Not too long ago, my company did a program with a large
pharmaceutical company's sales force.
Part of the program allowed the group to row and race in rowing shells
and also to row on the ergometer, or rowing machine. The ergometer objectively measures power
output by tabulating the "meters" each person rows on the machine. Before the group went out to row on the water
for the final time, I asked each of the six teams to sit on the rowing machine
and pull as hard as they could for one minute.
I then took their individual scores and added them together for a team
score.
The first group of six did very well, scoring say, 1500
total meters. The next team did a few
meters better, the next better than that, and so on. I then reversed the teams and asked them to
do it again. The same thing happened,
but this time, the group that had started off the first round with the lowest
score finished the second round with the highest score.
What had happened? As
each group got on the machine, they set as their goal the score of the group
before them. They competed to be the
best within the paradigm of what they thought possible. The final minute of the last group could,
therefore, be considered a final objective, with all of the other scores being
intermediate goals. But did anyone in
any of the groups actually achieve their HPO?
Unlikely. Perhaps if we had
continued, that might have happened.
The point is that intermediate goals and even final
objectives are always artificial.
Cooperative competition can drive individuals and teams to and past all
artificially imposed objectives, until the point at which they finally reach
their HPO. Having said that, goals are
essential in allowing all of us to measure ourselves against some defined
boundary. At the time Roger Bannister
broke the 4 minute mile, for instance, the feat was considered impossible. However, within weeks after he finally did
the impossible, several other runners followed his lead, until a new
"impossible" limit was set.
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