The “I Win, We Lose” Paradox

Last week we explored the impact of ‘talent hoarding’ on organizational success. Holding on to your best people as a manager is a great example of the ‘I win, we lose’ paradox because while you may, at least for a while, get to cling on to a high-performer, there will often be down-stream consequences that ultimately mean everyone in the organization pays the price. Including you.

 Self-defeating behaviors dressed up as healthy competition can lead to toxic cultures that will, at best, hold a company back from achieving their true greatness and can, at worst, put that company out of business. Here are a few more examples for you to contemplate:

• The high-performer that completes all his work well ahead of schedule and sits back to bask in the glory while other members of the team struggle to meet deadlines, performance or quality targets;
• The sales rep that hits her quota by selling old solutions, avoiding the innovative new offering that the company is betting its future on;
• The product marketing manager who paints a picture of the dream solution that, in reality, the implementation team could never deliver on
• The engineering manager that undermines her peers to ensure her team wins the quarterly performance prize;
• The finance director that artificially inflates the quarterly numbers to keep the stock price up.

In each case, hopefully you can see the paradox: The individual might win in the short term, only to lose in the long term as the repercussions of their actions hit home. I win, we lose. 

Aggregate analysis of our Whole-Mind Manager results, gathered across many managers working in lots of different companies, reveals that “Putting the needs of the organization before the needs of the team” is one of the most challenging competencies for managers to embrace. Unless you’re willing to do that, you’re often engaging in the I win, we lose paradox.