting, so they get to park close to the elevator for a month." "In America, any child with gumption can grow up and become president."
• Sure, it motivates, but it also demotivates. People do not line up to lose time after time. When it becomes clear that the fastest, strongest, cleverest, and best-connected people will always win top honors, the rest of us start to shut down. Who wants to be a walk-on in someone else's movie? No one wants to be the "breakfast of champions."

• It's fun. Warriors relish the din of battle and find meaning in it. It is the reason people play sports and reach for the gold ring in business. Doing business without competition is like playing tennis without keeping score, or gambling with matchsticks. The tension of knowing you may lose something of value adds to the enjoyment for many people.
• It's fun -- for some. To be on the losing end of every competition is no fun at all. What general store operator wants to see Wal-Mart trucks pulling into town? There's an epidemic of depression in America, and one suspected cause is the feeling many people have that they will never make it in a culture that only values winners. Is your company having as much fun as Microsoft? No one's is.

• It contributes to identity. Especially nice when the identity is "winner," with all the fanfare that accompanies winning. True competitors know who they are by dint of having competed and found out what qualities are inside them. It is equally true of organizations. Who recruits the top candidates: the company that has been taking a drubbing, or the company that has been dishing one out?
• It contributes to identity -- unfortunately. The worst label you can hang on someone is that of loser. You can beat out hundreds in your scramble for the gold, but if you finish anything but first many people will see you as a loser. Think Buffalo Bills, Woolworth's, American Motors, Montgomery Ward, WordPerfect.

• It's social. What better way to get people together and interact than through a contest between teams. Volleyball, softball, league bowling. Sales quotas, quality competitions, cycle time contests. Rivalry energizes people, lets them get to know one another better. Competition is like that Pepsi commercial where everyone on the beach is diving happily for the ball.
• It's antisocial. When people compete, there is usually an element of cruelty in the air. Winners identify other people's weaknesses and exploit them -- how social is that? Even beach volleyball has a dark side. Clue: it's not a Pepsi commercial if your skull is getting caved in with each spike.

• It builds character. To come back from a string of defeats to win the championship or to be a global market leader is the greatest plot in sports, entertainment, or business. Winning too soon is no good -- you have to suffer a while, until something changes inside you and you become a true winner. Says so right here in the script.
• Does it really? For every heroic story of an athlete coming back from untold defeats to win, we know people in our families and careers who lack that Horatio Alger resilience. When they are beaten they stay beaten. There are no body shops for restoring crumpled self-esteem.

• It stresses individuality. Being distinct is a virtue, and competition sharpens differences. Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party in Britain viewed cooperation with Europe not as "a high tide that lifts all boats," but as a blow to the things that make the states of Europe unique and, because they are unique, prosperous.
• It quashes individuality. Being separate means quarreling, which retards progress. Cooperating in the European Union is the best hope those states have of competing with global economic powers. Prosperous confederates will be much more distinct to the world than feudal duchies unable to agree on money and measures.

• It's emotionally healthy. Competing is exercise for the soul. It keeps you vital, relevant, someone not to be taken for granted. it sharpens your sense of self. It bestows blessing on everyone involved, winner, loser, and spectator alike. In some cases, it gives you reason to live.
• It's emotionally icky. If it is vitalizing to win, it is enervating to lose. Nearly everyone has had the kick-in-the-guts feeling that only the go-to guys get the ball; the rest of us are just fill-ins. Yes, winning is terrific for the winners, but that healthy glow comes at the expense of everyone they climbed over or ignored to seize the loving cup.

• It trains leaders. Just as rolling and tussling with siblings helps lion cubs develop adult hunting skills, competing against other managers in an organization allows a natural selection process to occur. The most talented alligator in the swamp eventually asserts itself, and a leader is born.
• What kinds of leaders does it train? It also assures that our leaders will be of a single type, ferocious competitors. "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." And why should workers swear allegiance to such leaders? Does it make sense that ordinary people will seek out leaders who have caused them personal pain?

• It elicits innovation. Countries that encourage competition between individuals and companies seem to vault to the forefront. America and India have competitive healthcare structures, and lead the world; The UK, France, and Canada have public, collaborative healthcare systems, and are not viewed as breaking fresh ground.
• The innovation it elicits isn't worth the pain it causes. Sure, the U.S. and India lead in healthcare treatment and technology. but look at them: the actual healthcare is only available to those societies' winners. Billions are wasted on marketplace duels that destroy the losers and do nothing for the truly afflicted.

• It consolidates allegiances. A team that competes against another develops a formidable spirit. The team develops loyalty and camaraderie. Each victory deepens their passion for one another. Picture the football goalie jumping into the forward's arms. Onlookers also form powerful attachments: they become fans.
• It discourages allegiances. When you have been beaten often enough, you become resentful. To the rest of the world you are just a punching bag, to have the momentary pleasure of defeating. Ever wonder how people working in banks, which are losing market share to non-banks on a daily basis, get out of bed in the morning? The "team attitude" your team is most likely to develop will be gallows humor.

• It allocates scarce resources. If there is only so much money or so many food rations to go around, what better way to decide who gets it than to make people compete for it? Like the Oklahoma Land Rush, the goods go to whoever is daring, swift, and innovative. By definition, the winner is the most deserving.
• It allocates resources whether they are scarce or not. Never mind that people unable to compete for them on an equal footing with the strong in all likelihood have the greatest need of them. Hey, small-minded African farmer, don't grow food crops for your family, get in the game and grow coffee for global export markets.

• It increases productivity. If workers must meet individual quotas or are paid according to how they perform compared to one another, they work harder and produce more. This dynamic helped make the U.S. the most productive and most prosperous country in history, and the idea is proving highly exportable to other countries.
• It may or may not increase productivity. When workers are pitted against one another to survive, how likely are they to share ideas that will move the entire enterprise forward? And when you die, as beaten companies do, where does your productivity go?

• It improves quality. If Teams A, B, and C all want to win the Golden Turkey Award for most quality suggestions offered and implemented, that will be one stuffed suggestion box. If job security depends on quality performance, you will get very high quality performance.
• It compromises quality. What is there about product quality that requires that teams be made to fight gladiator games against one another in order to ensure it? Companies like Nike brag that high style and low cost deliver supreme customer satisfaction, not defining the prison labor they employ as "customers."

• It tests ideas. The marketplace is a forum for ideas to duke it out against one another. Marxism, cold fusion, slavery, beta video and appeasement of aggressive dictators all had their chance to show what they could do. Competition will show if one formula for cola tastes better than another, if one design team's approach is superior to another's, if one political solution or style is more attractive than another. It makes choices easier for consumers and management alike.
• It kills ideas in the cradle. Instead of creating an atmosphere in which ideas are allowed to incubate, to show what they can do, or how they can be combined, we set them against one another, often before they are ready. How many great ideas have perished because competitive pressures prevented them from getting a decent hearing?

• It builds teams. Companies pit teams against one another at every step: product development, productivity, sales, all the way down to bowling leagues. Competition is the spark that drives them to achievement, and that's good for the company as a whole.
• It wrecks teams. Setting teams against one another, rewarding winners and ignoring losers, is one of the most irrational things an organization can do. Winners should be teaching others how to win, not leaving others in their dust. How can a company compete in the contests that matter -- market share, profitability, customer satisfaction -- when its teams are locked in a death struggle with one another?

• It institutes order. Through the middle ages, a philosophy of hierarchy called the Great Chain of Being, in which every creature, and every person occupied a rung according to his or her or its worth in the eye of God. God was at the top, followed by Angel, then Man (half angel/half flesh), then Animal, then Plant, then Dust. When a competitor gets his reward, people do not begrudge it, because it was earned in straight-ahead competition -- it made sense according to the Great Chain. Competition legitimizes the pecking order; it establishes a performance-based hierarchy. And who can argue with performance?
• It institutes order, all right -- Caesar's peace. An order built on resentment, bitterness, and a feeling your defeat is fuel for your competitor's victory. This isn't a game, it's predation.

• It establishes rules of fair play. No hitting below the belt, no shaving of points, and no intentional grounding.
• It creates loopholes. There was no cheating until there were games.

• It resolves disputes. To compete is to put a box around disagreements, so they do not spill over into violence.
• It escalates disputes. Competition, the insistence on winning, taken to its logical conclusion becomes war: "We could not prevail over you in legal ways, so our armies are poised on your frontier."

• It selects. In courting, people compete to win the best mate they can. It is survival of the prettiest, the handsomest, the most powerful, the richest. Those who can't win the competition become literally extinct: their inferior genes are booted out of the pool. Competition shows what sort of people we are, and what group we belong in.
• It selects destructively. There are schools that screen kids out at age 5, before any child can be expected to take a test. Competition establishes early on who will be given a second chance in life and who will not, whose DNA will be passed on to the future, and whose will not.

• It's fair. Competition equals competence. Devotees of competition see it as the indisputable arbiter of freedom and justice. What could be more fundamentally liberating or more just than "May the best man win?"
• It's not only unfair, it's unbeatable. "May the best man win" is circular logic. Competition does not guarantee competence. No one challenges it, because the only tribunals one may challenge it to are themselves victors of competition: the politicians that are elected, the opinion makers of the media, the judiciary, the establishment.

And is competition is all that bad, should we just stop doing it, as Alfie Kohn suggests? If we did that, is there another skill set we can turn to?

The offsetting skill set is collaboration, or cooperation, or teamwork. And it has been all the rage in management literature for the last few years. It is the heart of the teams, total quality, empowerment, and systems thinking movements. But it too has problems, as we shall see.

First, though, let's look at the range of impulses that stretch between competition and collaboration.

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