Zero-sum or relationship? It’s up to you

A “zero-sum” game is one where any gain you make is a loss for your partner. Chess is perfect zero-sum.

In a solid business relationship, gains are shared. A joint venture could fall into that category, as could a construction project.

I work with project leadership teams that usually comprise the contractor on one side and the client on the other.

Often, the two sides approach the endeavour as if it were a chess game. They see it in black and white, and it’s a competition.

Reduced to the basics, the contractor bids low to win the project but still has to make money out of it and so will look for savings and advantage from client changes.

Pulling in the opposite direction, the client is determined to pay no more than the contract price, which doesn’t quite cover what they really want, sometimes because they haven’t worked out what they really want.

This provokes zero-sum behaviour, and frequently it gets nasty, sordid and costly for both sides, even for the so-called winner.

Head and hearts engaged

The work I do brings the two sides together at leadership level.

The first step is to have discussions, which creates space to acknowledge and appreciate common ground.

Then comes dialogue. This means detailed, good-faith explorations of how they can create an environment for everyone to succeed.

Heads and hearts are engaged in the common goal. If someone new came into the room, they wouldn’t be able to tell who was the contractor and who was the client.

Once the leaders get into that space (head + heart) the ‘system’ relaxes and things ease and become more productive.

It’s not a zero-sum competition anymore. It’s a joint venture.

What has changed? Mostly, it’s the relationships between the people and their mindset.

Which is your piece, and which is mine?

I have my illustrator, Gary Nightingale, to thank for this meditation.

This week he wrote to me: “I’ve had an idea for a couple of years but never drawn it. It’s two people playing chess. One is dressed mostly in black with a bit of white; the other mostly white with a bit of black.

“On the chess board, as the rows and pieces get closer to the middle, the black gets lighter and the white gets darker. In the middle two rows, all the pieces and the squares are the same grey.

“The idea is that it gets progressively harder to see things in black and white until it’s impossible to tell which piece is yours and which is your opponent’s, or where they are allowed to move.”

That’s a good conceptualisation.

Preserve the joint venture

Now, I know it’s not as simple as I’ve laid out here.

On site, the leaders may have moved from zero-sum to joint venture, but back in the parties’ respective head offices, the perception of black and white “positions” can remain.

Representatives of the contractor and the client will feel a constant pull back to those positions, and new games of chess emerge. This time with their ‘own’ side.

Then there’s the supply chain, where the contractor’s project director is playing many separate games of chess, one with each subcontractor.

The same thing is happening on the client slide, with each of the many stakeholders.

Construction is a complex dynamic between hundreds of parties, with the site leadership team taking centre stage.

With all this going on, would you rather be playing a zero-sum game or building solid relationships and working together through the complexity?

Zero-sum game or relationship – it’s up to you.

If it’s the latter, I know how to do that. It’s what I do.