WHEN GROUPS COMPETE AGAINST THEMSELVES
       
       Groups of people fail to deliver results that cohere towards
       their collective benefit when people in a group do not share
       the same measure of priority for tasks they need to
       complete.
       
       Imagine three people---Bob, Alice, George---bound together
       into some kind of arbitrary grouping: a company, an
       organization, or a team.
       
       Bob has a task he needs completed. After doing his part, the
       task can only be completed when Alice pulls some lever. To
       Bob, completion of this task is essential.
       
       George also has a task he needs completed. After doing his
       part, the task can only be completed when Alice pushes some
       button. To George, completion of this task is nonessential.
       
       Alice has two tasks she needs to complete: Bob's and
       George's. She sees Bob's essential task as nonessential. She
       sees George's nonessential task as essential.
       
       Described above are four distinct priorities for two tasks
       in one group of people. But what kind of group contains
       multiple incompatible, subjectively measured priorities for
       a single task? The very idea is incompatible with the
       workings of a group. In competitive arenas tasks are given
       singular priorities: the ball must enter the opponent's
       net. This task has a single essential priority shared by all
       people in the competitive groupl.
       
       In our imaginary group, there are two incompatible measures
       of priority for pulling the lever or pushing the button: to
       one person it is essential, to another it is not. If Bob,
       Alice, and George were in a competitive arena they would be
       competing with their opponent and also with themselves. Bob
       needs to compete against George to get Alice to complete his
       task first. Alice needs to compete against Bob to maintain
       she completes his task after George's.
       
       At this point the problem and its solution should be
       obvious: Bob, Alice, and George need to share the same
       measure of priority for the tasks they need to complete. By
       some means they need to reach an agreement of what gets done
       first. They can arrive at this agreement computationally or
       collaboratively. In the end, the objective is the same:
       measures of priority for each task must be the same among
       all people involved in each task's completion. In effect,
       when everyone agrees to a single measure of how important
       each thing is, they agree to becoming not individuals
       working together but a group working as one.
       
       My experience working within groups of people lead me
       towards this conclusion. Time and time again, the essential
       tasks I needed completed by others were ignored. After
       numerous repetitions I eventually I understood why my
       colleagues were not completing their part in my task: to
       them the work was nonessential. Thus the only way I could
       get them to do their share in my task was by bothering,
       pestering, and bugging. In effect: wasting my capacity to
       work on sabotaging their capacity to work. Only by this
       collective defeat and gross inefficiency was I be able to
       get my tasks completed. Indeed, it became an essential task
       for my colleagues to disburse themselves of my
       annoyances. This was a task in my favor but against the
       favor of us all together in the "group", if you can call it
       that. In fact, the "group" was just a number of individuals
       in competition with each other.