Competition 2.0
Have you ever asked yourself why people gossip so much? My guess is that gossiping allows us to feel part of the group, which is ‘right’. So the others must be ‘wrong’. To invite someone to gossip is like inviting him or her to the community of ‘winners’, and leaving the ‘losers’ behind.
So, many of us humans need gossip, and in the slipstream blame (everything is someone else’s fault), as a way of feeling secure and staying in the drama triangle. It seems that we need gossip to feel like a winner once in a while and to feed our need for ‘basic trust’. Gossip as a source of social cohesion and using splitting behaviour: ‘conflict creates comfort’. A survival mechanism to cover up for not taking responsibility where one should.
Feeling secure: who really dares to take a stand? Who really trusts his own understanding of a situation and holds the line if challenged? ‘Conflict creates comfort’ doesn’t only apply to individuals. We see the principle operating in politics and countries as well.
Gossip is very time-consuming and doesn’t contribute to the company’s profit. One may argue that companies with a lot of gossiping and ‘divisive behaviour’ are therefore not cost-efficient and will vanish in the end as being not competitive. Perhaps the internet will, for that reason, drive out gossip as a non-value adding activity, as the internet makes the world transparent, forcing each company to be faster, better, cheaper? Or will it just turn gossip from a local into a global activity?
If the internet does drive out gossip, what would be the alternative? My guess is: ‘competence creates comfort’. Just be good at what you are doing and embrace peer review as a quality system.
Competition 1.0: ‘to win is to lose’, competition 2.0: ‘to share is to gain’. Do you agree? So, don’t go for the struggle or the fight. In the end, it leads to nowhere. Cooperation leads to value. ‘From survival of the fittest to survival of the most cooperative’.
Real teaming fostered by the internet. A wonderful perspective!