In the film, A Beautiful Mind, the brilliant yet flawed professor John Nash has an epiphany that he publishes as “Governing Dynamics.” This theory alone has been my obsession for the past few years. Governing dynamics, in it’s blithe simplicity, stipulates that if all participants of a system are interested only in serving their own benefit then no one “wins”.
The movie has a great way of visualizing this idea. It’s with friends at a bar that John Nash’s character eyes a pack of lovely ladies. One in particular stands out amongst the rest. As they strategize their approach Nash realizes that if he and his two colleagues all go for the lady in red then no one will get the prize. However if they each agree to ignore the crown jewel and instead hit on one of her three friends they in turn get to meet a beautiful baby (looking to party).
This idea translates into lucidly practical life. When you’re in a traffic jam if you happen to be that one person weaving between lanes trying to beat the crowd you just make things worse for everyone else. Sometimes, you’ll see truck drivers pairing up and building a buffer between them and the cars in front. This actually alleviates the jam.
Let’s take this metaphor into business building. You may feel inclined to blindly consume everything that is available to you. After all, Darwin says that the most selfish creature tops the food chain. Considering that Darwin was talking about survival and not socialization take his notion with a spoonful of salt. You can’t build a great business by being purely self-serving. With consultancy this is doubly true.
There are firms that exist wholly to make money. Contrastingly, there are firms that just want to do great work. You may be surprised to find that the ones in it for their passions are making more money than their counterparts (i.e. Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Michael Jordan). The pot of gold will be a byproduct of doing what you love. Here’s to not doing crappy work.
Extra Credit: Japanese Study Showing How Traffic Jams Form
Shamless Plug: A Client I Loved Working With
April 10th, 2010
2 Comments at "Do Good Work"
So so so so right you are.
(found you thru Andrew Hyde, btw)
I believe that this is more an issue of being short-sighted as opposed to doing something that is ostensibly “good” or as a part of teamwork.
Consider the reputation that one would garner if they always the went for the most beautiful girl - their friends might not choose to go out with them anymore. In the case of someone weaving in and out of traffic, slowing everyone else down, don’t be surprised when you can’t engage in your last lane change to get off at the right exit because everyone else is colluding against you.
I think that people need to engage in having a longer term outlook on things - yes, this means that there will be those individuals who can “get away” with less than optimal (”good”) actions, however, in the long term there is a lot to be said for maintaining one’s integrity and reputation by doing good.
Maybe “doing good work” is just in one’s enlightened self-interest! Or, maybe I am really optimistic about societies’ ability to self-regulate bad behavior!
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