What is better than winning?

Of course, the answer that probably comes immediately to your mind is, "Nothing!".

Usually, that's what I would have answered, if for no other reason than to be funny. And yet... I'd like to take you on a journey, to walk you through a thought process and show you how the words we use shape how we think.

One of the reasons we teach students to write essays in school is that writing teaches them to think. In fact, there is virtually no difference between writing and thinking[1]. Organizing ideas around words is a foundational skill for effective thinking. We use words to form our ideas. The act of writing teaches us how to group our ideas into concepts that can be shared with others. We “articulate”. This is the essence of thinking.

I am making this rather pedantic point because my mother, of all people, brought to my attention the reality that as American’s, we have become impoverished in our language around competition. We have taken the rich experience of human challenge and reduced it to a false dichotomy. There are only winners and losers. Specifically, there is only the winner, and the rest are losers. We act and talk as if only winning matters.

We all know the quotes about winning:

• Second place is the first loser.
• Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser
• Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing

The study of human performance has become an obsession in our culture. And yet… we also strive for more equity, more inclusion, and more fundamental decency toward one another. The question is how to reconcile our belief that the individual has intrinsic value with this hyper-focus on winning. We have achieved a kind of cognitive dissonance[2], holding two incompatible ideas in our heads at the same time.

Here’s an example of what I mean. For decades the NCAA used the Bowl System for Division I athletics. We had a system that produced a plethora of winners. An astonishing 20% of the teams in the country ended the year with a meaningful football game. And yet, the American public could not stand it. So the NCAA created the Bowl Championship Series with a “true” national champion. We went from a system that produced 20 “winners” annually, to a system that produces just 1. The results? Under the BCS only 4 teams of the 208 Division I football programs play a “meaningful” game at the end of the year[3]. Attendance in the sport is dropping, and what’s more, just two schools dominate the BCS playoff picture. Clemson and Alabama combined have captured 8 of the 10 finalist positions, and 4 of the 6 titles, twice playing each other for a national championship. The Pareto principle is often called the 80/20 rule. In business, we understand this means 80% of your profits usually come from 20% of your customers. In sports, that ratio becomes more extreme where two out of 208 teams have captured 80% of championship “gold”. That’s more of an 80/1 rule.

I bring this up because the BCS was self-inflicted. We clamored for that. People that supported the old bowl system were ridiculed and reviled[4], seen as old fashioned, and behind the time. American college football fans demanded that we impose a winner take all system. In a country where a majority of the voting population opposes the uneven distribution of wealth, this same group virtually unanimously supported the consolidation of "winning" to a single team. Playoff systems always lead to a highly skewed distribution of success. According to Larry Bassham, Olympic Gold Medalist, and one of the first authors of the mental toughness movement observed that 95% of competitions are won by only 5% of the competitors[5]. The reality is that most competitions are dominated by a few.

So if our goal is to create inclusive supportive communities, how does focusing on winning help? The reality is that we need more words, different words, and a different vocabulary to unlock all the value that competition has to offer us as human beings, and as a society. The conversation can not, and should not, be formed exclusively around winning and losing.

That is not to say I am advocating for participation trophies, and gold stars for showing up. I am not a fan of participation trophies. Undifferentiated recognition is no recognition at all. It’s offensive. It’s like saying, “we can’t imagine you doing anything worthwhile such as winning, so we’re going to give you this piece of paper to salve your fragile ego.”

Too harsh?

Perhaps.

And yet, meritless recognition is another form of the winning only mindset. It's like we gave up. Since a person can't win, we can't imagine what else they could have done that would be of value. Therefore, it doesn’t seem to matter how we recognize you.

But what alternative do we have?

If we can't talk about winning, what can we talk about?

I’ll circle back to the conversation I had with my mom. The sentence she innocently uttered me that triggered my current train of thought was, “It’s awesome that you make everyone feel like a winner.”

