Alpha Framing: The Art of Competition

As the economy continues to waver and businesses tighten their belts, our leading consultants are busy with the urgent questions of the day: how best, they ask, to keep our companies competitive? How best to fire the economic furnaces, to oil the wheels of the workplace?

These are, of course, difficult questions to tackle. A company is made of many moving parts—wheels within wheels that render the examination of the corporate enterprise an untidy affair.

Even so, just about everyone concerned with the consultant’s barrage seems to have fastened, at least to some extent, on one wheel in particular: a company’s culture. An ailing economy means much more than diminished profits; it means fewer promotions and fewer positions, higher stress and greater internal competition. But, some ask, how troubled should we be by this brisk turn of intensity in the workplace?

As a general matter, there exist two schools of thought on the query. On the one hand, there are those who embrace internal competition, insisting on the need to light a taller fire under otherwise complacent employees. On the other hand, there are those who reject it altogether, maintaining that internal competition is not advantageous enough to offset the animosity and insecurity it breeds, instead putting all their force behind the darling of workplace literature: collaboration.

The Man of the Hour, I will argue, is inclined to side with the latter camp—however, not without qualification.

Now, although I talk about internal competition as if it were a program to be implemented, we all know that, for better or worse, competition will always lurk beneath the surface of any collective. But how, then, can we diminish in the workplace something that is built in to its very nature?

As strange as it may sound, many in the corporate world have rightly adopted a calculated flavor of competition that, in fact, aims to engender its very antithesis: collaboration. For years, collaboration has been something of an ideal state of workplace existence, in which everyone is working together toward a common goal. Hidden agendas and driving self-interest are not welcome at the conference table; but paradoxically, competition is the key to the kingdom of collaboration—that is, external competition by the company itself.

Now, human nature and the competitive impulse are difficult attributes to shirk—nevertheless, consultants maintain, this impulse can be harnessed for good (!), and funneled collectively toward the real enemy: rival companies.

To be sure, this is by no means an easy undertaking. Every day, employees brush up against each other in close quarters, a site well suited for conflict; it simply isn’t as easy to butt heads with someone or something that exists in the abstract, or even across the street.

And thus, the work of taming competitiveness goes against the grain. So, lest we get too discouraged, let’s consider a few ways to pull it off:

(1) Create a unifying, simple, and stirring objective.

Give the team a target to aim at, one that is unambiguous and exciting. To demonstrate the ideal objective, management researcher Morten T. Hansen uses the example of JFK’s Cold War mission to the moon. Although the country’s general ambition was “preeminence in space,” Kennedy dropped the vague target of preeminence for the simple and (obviously) measurable policy of “landing a man on the moon.” Any objective of a piece with Kennedy’s will doubtless give the employees something to rally around, thereby defusing internal competitiveness.

(2) Employ the language of collaboration

An experiment given at Stanford University called “The Community Game” has demonstrated the value of collaborative language. In the first of seven rounds, one player is asked to either cooperate or compete with another player, and vice versa. Neither player knows the other’s choice in the first round. If both players choose to cooperate, they both get forty dollars; if one cooperates and the other competes, the one pays twenty dollars, and the other gets eighty dollars, and vice versa. After the first round, both players discover what the other chose, and from there, continue for six more rounds. Now at Stanford, two groups of participants were tested—but the players in one group were told they were playing The Community Game, and those in the other were told they were playing The Wall Street Game. The results were revealing: seventy percent of players in The Community Game chose to cooperate, whereas seventy percent of players in The Wall Street Game chose to compete. So what’s in a name? Apparently, a great deal. If the rhetoric of the workplace is fashioned in the cause of community, considerable progress can be made toward a supportive culture.

(3) Introduce a 360 degree performance review

If group objectives or collaborative rhetoric don’t do the trick, a holistic survey will. To give you an idea, the Senn-Delaney Consulting Group has drawn up some instructive criteria samples from what they call the 360 degree performance review:

(a) “Is unselfish in seeking the best outcomes rather than those that benefit him/her most”

(b) “Contributes to a positive, light (fun) and purposeful environment”

(c) “Partners by developing open and trusting working relationships and a general team spirit."

In this light, it is in the self-interest of every employee to work for the greater good of the company. That’s quite the paradox, but, as the research has proven time and again, it really works.

As you can see, it's not impossible to curb the competitive impulse--the program is readily available to all: first divert, and then, if anything’s left over, defuse.

Of course, I’m well aware that many of us are not in a position to formally implement such a program. Nevertheless, a man today should keep abreast of the current state of affairs; understanding the best workplace arrangement is vital for those seeking potential employers, or, for the more entrepreneurial among us, trying to get a start-up off the ground. In these challenging economic times, the tempo of a company’s workplace is instrumental—collaboration, with just the right dose of competition, will pay dividends in more ways than one.