The future is here. The future is now and we are all we have. But, we may not be how we need to be in order to have a successful society for the remainder of the century. I am speaking as an American national whose education has mostly been within the Western framework of enlightenment. Ironically, my time spent in boarding school in Cameroon exacerbated this. If you are a product of the Commonwealth, capitalism is the economic premise upon which you gauge your participation, progress and success. However, this success is somewhat partial or incomplete. The average successful person today has no real idea what it is like to have a healthy environment for competent equals to share a space and a project wherein the end goal is not either credit or profit. This is not an anti-competition think piece. This is about competition optimization beyond individual gain. This is not about going after individualism either. But understanding how to stack three elements of productivity that could enhance our society as a whole. Truth is, the case I am making already exists. It is just not as popular as it should.

There are three steps to a healthy productive atmosphere through time that when well-cultivated can contribute to quite a robust person, institution or society. Compete -> Collaborate -> Serve. Most industries, institutions and people look at these as functions and culture quirks when in fact they can be optimized for regenerative morale.

COMPETE. For the high ego, high ambition, high vanity types, this is what they may live for. With competitive sports being a de facto cultural addendum, we have expressions such as, mamba mentality (RIP Kobe), killer instinct, klutch gene, the G.O.A.T as affirmations of what defines a top performer. Young men and women are encouraged to tap into this urge if it occurs to them. For those who have any sort of success in sports, it becomes a self-defining quality whether they played in high school, recreationally or professionally. Competition on the surface is amazing. In market capitalism, competition gives us great options in product quality since the producers are compelled to outdo their competition. Businesses compete with each other for customers or clientele. Investors compete with each other for revenue generated. In a competitive atmosphere, output is rife. But in my humble opinion, competition should only be a phase to help distinguish prospective collaborators. Wins and losses are temporary but strengths and weaknesses are way more enduring.

COLLABORATE. Good collaboration is complementary. Great collaboration is exponential. We often see business partners and married couples tout how one side’s weakness is the other’s strength and vice versa. As true as that is, it sometimes masks incongruity or as some pastors, priests or rabbis would term “unequally yoked”. For example, a sprinter trying to improve his speed will be better off working out with another sprinter who runs almost as fast or faster. Both will eventually improve on whomever trails them as opposed to working out with a long distance runner who deals with a different muscle focus and running form altogether. One may be tempted to say this would create bad competition. Among mature athletes, not at all. After a fair dose of competition, successful athletes understand it is not just the win but the improvement that matters most. And some near-wins are just as good as wins because of the mark of improvement. After a certain amount of contests, even the person who has won the most tends to respect those he almost lost to. Those two would make great collaborators. Their combined impact on their respective professions is exponential in that it raises the standard of excellence in said field. Think Oracle collaborating with Microsoft, Steph Curry collaborating with Kevin Durant, Usain Bolt collaborating with Yohan Blake. However, it must be noted that collaboration of this kind requires a white flag of some sort from either of the parties. There has to be a total surrender to the possibility of unforeseen gains or losses for or from either side that will not impede the growing strength of both. This is why collaboration between former competitors is ideal. After a certain point the respect is so mutual that temporary gains and losses during their engagement would not cost them their esteem. Also for this to work effectively, both need not be under any delusions as to what their strengths and weaknesses are. Thus they would both understand how each other’s strength to weakness ratio truly contributes to one’s slight advantage over the other. Yohan Blake could improve his leg rotations but he could never make up for Usain Bolt’s height and longer legs with the same or less leg rotations. Nothing to envy there but he will improve drastically on his rotations.

SERVE. The last step of this is Service. I chose to use the verb: serve. Service from people who have gone through the thrill of competition and victory who then surrender into collaboration make the best stewards of service. The service I refer to here is of those who have been victorious in competition (or made significant improvement on account of it), who then made significant collaborations, who then go back to the beginners and tell them how far the goal post has moved. The charity of service is not in providing assistance and encouragement. It is in making sure, the standards you have raised are applied and the industry’s or profession’s improvement is reestablished. To make sure that your net impact affects the standard. If you are a farmer who started using a hoe and a rake and end up working with a tractors, your service is to make sure all other farmers get tractors as well. Too often this slips through the cracks because a lot of excellent people do not outgrow their competition phase, or do not collaborate with equals and at worst do not realize that the charity of service is about updating the standards more than it is about giving out turkeys at Thanksgiving. Truth be told, service is hard to get too when surrounded by or consumed by greed or outlandish ambition. Greed and ambition are often reductive because they drive parties to either try to make more gains than they need at precarious costs or keep their respective industries from its due growth that eventually weakens the overall impact of their own growth and the industry eventually withers because of it.

This is not a perfect process nor will it always be executed perfectly. But as a reimagining of how excellence need by applied in our society and our industries, it could take us out of the doom of imaginining our best and brightest as our prospective enemies and our beginners as envious competitors. This could also be a way to reimagine service from a cost permissive over a cost prohibitive approach. If the excellent are already few, why make the pool of excellents smaller if the society would benefit exponentially from their participation or growth?

Wherever you are in your growth, I hope you get to see the greater impact of your excellence outside of your personal gain within a short period of time. However, truth be told, this levity can only be maintained if the society is healthy enough to accommodate this.

by Julian Michael Yong.