Message #149
Friday, August
11, 2000
“Competition is the offspring of fear;cooperation,
the child of confidence.”
If
you remember the movie Wall Street,
you may recollect the character Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas) – a
viciously ambitious stockbroker who broke every ethical rule and took advantage
of every relationship to further his career. (KY reminds me that a gecko is a
lizard that has adhesive pads on its feet, allowing it to climb vertically.)
After
that movie was released, there was a lot of talk in the media about “cutthroat
businessmen” and the competitive nature of Wall Street. “Funny thing about that
movie,” JSN said to me after seeing it.
“My experience on Wall Street was nothing like that. It was much more like ‘I’ll
scratch your back if you scratch mine.’”
JSN should know. He was one of the
red-hot wonder kids during the “go-go” ‘60s, and the youngest ever (at that
time) to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
Since
that discussion, I’ve paid attention to this phenomenon in my own business
life. I hear plenty of talk about how cutthroat business is, but most of what I
see is softer. I do know businessmen who are rude and crude. I know some who
lie and cheat. But most of the worst ones don’t do very well. They score a
couple of scams, but then word gets out. Before long, they can’t find anybody
but new, dumb meat to do business with.
Put
differently, most of the business successes I’ve known or have seen firsthand
were achieved by some form of cooperative behavior.
Take
the direct-mail publishing business as an example. When I got into it more than
25 years ago, there were many small-business owners around who were covetous
both of the names they owned and the marketing secrets they had discovered.
They wouldn’t rent out their names, and they wouldn’t talk to you about what
they did. There were also business owners who recognized that by sharing ideas
and cross-marketing names, they could grow faster.
Today,
none of the former are still in business. (Or if they are, they have dropped
off my radar screen.) But several of the latter have gone on to become
extremely successful.
Among
the “cooperators” is BB who has built a
$100 million, international publishing empire by deploying many skills, not the
least of which is a very accommodating nature. One example: BB spent six months
resurrecting a failed British publishing company without any contracted
compensation . . . only the hope that they would appreciate his help and allow
him to buy half (and eventually all) of the business. They did – and now it is
one of his most profitable businesses.
I
can tell you from personal experience that in the jewelry business, the art
business, the contest and sweepstakes business, the astrology business, the
academic book publishing business, and many others . . . cooperation works much
better than competition. And for large businesses, cooperation can work
wonders.
There’s
a story about Grolier Encyclopedia that
I’ve told before. Here’s the short version: . Grolier’s publishers were hanging
on by their fingernails when their primary competitor invited them into his offices
to see how his company was succeeding at something Grolier was failing at. (It was
a bounce-back telemarketing program.) Yes, this sharing saved Grolier – but it
also provided the competitor with a continuous supply of Grolier’s names that he
could mail his offers to.
This
principle is also true when it comes to the internal management of business.
Steven R. Covey (the Seven Habits guy) has recently become a business expert.
(Why not? He’s a thoughtful man.) One of the mistakes he sees some
entrepreneurs make is trying to get their people to compete inside the company.
“They
think this will enhance productivity,” he says, “but what it really does is
create conflicts and interdepartmental rivalry.”
He’s
absolutely right about that.
I
know. I have done it both ways. My earliest instinct was to set good people
against one another, hoping it would drive them to achieve more. Instead, what
I got was a lot of negative, unproductive behaviors.
For
one of my businesses, this is still a major problem. We have managers
withholding vital information from one another. We have managers taking potshots
at others, creating conflicts that go on forever. We have energy spent on
beating people down instead of on making better products and selling them more
effectively.
I discussed
this with JG, my close friend, former business partner, and fellow ruminator.
He was, as usual, serenely in tune with this line of thinking. The ultimate
purpose of martial arts, he made me understand, is not victory but peace. You
learn fighting techniques not so you can go out and beat people up but so you
can live in tranquility and not have to worry about being beaten up yourself.
* *
* * *
ARE YOU TOO COMPETITIVE?
TAKE THIS QUIZ:
1.
Are you motivated primarily by the desire to do better than someone else?
2.
Are you suspicious of your competitors?
3.
Are you suspicious of your colleagues?
4.
Do you secretly enjoy it when a competitor fails?
5.
Do you like to see your peers fail too?
I
could go on, but you get the point. If you answered “yes” too many times, you’re
probably wasting a lot of energy doing things for all the wrong reasons.
If
you scored poorly on this test, don’t chastise yourself. These feelings and
desires are very normal, especially for ambitious people. And although I’m
suggesting you stop thinking this way, it’s not because I think it’s
intrinsically evil (though I kind of do) but because I believe you will have
much more success by being more open and cooperative.
If
you are already cooperative or determined to be so, here are two caveats:
1. First,
don’t expect to get back everything from everybody equally and in equal proportion.
The benefits of cooperation are universal. They come to you generally, not
specifically.
2. Second,
don’t be a giving fool. Extend yourself first – and even twice – without some
kind of reciprocation. But don’t keep giving indefinitely. This is a self-defeating
proposition. Just because you have decided to evolve yourself into a symbiont
doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of lizards around.
MMF
*
The Secret of Inertia
*
Why you need to rest your brain