Apr 03

On Winners and Losers

Tonight is the final men’s college basketball game of the year. Tonight one team will be crowned national champions. That means one team will win the game; the other will lose. One team will be called the winners; the other team will be called the losers.

Winners and losers - now that seems a silly way to look at it. But, hey ho, we like those terms. If I win, can you win? If you lose, can I lose? In business we like to think in terms of win/win relationships. But, in sports, we don’t think in those terms. Seems we can’t bend our heads around to having two winners. Even when there is a draw, or a tie, we still don’t call each team winners. We say they tied. So maybe it is impossible for us to think in terms of win/win.

On the wall in my office hangs a small poster which says, “Victory creates hatred, defeat creates suffering. Those who are wise strive for neither victory nor defeat.” The idea is attributed to Buddhist philosophy. Can that be so?

One businessman I spoke with, a chap working in the money business, called it “Eastern crap.” What do you think? Is it necessary for there to be losers if there are winners?

Tonight a bunch of people will leave the court with tears in their eyes. Some of great joy, some of incredible sadness. Can they all be winners, or do we only appreciate the magnitude of the victory when juxtaposed by the magnitude of the sadness the other team feels?

I don’t doubt that our best efforts in business can create true win/win relationships. It may not be possible in sports - but wait! Maybe it is.

What if we looked beyond the outcome of tonight’s tiny little college basketball game? What if we looked waaaaaaaaaaaay out there to the BIG PICTURE? Way out there it seems there are only victors. The kids, the coaches, the fans, the people in Indianapolis who benefited from the money a couple hundred thousand visitors to their city spent, the sport of college basketball, our cultural relationship with victory and defeat. Maybe all of us will win in the long term, even though men and women representing one American university will feel elated and those from the other will feel as if they’d been socked in the stomach.

Games are played to enliven us. They should awaken us to bigger ideas than who raises a wood and metal contraption above their heads. Tonight’s game should awaken us to living out a set of values that elevates the hearts and minds of everyone involved, and those watching, too.

When you watch tonight’s game, contemplate your values. How do you really play in business? Do you require a loser to be victorious? Are your “win/win” relationships magnificent and profitable enough? If you defined profit more broadly than merely money gains, would they be?

Think about it. A college basketball game is just the tip of the iceberg. What is really underneath is what I want to know.

Uncategorized