The Voice (Francistown)
29 April 2008
column
Francistown — It's a dog eat dog world. That popular expression recognises the massive role competition plays in nature, but there is also a lot of support for the argument that says human beings are not simply animals and that we should be able to all get along without the need to compete.
After all, in most competitions there is only one winner while there are many losers. On the corporate level, competition in the marketplace usually starts out as a great benefit for the general public as all the competing companies try to beat their rivals by offering the best product or service for the lowest possible price.
Eventually, however, a handful of firms usually put their competitors out of business and then there is a tendency for the survivors to cooperate with each other so they can all charge as much as they think they can get away with. The result being the public loses out.
On the personal level, meanwhile, competition tends to bring out the worst in people who need to prove to the world, and to themselves, that they are worthy of respect. There is, however, another side to competition, and it can be a very positive force for development as I witnessed firsthand last week in Harare.
No, I'm not talking about the thriving Zimbabwean economy. I ventured north of the border to watch the Botswana swimming team compete for the first time ever on foreign...water against national teams from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Uganda and Namibia at the Sub-Saharan competition. If you are one of those people who read the paper from back to front starting with the sports, or if you caught some of the coverage on BTV, you already know the team did fantastically well and captured 16 medals at the event placing ahead of Uganda, South Africa and Namibia in the final standings.
But the most amazing thing for me was not how well our swimmers did against competitors from other countries, but how well all the swimmers did compared to their own qualifying times. The Sub-Saharan gala is a steppingstone to the Pan-African Games and possible even the Olympics, and all the swimmers seemed to raise their games in response to the importance of the event and the quality of the competition.
In the Under-10 boys 50-metere freestyle race, nine swimmers, including two from Botswana, broke the existing Sub-Saharan record. Many other swimmers, meanwhile, took five, 10, even 15 seconds off their personal best times in various events. Yes, competition can help individuals and companies develop by presenting obstacles and challenges that bring out the very best of their respective abilities, but the trick seems to be to value those challenges as much as, or even more than, winning itself so that you will continue to seek the most trying competition and in the process develop even greater skill.
This approach to competition is not uncommon in the sports world - especially at the top where athletes continuously look to test themselves against the very best in their field. In the business world, however, competition is still seen as something to be eliminated.
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