HELPING YOUR COMPETITION

My dear friends Dan and Zeak are teaching our family to rope. One of my sons can now rope a steer from the back of a horse - the rest of us are far behind him. I keep getting tangled, just trying to rope the dummy. Roping is an essential skill on a ranch. Considering yourself a cowboy without knowing how to rope is like considering yourself a builder and not knowing how to hammer.

Dan recently shared a fascinating aspect of rodeo roping. Steers behave in unique but consistent ways. When cowboys are assigned the steer they will be roping in the competition, they immediately call the other cowboys who have tried to rope this steer previously to learn their tendencies. Even though they know they are about to compete against these same individuals for thousands of dollars, they generously share everything they can about the steer. When I asked Dan why they would do something that is obviously against their self-interest, he said, "Cowboys honestly want their opponents to do their best so they know if they beat them, they have beaten them at their best."

What a refreshing concept - genuinely wanting our competition to do their best because it motivates us to higher performance levels. I heard the CEO at Pepsi once say, "The fact is, we would never be as good as we are if we didn't have Coke pushing us."