THE CANCER OF COMPETITION

PULIN  DUTTA

Once I stumbled into an essay, the title of which I can never recall, which dealt with the dreadful affliction, “Cancer”. I learnt that Cancer was not a disease as such; but a malfunctioning of the organic body system, most of the causes residing within the body. It said, “A body has a number of parts and the parts have numerous tissues and cells. When due to some reason or the other, not yet well understood, some cells tended to compete with the rest to grow faster than the others and win - Cancer developed.”

The winning cells feed on the neighbouring cells to grow and gradually spread out. We all know what happens eventually. The Cancerous cells win and the body loses. Symphonic interdependence on one another breaks down - Win-Lose!

I thought in that case all organic bodies are likely to be afflicted with cancer, when interdependence of the cells and mutual harmony in their functioning broke down. If that logic were correct, then an organisation or a home made up of organic human beings must also suffer if the various parts of the same organisation were competing with one another in a win -lose sense. This is how as history tells us so many nations lost their freedom due to internal quarrels. I have seen indeed this was so, wherever internal comparison and adversarial competition was encouraged. This is true in schools, in companies, in market places and even in professional sports and our own homes. Is it not surprising that we are still in the same mode even now in the 21^st. century, still obsessed with adversarial competition?.

I think it is worth thinking it over and try out the alternatives seriously at home, at schools and in our organisations. Nothing to lose anyway! Otherwise, we should all stand to lose in the final analysis. This is more so in the shorter term in organisations like companies, political and social organisations families and governments. The breakdowns are seen sooner. In the case of societies, civilisations and nations it takes a bit longer to see the results.

Why does it have to be this way? I searched and searched, until I read and heard what Dr. W. Edwards Deming had to say. He was the only one in this vast world of business to tell for the first time how a superstitious belief of many people that “competition was healthy”, itself was the major cause of disaster of our own making.  I invite the readers to ponder over this seriously for sometime and reflect what could happen.

When I was in the Deming seminar in Birmingham in 1992, he gave us a diagram (Figure I) to study carefully. I am not sure if the assembled 350 people really understood Dr.Deming’s order, ‘study’. At least I did not. For, I thought there was not much to study in this sketch? We were by then veteran ‘professional managers’ for decades and we thought we knew most of the things managers ought to know. We were in the state of ‘unconscious incompetence’. We knew not that we knew not.

While, looking at the diagram, most of us, subconsciously, was engaged in what we were good at - executive art sessions (this happens to managers when their mind was somewhere else and forced to be physically where he was) drawing a rectangle or a circle or an oval around each word, e.g. design, production, assembly, inspection, distribution etc. Deming was taking rounds in his wheel chair, pushed by his devoted secretary for past 30 years. He saw us putting the rectangles and ovals and roared in his characteristic style, “ What are you doing? Why are you putting up the fences? I could have done that myself”. We were dumbfounded.

For, we were veterans in organisations for years and we were used to be in our departments, our fenced homes, feeling protected. That was our idea of an elegantly designed organisation structure. Wasn’t it? So, we did nothing unusual, we thought. Another superstitious belief! Deming went back to the Over Head Projector and began telling how silly we could be as managers. He said, such fencing created both physical and mental barriers between functions and internal adversarial competition (and politics) became the norm. He said, thus we ignored the main aim of the organisation – collectively cooperatively and intensely “creating and delivering value-satisfaction’ to the customers”.  How right he was? We were on the other hand mostly preoccupied to protect our own ‘private turf’, the chair, lest someone took it away. A fear resulting from mistrust and distrust towards one another. We were opaque to the others, and transparency highly desirable to satisfy the internal and external customers was amiss. We became the cancer causing genes to our own organisations! The organisation suffered, we suffered!

Deming spent his lifetime trying to educate business managers that for a company the competition is outside the company. And he was not at your mercy. To win there, he suggested all the people must work without competition inside the company in total co-operation. Interdependence in place of independence! The Japanese applied Deming’s advice and did exceedingly well in the market place and came to be known as the “miracle” of the second half of the 20^th. Century., rising like the proverbial Phoenix from the devastations of the World War II and two Atom bombs and still going strong as the unrelenting economic power house.  Even after fifty years, he found the American managers (and their likes in India) are still competing with one another inside the organisation like the cancer causing cells in the belief of “healthy competition”. 

The term, “Healthy Competition” is an oxymoron. It is like saying, a ‘truthful lawyer’. Does that not seem contradictory? Actually Mahatma Gandhi first said it more explicitly, while denouncing his legal practice.

Competition amongst the various parts can never be healthy. It creates friction, bitterness, inferiority and superiority complexes that affect the body and mind.

Even at schools and homes, asking children to compete adversarially with one another is the blunder many parents and teachers committed. Thus we harm the child by polluting his developing mind for life. Such children cannot lead a happy life, even if materialistically ‘successful’. The only thing we should ask the kids to indulge in is competition with oneself trying to continually improve from his and her past and cooperate with the others and help them to improve too. That will benefit the children and the society more. Continual self-improvement should be an infinitely better way to lead a happier and more successful life.

I know most readers won’t agree. For, most of us grew up this way without much thinking. Superstitiously! We believed for one to win, another has to lose. Why? Can anyone tell me? The term “survival of the fittest” did not imply that one is required to destroy others to survive. That will be a very uncivil behaviour, don’t you think? Are we not seeing enough of the devastating outcomes of win-lose competitions all around us? Are we not victimising ourselves this way?

Look at the environmental degradation we have created for selfish gains of few. It is now threatening our lives and our children’s lives. Many families and homes suffered from the same disastrous consequences of encouraging adversarial competition amongst their children. Should we encourage that? This is a very serious matter to be left unquestioned, I believe.

Organisations can be designed to foster co-operation in place of competition, like in a symphony orchestra, if we wished to. Only the 'macho' fast lane traffic, the drunken drivers on the roads, impatient and over ambitious people may resent it. What to do then? Get rid of them like virus is the honest answer. They caused jams, harm to others and to themselves. They also block the others. The pests should be controlled. Don’t you agree?

It will be a blessing for the organisation, experience says so repeatedly. I have seen it all around for decades and that is why I teach such non-textbook ideas in organisations as a passion, as I vowed at the ‘feet of the master Dr. W. E. Deming’.  I take pride and joy in saying that in few cases even my listeners found happiness., about which they narrated interesting stories. I wished our school teachers, parents, guardians, the business managers and bureaucrats understood this very difficult concept. Difficult, because it demands rejecting a long-held superstition that there is a thing called, “healthy competition”!

Managers, teachers and parents beware! I remind you once more - if it were healthy then it won’t be competition (but cooperation) and if it were competition, then it can’t be healthy.

Further, the worse thing we are used to is the reward and punishment (absence of rewards) associated with adversarial competition.  That kind of short - sightedness robbed individuals from taking pride and joy at work, schools, homes for peace and happiness in life. The society thus suffered more, because the whole system gets into a trauma. The West suffered a lot this way, they confessed. A careful observer can discern that. We too are suffering in many fronts. Subversion of the system caused a chain reaction like cancer in any organisation.  Let us appreciate this in greater depth and spare our children from entering into this vicious cycle now and let us encourage them to cooperate to gain together and earn true pride and joy in life.

We have to come out from the state of ‘Unconscious Incompetence’ and move towards ‘Unconscious Competence’ and avoid the fatal attraction of ‘Healthy Competition’. It simply does not exist. Period.