Don't Settle For Having Winners And Losers
In America we certainly like our sports. The games we watch or play bring out our competitive spirit. We want to win and we want the other team to lose. For most of us we can't play sports so we try to take that competitive spirit into our workplaces, be it a corporation, a government organization or a non-profit. If we aren't winning we are losing. We want to turn everything into a game where there is a clear winner and a clear loser, because that is what we understand the best.
It sickens me to watch what is happening in the political arena in our country as we descend further into the black and white of needing to have only one winner. There has always been a difference of opinion and two parties who don't have the same ideology, but it felt like it used to be more about how to take those differences of opinions and find a way to make something work that everyone can agree on. You can't watch a debate or political ad, read a news article or the latest social media post without getting the sense there is no compromise left.
If there are days it feels like we are at war, it is because it is hard to see how anyone will come out of this as a winner aside from the politicians in Washington.
When we look at our own work and elements of life, we need to see the times when we feel like there is just A OR B and figure out how we can come up with a solution that is A AND B. Jim Collins calls this the "Genius of the AND" and the "Tyranny of the OR". Don't settle for the easy answer, especially when it takes down others.
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