It jumped out at me because "making everyone feel like a winner" is patently impossible. Everyone can not feel like a winner when there can only be one winner. But I knew what she was trying to say. But how could she have said it? How could I say it? How did I want her to say?

How do we want to have this conversation about competition?

Personally, one reason I don’t like participation trophies is that I do like winning. I think winning is important. I respect it, and I respect the effort it takes to win. Winning has a tremendous amount of utility. Structures that produce winners - focus the competitors’ efforts into the activities that are the most productive and effective. This orientation toward excellence is valuable.

But if everyone can’t be the winner, what can they be?

After a moment, the problem presented the solution.

If you only focus on winning, that means winning is your highest value. That means not winning, is not as valuable as winning. Sounds obvious right? But put another way… that means not winning… is worth… less.

Therefore, the core trouble we have with a hyperfocus on winning is that it makes the majority of the competitors worthless. That’s a huge problem. And yet, without competitors, there could be no winner. We can only win when we are challenged by another. A win without a challenger is simply an exercise.

No, the root of this is the competition itself. While wining has value, it is not the most valuable aspect of competition. In fact, legendary basketball coach John Wooden[6] never talked about winning. He talked about grace, he talked about execution, he talked about character, only he called it "competitive excellence".

The real value of competition is not the single winner it produces, but the myriad of people it trains to perform under pressure. In short, competition can teach each of us to be our best when our best is most needed. That is the heart of competitive excellence. It is the capstone of Wooden's Pyramid of Success.

This development of human potential is the exact opposite of being worthless. It is the pinnacle of value. The “W” word that springs to my mind is not winner, but rather "worthy", as in "worthy competitor". It is my belief that everyone has the potential to be a worthy competitor. Competitive hierarchies are shockingly useful because they focus our time, energy, and resources toward the pursuit of excellence. And at every point along this ladder, each one of us has the opportunity to be a worthy competitor for someone else. We quite literally push each other higher.

Legendary football coach Pete Carroll, in his book Win Forever[7], says that competition is the foundation of everything he does. When his USC Trojan’s lost to the University of Texas in the Rosebowl, Carroll shared one of the most amazing storied had ever read. While the loss stung - it was not crushing. Carrol was proud of his team. It took an historic performance by Vince Young to defeat the Trojans. USC was the worthiest of competitors. Blowing out a lesser opponent was worthless, but defeating the Trojan juggernaut made the contest legendary. And we see this in the college football playoffs when teams with undefeated seasons are passed over for berths in the coveted bracket. The single most damning argument, "you didn't play anyone." the value of winning is in direct relation to the quality of the competition.

The real value of competition - as I have come to understand it - is this. Competition is the greatest activity humanity has ever contrived to train a person to be their best when their best is most needed. Performance under pressure has enormous cultural value. Competitive excellence can be transferred to a wide range of careers and disciplines.

So, while winning has its value, competition produces something much more valuable. We all have the capacity to become a worthy competitor. We can all be someone who is worth spending the time and energy to develop, someone who has potential, and someone who can rise to a challenge with their very best.

So when we look at the programming at my esports company, when we look at the experiences we create around competition whether in-person or online, it is with an eye toward developing worthy competitors. While winning is important, I have come to believe developing self-worth has more long term value for individuals and society.

So to answer the above question, what is better than winning?

Developing human potential. In my humble opinion creating worthy competitors is infinitely more rewarding.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/320581-writing-is-thinking-to-write-well-is-to-think-clearly

[2] cog·ni·tive dis·so·nance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Football_Playoff_National_Championship

[4] Arizona State Football Head Coach Bruce Snyder openly opposed the playoff system and was widely criticized for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Snyder _

[5] Bassham, Lanny. 2011. With Winning in Mind 3rd Ed. 3 edition. Mental Management Systems LLC.

[6] Wooden, John, Jay Carty, and David Robinson. 2009. Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Revell.

[7] Carroll, Pete. Win Forever: Live, Work, and Play Like a Champion by Carroll, Pete (2011) Paperback. PORTFOLIO, 2011.