Want to Win at Business? Be a Human Being.

The Meaning of Open left me thinking about how brilliant it is to drop the competitive razor for a moment and consider the factors in communication that lead to a company's success.

Drive to Win, or Drive to Share

Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Google writes in his screed:

We are often attacked for being too big, but sometimes being bigger allows us to take on the impossible. All of this is useless, however, if we fail when it comes to being open. So we need to constantly push ourselves. Are we contributing to open standards that better the industry? What's stopping us from open sourcing our code? Are we giving our users value, transparency, and control? Open up as much as you can as often as you can, and if anyone questions whether this is a good approach, explain to them why it's not just a good approach, but the best approach. It is an approach that will transform business and commerce in this still young century, and when we are successful we will effectively re-write the MBA curriculum for the next several decades!

Jonathan may be talking about computer programmers and the engineers that make Google tick, and produce amazing products, but this is inspirational thinking. Why? Because he's revealing the algorithm that everyone pesters Google to reveal. And it's not source code.

One common denominator that allows humans to bond is sharing. It is not, as far as I have experienced, the relentless desire to compete against each other. In the sum of it, the physics of competition is less productive and more inefficient than sharing. Look at how much energy single sprinters have to use to achieve that 10.4 seconds of glory? And then look at relay teams. Each putting out the same amount of energy, or greater, but in the end, they go farther.

Having a Secret Sauce that Didn't Need to be Invented

Google's secret sauce, as far as I can see, is that the best company is the company that acts like a human being. The seeds of a good idea find the greatest climate for growing into an action plan or a product when the person, or people, who conceive(s) the idea shares it with another person or a team. It's important to create an environment where one person can talk to many, or to another individual. That's how growth happens. Another human being is a great testing ground for a product. Without them, you would have nobody to sell to. I notice that many people must have this idea, too, but it is deployed innately. I don't know if they are thinking about it because they see profit after the end of a conversation or a series of conversation. They are doing it because that's what you do with your friends, and your colleagues. You share. You try to make them better.

When I walk through New York, there are always people telling each other about deals. I hear them. They talk about pricing. They talk about discovering sources. They talk about "competitors" who got into such and such a situation, and the result. Why are they doing this? Because they are active evolvers. They are evolving along with the business community and the products it makes and sells. They are eponymous. Business is eponymous for sharing. In a "fast company" environment like New York City, sharing information is the quickest route to a golden opportunity. It's just natural sense.