60 PART I Knowing What to Do

between adversaries, even when the contest seems to be only in the eye of the reporter.4 This mindset can be so pervasive that we fail to even see that there might be other alternatives.

The problem with a win-lose mindset is that it limits our options when cooperation is called for. I like sports; I don’t want baseball to change into some New Age event where no one wins. But in the workplace, an us- versus-them model can be a killer. As our product design “team” tries to get a new product to market, we engage in a “full court press” to get it out the door before accounting can object. Headquarters “drives home” a new ini- tiative. Our “home runs,” “slam dunks,” “two-minute drills,” and “blitzes” make competitors of the people who should be our business partners.

Although we call this healthy competition, it is anything but. Assum- ing that our new idea will face stiff opposition, we begin to view the fight to save our dream as a battle royal. To the victor belong the spoils.

If competition is the only way, then it will be impossible to build alli- ances with all who have a stake in the outcome. Competition causes us to assume that our interests are at odds with those of other people, even though they may be sitting in the office next to ours.

The Win Might Not Be Worth the Cost

In 279 B.C. the emperor Pyrrhus fought the Romans at Asculum. His army won, but at a tremendous cost in lives. He was said to have declared, “One more such victory and I am lost.”5 Such Pyrrhic victories are common in organizations.

Our desire to win at all costs blinds us to the toll it takes. 20th Cen- tury Fox tried a new way of selling movies to television. Instead of selling rights for a fixed fee, they set up bidding wars between the networks. One ofthe first films offered was The Posei-

don Adventure. The network execu- tives couldn’t stop themselves, even when they realized they had gone over their break-even point. It wasn’t that they wanted the film so badly—they just didn’t want another network to get it. ABC finally got the rights to show the film a single time for$3.3 million, knowing that they would probably lose over a million dollars!6That was in 1973; in today’s dollars the loss would be the equivalent of almost$5 million.

ABC’s “win” only cost them money. When competition this intense occurs inside an organization, your win can leave a bitter taste in the