The 2022 Attitude: Collaboration Beats Competition Hands Down

The African saying puts it aptly: "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go with others".

Kenyans on Twitter—KOT, were at it again. Last year, the World Bank Group took note of Kenyan citizens displeasure with the lending arrangements viewed as punitive and unnecessary. This past week, KFC bore the brunt of KOT. They dropped their very own hot potato and yielded to demands from locals to buy Kenyan tubers instead of importing the same from Egypt.

KOT use the space to collaboratively express solidarity around areas of common concern. This is where they fight for the country as the new breed of freedom fighters. So, tales such as: " I fought the World Bank War", or, "I took part in the KFC War", are the new category of Mashujaa day claims to the kind of fame that merits a presidential commendation.

On the corporate scene, similarities centred around the unity of purpose abound. The Kenyan oil industry imports products monthly for our local consumption. What's interesting about this is the fact that every month, one amongst the oil marketers, is mandated to import on behalf of all the rest. It is a round-robin affair that ensures that everyone gets a chance to import fuel. So, even the least-likely local formations, get to wield some international business clout and exposure in the process.

What gets the product into the country is a collaborative rather than a competitive effort. They are one happy gang behind the scenes and supposedly different before their consumers' eyes. They fight the war together and then entertain themselves through smaller battles at the pumps that only serve to help them run efficiently.

The Uber fraternity, just like the Boda Boda brotherhood, has made the laws of nature their allies. Like endangered animals, they have found safety in numbers. And like a shoal of piranha or a pack of wild dogs, they hunt down any party that wrongs one of their own. Fortunately, this collaboration has now been extended to include their financial well-being.

These drivers and riders are in two or three groups that contribute money weekly.

The recipients get handed the collections and are expected to pay back by keeping up with their regular contributions. The fact here is that for the amounts earned daily, it is harder to save up individually over time but it is easier to maintain steady contributions weekly. The power of numbers comes in handy and everyone now has money in beneficial amounts frequently.

Collaboration has a way to concentrate positive energy on a worthy course. Competition often concentrates negative or untamed energy against another's efforts and causes avoidable losses. The collaborative spirit acknowledges the size of the pie as being enough for all partakers, so it now is just a case of who takes which corner. The competition spirit, in its extreme form, acknowledges that the pie is only enough for one party and therefore all the rest seeking it must be dealt with comprehensively.

When it became fashionable for one to profit from Quail eggs, everyone opted to outcompete the other from the market. The same happened with retiring civil servants who all flooded the posho mill trade in one year and then rushed into chicken rearing the next year.

Within a short time, everyone was out of business in a saturated market. Collaboration would have allowed fewer, larger and focussed players to ride out the tide.

If competition is to industry what the gym is to the body, then collaboration is to anyone or industry what good nutrition means to the body. You can remain healthy without the gym but not without nourishment.

The Olympic games and other global competitions, serve to enhance collaboration among nations in the long run. The competitors become life-long friends and begin to collaborate in ways that bring closeness and better sporting standards.

It is in these kinds of interactions across the spectrum of interests that our country will find meaningful progress. John Adair, the author of " The Art of Creative Thinking", encourages travel, for one seeing is worth 100 hearings. He argues that, individually, the Japanese are not highly rated as creative thinkers, but in groups, they are much more creative.

The secret of the Japanese economic miracle is that they travelled the world in search of the latest technologies that they could transfer to Japan to be endlessly adapted and improved. Adair adds that Quality Circles was a system for getting work people to think creatively about their products or services. It made its first appearance in the United States after World War II. The Japanese transferred that system and developed it with outstanding success into their own industry.

Collaboration is the most effective way of domesticating competitiveness. Seen another way, competition must not be an end in itself but the tool used to bring about collaboration just as good sibling rivalry yields better collaborative efforts later in adulthood. So, please don't walk alone.