Life ain't a zero-sum game.
BUSDIR 15 July 1996Now we're not talking Lotto here, or "guess the temperature correctly and you too can be a meteorologist."
We are talking the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Life on this planet (Earth, for all you cyberheads surfing the galaxy) is a non-zero-sum game.
You might be thinking: what the heck's a zero-sum game? Or: don't ask me what the score is because I don't even know what game we're playing. Or : who cares?
Well, we are so often hearing all those power packed messages to get out there with our Best Practice Quality Assured Just-In-Time ISOd Quality Controlled Leading Edge Value Added Ethical Service Backed product and beat the competition!
And you may just beat your competition. For awhile. But not for long. Because if the planet is actually a non-zero-sum reality, then to win we should not be competing!
Now I have your attention.
A rather clever bloke by the name of von Neumann invented game theory about the same time he helped conjure up computers.
One insight from his game theory became a shibboleth of science and contemporary thought: the distinction between zero- and non-zero-sum games.
In a zero-sum game, every win is offset by a loss; if there is a winner, there must be a loser. Aussies have made this concept into a religion. Whether in the sports ground cathedral or the board room temple, we praise winners and purge losers. In a zero-sum game, a tied score means no one won.
But in a non-zero-sum game, both sides can lose or both sides can win. No one wins a war. Nursery rhymers Jack Sprat and his fat wife, however, both lick the plate clean and each wins.
What leading research scientists, like Nobel laureate physicists Murray Gell-Mann, are finding in studying Complexity or Complex Adaptive Systems is that the most complex systems or natural structures in the world do not seek balance or equilibrium.
For example, researchers around the Santa Fe Institute have observed that having more varieties of organisms on our planet increases the opportunity for yet more new species to evolve, rather than decrease the opportunity for diversity, as in a zero-sum game. (Hear that, Charlie Darwin?)
You and I are people. (Well, I'm guessing about you, and I'm not always sure about me, so let's just assume.) We are complex systems in complex systems.
Our world of trade and commerce is incredibly complex. It used to be more simple, or we thought it was. It followed basic rules of supply and demand, of push and shove, of gimme-or-I'll-take-because-I'm-bigger, of let's believe in a gold standard, and of the (greatest oxymoron of them all) balance of payments.
Our planet also used to have brontosaurus rex and pterodactyls.
The planet has evolved into greater complexity. Our economic world has evolved into great complexity. But it retains its adaptability, or it would rigormorte itself out of existence.
So, if the world of commerce is actually a non-zero-sum game, what does this mean ? It means a big shift in the ways and wherefores of business and competition.
Look at General Motors (America's largest corporation for zillions of years), the Big Blue, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, EIE, Olivetti, Telstra, (watch BHP), to pick on only a few. Look at them doing unheard of slash-and-burn redefinitions of what their business is (core competence, in jargonese) or will be.
And if you look very very closely with unblinkered eyes, you will see that what they are moving towards is not greater zero-sum game playing, not greater beat-the-competition-down-so-we-will-expand, not kill-for-market-share, BUT non-zero-sum game playing : cooperation.
Say what? Cooperation ? Shock, horror, can't-be, you've lost the plot, your cheese is sliding off your cracker, no way Mate..... Well, reality knocks and The Truth Is Out There.
Traditional lemming organisations, particularly the large "successful" Big Eights and Sixes and other icons at the top of the professions, are continuing to march toward the leaping edge, steadily and relentlessly, although with mounting concern at the unfamiliar terrain.
Meanwhile, back at the leading edge, the smaller, younger, global visioned, and now-reality organisations are working out ways of cooperating with others in the same paddock. Cooperating with those who used to be called: The Competition.
These future winners operate from a different mindscript, which goes something like this:
Act I Scene I: I excel at one itty bitty part of this complex system called business. I do not excel at other itty bitty parts, nor any of the humungous parts of the world of trade and commerce. But no one else does my itty bitty bit as well as I do. Anywhere.
Act I, Sc 2 : You excel at creating itty bitty bits very similar to mine. But the difference between our itty bitties is crucial to our customers in the global marketplace, who want very precisely what they want.
Act I, Sc 3 : I can form an alliance with you for us to share all kinds of happy healthy corporate processes, eg, in areas of R&D, production, marketing, distribution, and administration. We will each continue to develop our own specialness, our unique itty bitties. The spin offs of cooperating in any of these areas are not only economic efficiency, but also that immeasurable essential for continued survival - creative synergy.
Act II, Sc 1 : My little itty bitty bit is an important though not large piece of a bigger part (product, service). You and the guy across the street and the guy in the next neighbourhood all produce bigger parts which need my itty bitty bit. So I can sell my itty bitties to you and them. Fairly standard stuff.
Act II, Sc2 : I can also form individual alliances with you biggies, so we can work together in R&D, in production, marketing, distribution, and so on, depending on what will be of mutual benefit. No buy-outs. No mergers. Just fixed-term alliances based on working together in some shared business processes.
Ford, Chrysler and GM have been steadily implementing cooperative procedures. They know that the survival of their cut-throat competitive industry (protecting their R&D more rigorously than Michael Jackson does his gender) depends on their working together.
I hear the Japanese auto industry is also moving to caring-and-sharing in much the same way.
One retort, Detroit is only ganging up on Tokyo, is only surface appearance. Look around you, I say. Look at how all major cars are now designed, produced, marketed and distributed.
It varies from one to the other, but very little remains in-house except the corporate vision and directives. Bits and processes are increasingly shared and outsourced. This pattern is occurring around the world; itty bitties now provide to all the biggies what the biggies once made for themselves.
Act III, Sc 1 : You and I and those two in KL , together with that small team in Copenhagen, can form a consortium to tender for projects that demand our very special combination of excellent skills and knowledges.
Each project team is tailormade for the needs of the project. You and I may work on only one project or we may find that our combination of excellences is appropriate to more than one project.
It is the project needs that determine who is in each consortium, not our being golf buddies or sharing the same God, language, school tie, or zodiac sign.
I am currently consulting to a consortium led by two prestigious architecture firms; five years ago it would have been unthinkable for these two firms to put in a joint tender. Needless to say, they are very very successful in a profession littered with dinosaur carcasses (some still breathing. sort of.)
The mindset of the actors in this cooperative play may appear the same as the competitive mindset, of looking for ways to beat the competition, of getting the contract over them. Of course the actors want the jobs. Of course you are going to put together the best damn bid with buttons and whistles and multimedia programs and kisses for babies and anything else that will prove you deserve the project.
So what is the mindset difference between competitive and cooperative in the non zero sum game?
The Non-Zero-Sum corporate mindset operates on two key principles that are almost the reverse of our present competitive model:
- There is not a limited number of projects, clients, or customers out there right now. I, therefore, do not have to fight on a win-lose basis to gain an increasing share of them.
- More begets more, so the more I work with my "competitors" to help them gain new clients, the more clients shall exist, and thereby, the more clients I shall gain. The win-win model.
This is incredibly simple stuff. Yet revolutionary. And like all revolutions, the majority of people will fight to retain the old view of the world. Well, fight away, I say, because you and your resistance partners will find the other interesting principle of the non-zero-sum corporate world : the lose-lose result.
On a quiet day out here at the leading edge, you can hear the dinosaurs dropping....
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