BUILDING BRIDGES
What does the term ‘building bridges’ actually mean? I think it resonates on a number of different levels, all of which play a role in contributing to the spirit of cooperation that characterises successful communities the world over, whether it is on a business to business level, or as individuals.
Taking a literal view, there are three main points that come to mind when the term ‘building bridges’ is used:
- Bridges are built to overcome obstacles
In any social, business or other environment, conflicts will always arise. Bridges do not attempt to divert the course of the river, nor do they dam it up – they overcome obstacles.
- Bridges are permanent
Bridges, once built, are not only permanent, they become a point of reference, they attract traffic and become a place where both kings and peasants may pass – bridges do not discriminate, they do not judge
- Bridges are built from both ends
Well, most of them. The point is: the very act of building bridges requires cooperation to be successful.
Let’s look at a few key areas where bridges could be built in Hermanus:
Competition
This is considered a good thing – healthy, necessary even, especially within the business community. It is not, however, quite as simple as that. Competition can be interpreted in two ways. The healthy competition we should all immediately think of is simply a function of supply and demand, and is intricately intertwined with free will. Competition gives people options – if I don’t like a certain brand, or the price is too high, I have the CHOICE to shop somewhere else. If the service is shocking or supply of goods inconsistent, the free market allows that these factors direct our custom elsewhere. The self-regulating nature of the resultant situation, barring any collusion or other illegal activities, promotes stability and a positive environment for growth. Simply put:we need competition.
The ugly side of competition
While it is essential, competition can also manifest in a number of negative ways and the standard ways that people once learned to cooperate – home, churches, communities – are not operating as they did a generation ago. Teaching young people how to cooperate does not receive the appropriate level of emphasis. As a result, competition breeds unabated.
It can cause you to lose focus. Each business, above its duty to work within and for the good of the community, must also be successful in its own right, providing security for the small business owner and the employees. It is infinitely more rewarding to work hard and focus on your own business, than to work hard at beating someone else, or damaging their business. A great example is Coke and arch-rival Pepsi, who had steadily been gaining market share through the 1980s with their blind tasting campaign: people naturally preferred the sweeter Pepsi. Coke released New Coke, a sweeter recipe specifically formulated to counter this, and received 400 000 letters of complaint, while seeing Pepsi experience their fastest ever year on year growth. A perfect example of how being too focussed on your competitors can damage your own business.
It’s expensive. Embroiled in a bitter war for market share since the 1950s, Coke and Pepsi once again provide a good example of this. In 2004, the then CEO of Coca-Cola, Neville Isdell stated that: “Marketing expenditures would rise by $350-400 million a year … forever”. Everyone knows it’s expensive to wage a war. Why spend money on erecting a big neon sign above your competitors, when you could be investing that money in staff development and training, providing better service, promoting the entire industry in your area and enriching an individual. The crux is that unabated competition may be costing billions of rands in sales internationally and an overall decrease in human achievement – if cooperation brings out the ‘best’ in us, then surely competition brings out the ‘beast’ in us.
Competition is Exclusive. It makes sense that the more cooperative your approach to doing business is, the more free the flow of information and sharing of knowledge will be. Competition stifles the creativity that stems from seeing how others work.
People notice. The consumer is intelligent and rational, and above all, human. The weekend visitor to Hermanus is likely to interact with dozens of local businesses and individuals, and the collective face of Hermanus that they perceive, will be propagated as they travel on. People think of Hermanus as a unit – shouldn’t we think of ourselves in the same way and present a unified front?
Interpersonal Relationships
Living, as we do, in a so-called global village, I sometimes think we’ve forgotten that we live in an actual village. It’s so much easier to casually deride a competitor when you never see them, when they are a voice on the other end of the line, or the name at the bottom of the e-mail. Go out there and meet the people of Hermanus; introduce yourself, network, mingle. You can’t fake community spirit – it is something you build, like trust.
Mindset
This is perhaps the most important area, because it is from this that all other bridges will be built. I’m talking about internal bridges, how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we perceive our relationships with others. At the end of the day it is a personal decision and I cannot make it for you. I can, however, tell you that there needs to be a paradigm shift – we need to change not just the way we think but how we think. We need to take a step back and see the bigger picture – what is good for one of us is good for all of us. The more positive the perception of Hermanus is as a whole, the more we will benefit as individuals. Relationship marketing is not confined to person to person interactions; visitors to Hermanus form a relationship with the town as a complete experience, a product of their combined experiences.
How do we build these internal bridges?
Let’s remember first of all that cooperation increases creativity. So let’s get involved in community forums like this, where voices can be heard and courses of action decided. Let’s get involved in social media, as a town, with one voice. Let’s get involved by supporting ‘LOCAL’. Let’s get involved by demanding service excellence from ourselves and our employees, from our suppliers. Let’s get involved by all being on the same team, consciously, every day.
There are ways to facilitate cooperation, and they are the same no matter the environment:
1. Focus on doing well. Attempting to do well and trying to beat others are two separate mental processes. It is impossible to concentrate on both. Of the two, cooperating with others to create a positive outcome has more rewards.
2. Allow ample time. Cooperation comes to a grinding halt as time pressures increase. Time pressures produce non-agreement, decreased information exchanges and firmer negotiator demands. The perception of available time facilitates cooperation.
3. Practice reciprocity. When someone helps you out, make it a point to help them. Express your gratitude by helping them before they expect it. A policy of general reciprocity – people helping people – facilitates cooperation. This particular technique has been shown empirically (especially in international studies) as one of the few ways to gain an adversary’s cooperation.
4. Share resources and information. When people are vying for knowledge, work space, personnel, or anything to help them get the job done, cooperation decreases. Resource exchange, however, encourages one person to work with another.
So, just as competition has its disadvantages, cooperation has a number of advantages – even in the most unexpected areas like health. Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling English-Canadian author, cites an account of the healthy citizens of Roseto, Pennsylvania, a town of about 1,500 residents, most of them descended from families who immigrated from Roseto Valfortore, Italy. In the middle of the twentieth century, it seems, the inhabitants of Roseto had extraordinarily low incidents of heart disease, and this well before cholesterol-lowering drugs had been invented. Was it because of their ‘Mediterranean’ eating habits? No, they had switched to the American diet. Was it genes? No, immigrants from Roseto Valfortore living elsewhere in America were not exceptionally healthy. Could it have something to do with the region? Again, no, since neighbouring small towns of immigrants showed average levels of unhealthiness.
The answer, according to Dr. Stewart Wolf (who began to study the people of Roseto in the early 1960s) was the especially close-knit, supportive community that existed in Roseto, Pennsylvania.
Gladwell’s conclusion is: Roseto demonstrated that to understand why someone is healthy, doctors “had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was part of, and who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from. They had to appreciate the idea that the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.”
Another point to remember is that it seems that cooperation has an impact on individuals working together in several key areas. Not only does it create a more fluid leadership, but it allows everyone to participate actively without fear of censure. Cooperation also has a positive impact on an individual’s perception of the work environment.
As Nelson Mandela said: "A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed."
In the words of Perry Buffington: “Cooperation is a valuable commodity and works best when it is freely given and indirectly encouraged. It promotes goodwill toward men and women, and is a gift that is always appropriate. And there’s no better time to be cooperative. After all, ’tis the season.”
Let us go forward together in the spirit of cooperation.