This is From The Balance Beam

[TheBalanceBeam] - Survival of the Fittest?

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THE BALANCE BEAM
Ideas and Inspiration for Creating a Life that Works
Vol. 2 No. 18, September 1, 2000
Published by Success Builders, Inc.
http://www.SuccessBuildersInc.com
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"He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened."
Lao-tzu
In this issue: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST?
====================================================================== Dear Friends:
OK, I admit it. I got hooked into Survivor-mania last week too. Prior to this final show, I had caught only about 10 minutes of one other episode. And yet, like every other soap opera, it was pretty easy to get the drift of what was going on, and get swept up in the anticipation of the final contest. In this issue of The Balance Beam, I offer my reflections on some of the larger lessons from this show (with my apologies to the non-TV watchers out there....!)

If you want to check out earlier editions of The Balance Beam that you may have missed, you can easily retrieve them by clicking on http://www.successbuildersinc.com/newsletter.html and going to the Archives section. If you are not yet a regular subscriber to The Balance Beam, you can also enter your subscription information at this location.
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Today's Topic: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST?

By the time you read this article, the hoopla surrounding the TV show, "Survivor" will be old news. Rich will be happily settling into his new status as a millionaire, the ink will be dry on multiple deals stemming from all the participants' new-found fame and fortune, and Entertainment Tonight will be on to a breaking story closer to home.

Still, as I write this on the proverbial "day after" the winner was chosen, I've had a lot of random thoughts surrounding what this show, or maybe I should say phenomenon, has to say about modern culture and contemporary business.

There's been a lot of discussion in the media about the implications of Survivor and the other "reality shows" for the business arena. For years, we've been doing team-building games that centered around the notion of survivorship. Almost since the term "team" came into vogue, there have been simulations carried out in countless conference rooms and retreat centers with themes like desert survival, whitewater challenge, the arctic pursuit. You name it, somebody's created a team building exercise around it. We've been around the world in our imaginations, trying to survive, with a list of resources that included things like two soggy matches, a plastic tumbler, twelve inches of string, one package of Hostess Twinkies and a broken mirror.

As our games became more sophisticated, we moved out of the conference rooms and on to the ropes courses. What better way to build trust than by agreeing to fall backwards off a tree limb into the arms of eight encouraging team members who have assured you that they will catch you? And how about the problem solving skill required in trying to figure out how to get two beams from here to there without any feet touching the ground?

So, our team building games have been about trust and helping and collaborative problem solving, etc., and then along comes the final night of Survivor, and things begin to get ugly......Is this simply the reality of what happens when people are playing on a real-life gameboard? Or is there something else going on in this picture?

The obvious difference, of course, is that Survivor was not just about devising ways to cope with the elements and find food in creative ways. It was about winning, and winning on a very singular, one-person level. So, although there were alliances and collaborative schemes formed along the way, in the end, it was each man (or woman) for himself. Only one person could win the million dollars, and it was that fact that nullified any true team effort.

There are important lessons here for the business environment. In many organizations that say they value teams and operate with team structures, the rewards are still based on singular achievement. How often do we ask people to work together and to forge partnerships, yet come performance review time, we consider only their individual efforts? If the models don't match, the behavior that gets rewarded is what will be emphasized. And if that's individual performance, so much for the team process.

And how about the concept of "surviving" in business? In many ways, the TV series was a quest to see how much the contestants could put up with and still hold out for the pot of gold at the end of the show. Do we do the same in business? Just imagine what might happen if we chose to emphasize thriving rather than just surviving? If our challenge to our employees was to take very good care of themselves, their customers, and each other every single day, rather than just knocking it out for the numbers at the end of the quarter. Would results suffer? Or would sustainable performance improve? Some important questions to ponder.........

In the end, of course, it was the network and the show's producers that were the real winners on Survivor. They hedged their bet that millions of Americans would be willing to sit on their sofas week after week and watch life's trials and tribulations happen to somebody else. And millions of Americans took the bait. Next season, Survivor will launch a new quest for a group of willing contenders in the Australian outback. I wonder what lessons we'll take away from that adventure?
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Words to live by:
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
- Jane Wagner:

"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
- W. Edwards Deming: