Coopetition
Because all boats rise in a high tide.
By Steve Hodges
I have seen too many positive examples of this so far this year for me to not want to share my thoughts on it. For the unfamiliar, coopetition is the art of being furiously competitive but cooperating with your combatants to ensure that they too do well. Wanting to WIN, but not at all cost. The net result being everyone does better, and the sense of achievement is so much greater.
As an average, club level, ex-rugby player I have seen the need this for many years in my chosen sport. Within the same team you will have fierce competition for a position on the field and even within a chosen team there is often explosive combative activity between forwards and backs. Banter and sledging are standard behaviour and I have even been involved in the occasional scuffle with a team mate as ‘feedback’, fuelled by passion and the desire for success, outweighs the unity and boils over until common sense resumes. All good natured and instantly forgiven inside the team but if someone from the opposition goes toe-to-toe with your teammate, then the person you were rolling around on the floor with a short while ago delivering your best “let him know you were there but don’t injure him for the game” blows too is now stood shoulder to shoulder in a ‘I will lay my body on the line for you’ way that is often difficult for non-sports people to understand.
But more and more I am seeing examples of this in the rest of my life, especially in business and I am loving the impact.
Something as simple as the Astro team get together this week saw us hit the bowling alley following a meeting and dinner for an inter-company bit of fun. As I listened to the “you’re going downs” and the “Didn’t fancy hitting any pins that time…” comments flying around the room I was also witnessing the same people, on competing teams helping, guiding and coaching each other – it is brilliantly paradoxical.
Two other examples that I have been party too recently show the benefit of this to the greater good and have warmed my heart this year. One is health related and one very much business centric.
I am fortunate enough to be a member of a fairly exclusive (don’t look, you won’t find us!) elite group of business leaders in Kent called the Intelligo Group. Masterminded and lead by Tim Levey of Kreston Reeves, we get together monthly to discuss challenges, successes and issues to help everyone get a different perspective, from different markets, on the usually challenges on running a SMB. This collective of successful and highly competitive, goal-focussed, individuals decided to have a competition to lose a chunk of the chunkiness post-December and a ‘% of body fat loss’ challenge was set. The prize is a fair few quid of a pot we have collectively put together, but that is utterly inconsequential compared to the prize of simply being the winner. This challenge has seen people join gyms, give up drinking, hit the salad bar, even go vegan until the final weigh in, and the competitiveness of it has the group messages flying around at a most prolific rate. It is brilliant and really good fun, but these messages are so strange!! 50% are insults and banter but 50% encouragement, praise and even people helping share gym memberships and training tips !! Don’t get me wrong, EVERYONE wants to win, no question, but at the same time everyone is happy to assist the very people competing with each other along the way. The outcome, everyone does better!!
My final example is purely business, in the same group there is a lot of kudos for the top spot. Biggest growth trajectory, most profitable, greatest collections of awards. Everyone want the “Top spot.” Each member works tirelessly to get their business to be number one but then at the same time, people are commercially trading with each other, assisting each other and on the occasions where someone has been up for an industry or regional award, every one of us is there in support with a collective sense of pride that is pack-like in its passion. Some of us are even working together on projects that help the growth or development of each other’s businesses independently or collectively, but in the background, despite all of this we are still keeping a watching brief on how we are all doing and deep down inside wanting to do better.
The net result is all of these examples is a disproportionate improvement in performance for everyone, the competitive spirit improved the overall scores in bowling, everyone is collectively getting much fitter from the Intelligo Group and in the same group, many of the businesses are performing better than when were they not a member (a number of the 14 of the group were in the Kent fastest 50 growing businesses of 2017).
It is unquestionably brilliant. An excellent sales team member of mine once said to me “Hodge, it is not enough to win, someone must lose.” And I like that, I get it and I can’t stand the strange mind-set of parts of our education system that takes the competitive nature out of activity – I believe that it is unhealthy. But I think, and I hope, that Coopetition is taking over from the ‘win at all costs’ mind-set of years gone by. Yes, we must celebrate victory, we must encourage success and we must strive, wherever possible, to be the best in our chosen fields or at least the very very best we can be. But at the same time, more and more people and businesses are seeing the value in everyone doing well, helping the field of competitors and still striving to come out on top rather than seeing others fail and ending up being the best of a bad bunch. This year Astro is going to continue to strive for successes, growth and further development, for a continuation in our pursuit to be ‘business class’ and challenge the standards of market we are in, but I think there will be more and more partnerships, delivering healthy coopetition along the way and a goal of being the best of the best, and not just lone winners!! Personally and professionally I certainly believe it is a better manner in which to behave and we will embrace it all ways. Who will you be supporting while competing with this year ??