Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Another age-old motivation technique that should probably go away.

It was 30 years ago (yes, I am that old). The big boss of the organization was excited. A competing organization was trying to build a new product just like we were trying to build. By the way, we were both government organizations and therefore redundant organizations. Hence, we were wasting money, but that is another story for another day.

Anyways, the big boss saw this competition as a way to, “get us going.” His comment was:

Nothing like a little competition to get the creative juices flowing.

Like almost anything, there is some merit to this statement. I find much  more merit to the statement:

Since we are both government organizations (funded by the same taxpayers), let’s pool our resources and combine the best ideas from both organizations into one superior product.

The second statement was never spoken. We went head to head in competition. The result was a product that was pretty good, but cost the taxpayers more than twice what it should have.

Competition and Creativity

I don’t hold to the idea that competition spurs creativity. I find that to be something a caveman would grunt. The “competitive juices” manager was promoted, but that is just another example of an incompetent manager being promoted out of the way of people who worked hard to earn their pay.

I find that imagination spurs creativity. I find that fun spurs imagination. I find that happy, motivated people do good jobs while people who are told, “either do it great or you’ll be fired” feel pressure pushing down on their brain. I have yet to find anyone who thinks well with someone squishing their brain.