Do You Play To Win Or Not To Lose?

You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win. - Zig Ziglar

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories. - Richard M. Nixon

A few years ago, I walked into a car dealership, picked out a vehicle I wanted and asked the salesman for the best price he could give me.  We haggled for a while and then I thanked him and told him I would think about it.

I went to the dealership down the street and gave the second dealer the best price from the first dealer.  The second dealer gave me his best price and I told him I would text this to the first dealer if he didn’t mind.  The dealer agreed and after I sent the first dealer the new offer, the first dealer promptly texted me back with a better price.  I showed the text to the second dealer who promptly beat that deal (which I then texted to the first dealer) and a bidding war immediately ensued between both dealers with my phone as the conduit.

In the end, I purchased the vehicle from the second dealer for $110 over the rock-bottom price and as I left, the dealer looked at me and asked me if everyone bought cars like that where I came from.

We both laughed and I left.

The bottom line was that I had entered the negotiation to win and I played to win, whether it was buying a car as in this case or building successful companies.

However, most people don’t understand the difference between playing to win and playing not to lose.

For example, in Alberta, Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark, in a move of desperation to unite liberal voters who follow the Liberal and Alberta Party brands, offered a non-aggression pact between the two parties where the Alberta Party would not field candidates in certain ridings if the Liberal Party agreed to not field candidates in other ridings.

While Alberta Party strategy folks will insist that such coalition-focused strategy is the best way to offer opposition to the juggernaut presented by the ruling PC Party, it in fact is a non-sensical way of carving the liberal voters between the two parties and then rationalizing that by bringing the same voters back together, they somehow add up to more voters than they started with.

Not only does the math not make sense, in fact the strategy is one in which one is playing not to lose instead of playing to win.  Instead of establishing that he is a leader who would be so strong that the Liberals would be demanding he take over their party, Clark is soft-pedaling a solution that doesn’t help either party, thus weakening him in the public eye.

The approach reminds me of the young orphan in the Dickens’ classic Oliver who tentatively approaches the headmaster and timidly says “Please sir, more soup?”

While political “experts” may say that politics is different than other worlds and that this makes for good strategy, playing not to win is never a good strategy.

Anywhere.

Well, that is unless one feels that pretending to be weak can be leveraged later in a surprise coup of some sort.

But at least one can fall back on cool posters when strategy is absent … posters like this one:

Winners: Because nothing says "you're a loser" more than owning a motivational poster about being a winner.

I’m not suggesting that Mr. Clark is a loser.  In fact, I believe that he is sharp strategically and tactically and that he is potentially the most capable leader of all the political parties in Alberta.

However, if one intentionally plays not to win or someone else convinces them to play in this way, such gifts are quickly wasted.

The Bottom Line

Do you play to win or do you play not to lose?

Do you know the difference?

Are you sure?

How do you know?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Creating Allies Versus Antagonists–When Ego Makes the Choice

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. - Edmund Burke

Remember that when you meet your antagonist, to do everything in a mild agreeable manner. Let your courage be keen, but, at the same time, as polished as your sword. - Richard Brinsley Sheridan

As the dusts settles from the Alberta by-elections, a children’s story comes to mind regarding how certain parties executed during the election and the results that they produced.  The story goes like this.

There was once a hen and a pig who were thinking about starting a breakfast restaurant together.  “Let’s call it Ham and Eggs”, said the hen excitedly.  “That’s no good”, replied the pig sadly.  “Why not?”, asked the hen.  “Well”, sighed the pig, “You are only participating in it while I am fully committed.”

The story came to mind as I reflected on how people who are fully committed to an endeavour tend to make smarter choices about whether they create antagonists or allies in their day-to-day execution because they have much more to lose if they choose poorly.

In the case of the by-elections, I had had interactions with the Alberta Party in the past and believed them to be a genuine voice of change, representing a non-hyped, data-focused leader of change that the Province (and other jurisdictions for that matter) needed.

In the public debate that occurred, I mused about how Greg Clark, the leader of the Alberta Party, appeared to win the debate.  I tweeted such during the debate and wrote about it later here - Greg Clark–A Refreshing Change Or Just Another Politician?

However, in subsequent interactions with Stephen Carter (his lead strategy person for the campaign) and before I made a decision regarding the Alberta Party one way or the other, Mr. Carter, without caring who he was speaking to, decided that I served better as an antagonist rather than an ally (or at least leaving me neutral at best).

With taunts regarding how much I did for others (or not) without any knowledge of my service to others and in providing flippant answers to serious questions (which I wrote about in Greg Clark–Politicians and the Importance of Optics), it appears that his ego and his belief that a win was “in the bag” invited him to discard myself and others as potential allies and in doing so, invited us to become potential antagonists instead.

Observing the traffic in social media, it appears that the Alberta Party’s selection of Mr. Carter’s raw online style backfired, drawing the desired attention but also creating a large pool of antagonists who may not have cared otherwise about the Party had it not been for how he interacted with people. I realized when people were actively campaigning against the Alberta Party because they believed it to be the Arrogant Stephen Carter Party that something had gone amiss with the Party’s strategy.  In certain groups, such as in schools, the actions of some of the Party’s faithful would have been considered bullying – hardly the role model for young people.

How large an issue this was in regards to the final result of no wins for the Alberta Party will largely depend on who you ask.  Whether the Party will be honest in its post mortems will also be a large matter of conjecture.

However, it causes me to stop and reflect upon how we choose our antagonists, enemies and allies, not only in politics but in Life.

Sometimes we may not be able to secure a person, people or organization(s) as an ally but we would do best not to awaken them as our antagonists also.

Because while the Burke quote at the beginning of this blog post may generally be true, the strengthening of our nerves and skill that is produced by antagonists is only apparent when the ego is such that it allows such learning lessons to be acknowledged and absorbed.

Otherwise, people just end up creating scenarios of themselves versus the world and in such cases, it is always better to bet on the world.  In other cases, they just end up bitter as illustrated here in this delightful quote from Despair.com.

The Bottom Line

Life has enough complexities as it is and there are many times when we wished that there were more powerful people in our corner.

In such situations, I think we are better off choosing our allies carefully, lest our thoughts, words and actions produce the exact opposite effect, creating antagonists or enemies when we least need them.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS In the blog post Answering The Cry For Help, I referred to the true story of a predator who was assaulting and in some cases, extorting things from women once they had been put in compromising situations.

The warning of choosing enemies wisely extends in these situations also.  People who exist to hurt others shouldn’t forget that they will eventually run into someone more powerful than they are and that their actions are creating very powerful enemies that will eventually produce justice.

It’s only matter of time.

Our thoughts, words and actions produce a steady stream of allies, antagonists or people who are neutral to us.

We must choose wisely in order to maximize the nature of the people we create around us.  They will, after all, often decide the result that we produce in our Life.

We should choose as if our Life, personal or professional, depends on it.

Because it does.