1. Our desire to compete is a manifestation of our insecurities. Our insecurities provide us the drive to succeed. Our drive is just an outlet for the competitive spirit that rises out of our insecurities.
2. There has been a lot written about the difference between healthy and unhealthy competition. The line between them is actually very fine and is flipped by a single switch – awareness. If we’re aware of our competitive instinct and the underlying insecurities, competition is likely to always be healthy. This is when we enjoy competing, enjoy winning and are good sports when we lose. However, the moment we lose that awareness, it becomes a race to the bottom.
3. The problem with unhealthy competition is that it is driven by looking outwards. We’re constantly measuring our success relative to that of others. This, in turn, results in a litany of negative emotions – envy, fear, and hate being the most dominant.
4. This is where companies that review performance purely by pitting one individual over another mess up. While this is a legitimate method to measure performance, it is a sure shot method to curve long term improvement. The trouble with such review systems is that the atmosphere within the company becomes one of people jostling to become big frogs in the small pond. Destructive politics is the only outcome.
5. The right way to do performance reviews, in my opinion, would be a 1-100 sliding scale of how an individual has performed on various dimensions. One scale would be filled in by the individual (self assessment) and the other by the individual’s team members. This would make for an interesting study because the only basis for comparison would be the individual’s previous review and the level of discrepancy between the individual’s self assessment and that of the team’s. This would then need to be rolled up at a team level to then understand the effectiveness of the team – all the way to the top. The rationale here would be to raise self awareness (understanding where the discrepancies in perception lie) and to focus the competition on improving oneself (being better today vs. last year).
6. The best companies don’t set out to crush their competition. It is the wrong approach. They set out to be the best version of themselves and ship products/services that are simply too good to be ignored. In that process, they crush their competition. One is a process and the other is a by-product. Success is always a by-product of a good process.
7. There’s an interesting counter intuitive fact when it comes to competition. The best long term competitive strategy is to be intensely collaborative. When you focus your energies on being collaborative wherever possible, you rise above the competitive noise and focus on the work that needs to be done. In the process, you also build a stellar reputation for always leaving people and environments better than they were before you came. This is part of tough long and short term trade-offs that we must make. Sources of long term profits are often not friendly to short term earnings. But, they’re necessary if we plan to survive beyond the quarter..
8. The only way to re-focus our competitive energies from the long term is to choose to rise above our insecurities. This is easier said than done, of course. But, it is possible if we remind ourselves of the importance of the long term and stop reminding ourselves of our insecurities. This is also easier said than done. But, it is possible. And, that is what I’ll conclude with.
9. From my own experiments, there is only one way I know of to focus competitive energy from the short term to the long term. That is by only taking part in one kind of competition – the kind that competes with your own self. This kind of competition removes focus from everyone else and also kills all sorts of comparisons. Every time we’re in a new environment, it is tempting to compare our progress with that of our peers. There’s no good that can come from doing that. Every one has their own paths, goals and breaks. These aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons. We’re all typically working towards different ends. And, even if we are working towards the same ends, the results hardly ever matter. It is the process that counts.
All this brings me back to competing with ourselves. I believe that the only question we should be asking ourselves is – “am I better today than I was yesterday?” If the answer is no, find out why. If it is because of your environment, change your environment. And, if it is because of you, understand what’s stopping you from learning.
That one question clearly brings a lot of good with it. However, it isn’t recommended because of that – I have come to realize that it is the only kind of competition that matters.
A Learning a Day 