Winning in Business - Ralph the Wolf

When you work in an office or maybe as a self-employed person, do you have someone that is a competitor in your office or against your company that you’re friendly with but want to beat as well? This could be in sales numbers or moving up the corporate ladder, we all have that one person. However, more and more we as a society are teaching are children to move away from competition and further the belief that we should all be equal in how everything is done. Not everyone is a winner daily and not everyone gets a prize, we all have to compete.

I thought about this concept when I was watching an old cartoon, Sam the Dog and Ralph the wolf. Aside from Ralph the Wolf looking exactly like Wiley E. Coyote it made me think about the relationships we have and how we foster them. Not familiar with the story, well here it is. Ralph the Wolf has one function, steal the sheep form the pasture and Sam the Dog is the big sheep dog tasked with preventing that from happening. Everyday Sam and Ralph clock in with “how you doing Sam, Great Ralph…” and they go after it, at lunch they break for conversation then go back to work. At the end of the day they clock out and say “Have a good night”. Their friendly with each other but compete against each other throughout the day.

What happens now when we face competition though? A lot of people are straying farther and farther away from it. They don’t want to appear too competitive, or if they encounter a competitor they back away and label that person aggressive or arrogant. Now some careers like sales encourage competitiveness but some may take it too far. Who’s your Sam or Ralph in your work?

How do we bring it back? First we need to start with the elimination of the participation trophies. If you don’t earn one, you don’t get one. We need to show our children and ourselves what healthy competition is and to stoke that fire a little. At work we need to be friendly and when we clock in, go to work to the best of our ability. Know that some days some are going to win and some are going to lose and teach everyone how to cope with that competitiveness. Sports are a good way to do this. You don’t win every time and the drive to win becomes great when you see what it provides you. Of course when children are in Kindergarten through third grade, getting them excited about participating is important but once you get into fourth grade teaching them about competition and there are winners and losers is better. 

The great message about Sam and Ralph is they didn’t like each other on the field of battle, in this case work, but off they were friendly. This is a lesson basketball taught me. I have some of my greatest friends nowadays who I battled and fought while playing basketball or competing against them swimming. I remember one competitor, Mitch Goodman; he was exactly like me, tall skinny and blonde and was my nemesis. We battled hard and fought for every point, sometimes besting the other, but off the court we were friendly, we always talked and good conversations, but when the whistle blew we were focused on our tasks.

This is what competition and teamwork can bring us. Teach those around you how to win and how to deal with defeat. Who is your Sam? How are you going to best him or her today?