My win-win obsession. If you aren't on already, I hope you jump on this bandwagon too!

The Idea: Consider pursuing Win-Wins or Positive-Sum partnerships, they can be a high leverage path to team success.  Positive sum situations are those in which many people can gain, as opposed to zero-sum games in which if one person wins, someone else must lose.

I think I have recognized an obsession of mine - the pursuit of “win-wins”. I want to successfully achieve my personal goals, but not at the cost of other people around me. I want them to win too, or at the very least, not put them down in order to win myself. And the more I learn, the more I realize this may just be an achievable, sustainable, full-filing, life-long pursuit.  

It all started with my hatred for being hated.

I’ll admit that in my youth, a fairly uninspiring thought paved the way to this win-win obsession. I never wanted anyone I interacted with to leave with a negative feeling. If you are a fan of ‘The Office’ like me, you will remember Pam admitting to the camera, ‘I hate the idea that someone out there hates me. I even hate thinking that al-Qaeda hates me. I think if they got to know me, they wouldn’t hate me’. LOL. I could really relate to that ridiculous thought. I really wanted to win, without being hated by anyone at all. This bland idea led me to my next big question - are zero sum games (In which for one person to win, another must lose) the only way?

An aversion to zero-sum games 

When I reflect on my childhood, I realized that I was one of the fortunate few that developed a love for learning in the traditional and largely uninspiring school system we were in. I also recognized that my least fulfilling experiences were connected to intense competition. I was curious, gritty and constantly striving to get better. But if I had to get better than someone else in a high stakes environment it was usually a terrible experience. There were definitely other factors at play as well here - like a strong fixed mindset / the fear of losing / risk aversion, and these were amplified in high stakes, competitive settings like sports competitions, school elections, competitive exams etc. After a few unpleasant experiences in tennis competitions and school elections (of course this is not the case for everyone, but it was for me), I completely shied away from them until I was a young adult.

Recognizing that zero-sum games are not the only way

At some point in the last decade I experienced the power of team successes at work. Sharing and learning together, lifting each other up so we could all succeed together. At first I just wanted more because teamwork was fun and felt great. But then on deeper reflection, I realized that there was another reason I was thriving in these environments. It was not just because the team was achieving great things together, but because in that process, I as an individual was learning and growing tremendously. It was a win-win, and that increased my motivation. It was not a zero-sum game, but a positive sum game. A positive sum game is a situation in which the total of losses and gains is more than zero i.e. if someone wins, another doesn’t have to lose the same amount. There is an opportunity for several people to come out with gains.  This personal discovery positively transformed my approach to work, collaboration and relationships.

Experiencing the power of win-wins

In the last 5 years I have been intentional about playing positive sum games:

• How can I maximize my contribution to my organization AND my own personal growth? 
• How can I collaborate with teammates in a way that helps them develop AND also achieves the goals of the team most effectively? 
• How can I share useful knowledge with the wider education community AND also use that experience to learn more and build the reputation of the organization? 
• How can I lead our team in a way that enables individuals to pursue projects they are passionate about AND drives innovation in the organization?

Once you are sincerely striving to play positive sum games, it completely changes your world. The upsides are huge. It automatically creates positive, supportive cultures in which people lift each other up rather than beat them down. It creates safe environments that enable learning and innovation at the level of the community, in ways that competitive and often hostile zero sum environments cannot. 

Realizing that many successful, inspirational people out there are also in pursuit of win-wins! 

What really consolidated this for me in addition to my own experiences was a realization that many successful people also seemed to advocate for the pursuit of positive sum games or ‘win-wins’. Adam Grant, Naval Ravikant and the late Hans Rosling to name a few that reinforced my thinking. This idea propagated by many of them  - that progress we have made today has made positive sum partnerships more achievable at scale than ever before - has also had a strong impact on me. Finally a simple but profound quote from Adam Grant: “The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed”.

Closer to home, my husband and I have decided that we want ‘win-win’ partnerships to be a central part of our personal and professional lives. And we spend a lot of time thinking about how we might identify these win-wins and develop them! I’ll let you know how this pans out for us in 10 years, but I am optimistic!