Thursday, August 20, 2015

Difference between "competition" and "cooperation"

My friend in Jakarta have three children, aged 6 to 12. When I visited him during Indonesian Independence Day, I said that I would teach his children the difference between "competition" and "cooperation". He and his wife was interested on how I would do it.

I asked the three children to do the T-puzzle. If they are able to do the puzzle, they will get a prize. I asked what prize that like. They hesitated. How about ice-cream? They eyes lit up.

I said that everyone who complete the puzzle would win the prize. If they know the answer, they can teach their brother or sister. That is "cooperation".

If I give the prize only to the child who complete first, it becomes "competition". They will behave selfish, to win the prize.

After completing the T-puzzle, they went to do the other shapes. In the evening, we went out for dinner. After dinner, we dropped into the mini-mart and every child had the ice cream that they liked.

Here is the T-puzzle.
http://c-pearl.com/cart.aspx?ID=3

I told this story to my Indonesian client who run a new insurance company. He was surprised. He wanted his telemarketers to compete to improve their performance. He never realized that it would be better for them to cooperate and learn from each other. He wanted to try out my idea in his next campaign.

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