Roger W. Nielsen

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ROG BLOG
by Roger W. Nielsen

Cooperation Is Key to Success
Ever since I was in school I remember being taught to compete with my peers for grades and recognition instead of cooperating to solve problems and achieve common goals. When I entered the business world I discovered competition was essential to the functioning of a free market economy. Now it’s beginning to dawn on me that I was wrong. It’s cooperation, not competition that is the true key to success.
    Lately I’ve determined that as I concentrate on winning at the expense of others you have already lost. Consider the “Me Decade” of the 1980s. Everyone was out for what he could get. As a result our economic system fell apart. Product quality dropped. The United States lost its role as the world’s economic leader.
    In our country everyone is part of a mutually interactive system. It isn’t possible for any part of the system to prosper unless the other parts also work. Unless we act harmoniously, the individual, who is only one part of the system, fails.
    One way to survive rough times is for us to pull up our boot straps and work together on improving our lot. We need a system in which all partners are winners. I’m not suggesting you ignore competition, but preoccupation with beating your competition diverts you away from your real work of making a better product. This means having the vision to create products and services which meet future needs we have yet to conceive.
    No one asked Alexander Graham Bell to invent the telephone. No one asked Marconi to invent the radio. No one asked Milo Farnsworth to create television. I doubt very much if any one of these men worried about competition. Each new product came about because Bell, Marconi, and Farnsworth were men of vision and foresight who created a customer benefit. Stated simply, they defined terms of customer satisfaction and by so doing set the terms of competition.
    Once we stop seeing other people as adversaries we may be able to maximize our strengths and remedy our weaknesses in ways that benefit us all. By concentrating on the niche we do best and forging strategic alliances where we can strengthen and support each other, we’ll go forward together.
    We can no longer afford the luxury of doing things the old way. The cost in lost human potential and wasted resources is too great. We need to move away from competition to cooperation if we are to survive the savage economic times of the future. Advancement doesn’t have to be at the expense of others.