Competion or Cooperation?Learn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Competion or Cooperation? article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
It has been said, there is no better way to hone your skills and improve your performance, than competition. Competing with others, or even with your self, fosters continued improvement, striving for even higher goals, and an ongoing sense of achievement. Competition in the world of business is natural and expected. Every business has competitors that are vying for the dollars in the marketplace. And over the years, some of these competitors have been classic. Coke versus Pepsi comes to mind, as does Avis versus Hertz in the rental car industry. Years ago Miller Lite had commercials where two factions of their fans competed over the reason to buy their product. As a crowd gathered half the group would shout out "Less Filling!!" while the other half would retort "Tastes Great!!!" They were humorous commercials with Miller Lite being the only real competitor. These classic competitions served to strengthen the product itself and made the competitors stronger. In effect, both Pepsi and Coke won, as did Avis and Hertz. Competition can be a very intense experience and a very rewarding one, or it can be enormously destructive. - Andrea Lawrence - Ski Champion But what about competition inside your workplace? Can you improve morale or increase motivation through a contest? Does internal competition make your department stronger, or does it divide the group into "winners" and "losers", with the real loser being the customer? That was the question that a client had for me this month. She runs a national organization that is divided up into 6 geographic regions, each producing basically the same product. Her desire was increase productivity by having the 6 regions compete for cash prizes and trips. "Morale has been a little low recently, and I figure a 6 month contest with the winner at the end getting a pretty substantial prize will be a big boost!!" she said. "Sounds interesting", I replied. "Personally, I've always enjoyed competitions and have frequently used them to create excitement in my groups. There is one thing to watch out for", I told her. "Be careful that the competition serves the customer and not just the leadership. Because sometimes 'winning' the competition becomes a goal unto itself and when winning the game becomes the goal, your customer can be the loser." Positive competitions are marked by strong, resilient groups looking to move their productivity to even higher levels. You tap the creativity of your people and ask them to find new and creative ways to accomplish their tasks. They know that the other groups will find creative ways to move forward and it taps into their creative and competitive juices. At the end of a positive competition, all of the groups have moved forward as the competitors find little things that they can do. At that point, all of the groups and the customers are winners. Ultimately, that is the goal of every competition in the workplace. But it doesn't always turn out that way. What would make it a "bad" competition? Bad competitions are marked by the following characteristics: 1. The groups are not well organized or well led. Productivity is bad and competition is viewed as a last resort to increase the numbers. 2. There are clear "winners" and "losers" of the competition. Instead of trying to move everyone forward, the winners are hyped and the others are castigated for not doing enough. 3. At some level in the management chain "winning the competition" is equated with earning a promotion or even keeping their jobs. 4. The competition is used as a motivation technique. Motivation and rewards are often confused, but distinctly different. 5. The people actually engaged in the competition don't view is as a test of their creativity, but as just one more way to try and pry more hours from them. The Law of Win/Win says, ''Let's not do it your way or my way; let's do it the best way. - Greg Anderson American Author The key to a positive competition lies in the win/win nature of the contest itself. When your contests have losers, you can rest assured that when you do your final accounting that morale will be one of the sure losers. Magic Secrets Revealed. - Find out how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear or how David Blaine levitated off the sidewalk! Make A Living Online Course. - David Vallieres Provides Detailed Instruction for Making a Living Online. Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 |
More Articles:1. Proactive Workplace Stress Management - Moving Your Organization to Healthy High Performance By Sandra Stark The mental dimension of performance has been receiving a lot of attention recently – for all the wrong reasons. Statistics Canada recently reported that stress-related absences cost employers $3.5-billion annually, and that health costs for employees reporting high levels of stress are 50% above average . In another study, the Business And Economic Roundtable on Mental Health called depression at work “the unheralded business crisis in Canada”, and noted that “workplace stress is a factor in t… 2. The Inferno of the Finance Director By Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. Sometimes, I harbour a suspicion that Dante was a Financial Director. His famous work, "The Inferno", is such an accurate description of the job that it cannot be otherwise. He is fervently hated by the workers. He is thoroughly despised by the other managers ("mean bastard" is his common nickname among them, mostly for scrutinizing their expense accounts). He is dreaded by the owners of the firm because the powers that he has often outweigh theirs. Shareholders hold him responsible in annual … 3. Preparing For ISO 9001 2000 Registration By John Oakland The steps need to be taken to prepare an organization for ISO 9001 2000 registration:Whilst the following text is not exhaustive in its content it should give you a reasonable idea of what’s involved in setting up an ISO 9001 2000 registration within an organization.First and most importantly you should either purchase a copy of the ISO 9001 2000 standard or read a copy at your local library.At first glance many of the terms referred to in the standard sound quite confusing but if you study th… 4. Bar Charts Brought to Life: Index of Interactive Information for HTML and PDF By Joe Miller Bar Charts and the Information ChallengeWhether one is an unknown entrepreneur or Donald Trump, an elementary school teacher or a university president, a 6th grader researching other countries or a government leader visiting them, each person in any capacity has at least one thing in common: information.Let me explain why I use bar charts as an example. Whether information is being acquired or distributed for business or educational purposes, the challenge that arises is how to compile all of … |
||||
