Victory! A concept everyone knows. A concept that stirs a host of emotions in the one who experiences it. A concept that usually leaves a particularly sweet taste!
But is it always so? And are we always able to tell when we have a clear victory and when we have a Pyrrhic one?
Are we always able to grasp the real cost of a victory? And, in the end, are we able to weigh the benefits that flow from it against its cost?
Many are the questions we are called to answer. Many, and unanswered, because, objectively, none of us asks them of ourselves. The goal is one. Victory! And in the face of conquering it, we take no cost into account!
Having fought quite a few “battles”, I have found that the cost of a victory is rarely assessed. And I am not referring only to professional victories. Not necessarily. Small or large “victories” are won every day, in every aspect of our lives.
At this moment, the moment I am writing these lines, all the “victories” I have won come to mind. And at the same time something magical happens! The “defeats” I have suffered come to mind too, and they, by the way, are quite a few!
But let us put things in order. Whether we are talking about a battle or a war, the result is either victory or defeat. Right? When we choose the battle we want to fight, we prepare for one purpose and one purpose only. Victory. And we usually convince ourselves that this victory is necessary in order to... the reasons vary and differ from case to case! What does this mean? That we have already done the necessary setup, we have built the necessary attitude to conquer what we are after. So far, so good. The problem starts to arise when the attitude affects our reasoning. What happens then is that blindness sets in, which does not allow us to see whether we should win this victory or not!
And worse still. When we finally win, we do not take stock of the victory. We stay with the victory. This can happen for two reasons. The first reason, the obvious one, is that we do not care; it is enough that we won! The second reason, the less common one, is that if we take stock of the victory we may conclude that, comparatively, it came at a high cost. Then we might admit to ourselves that the Winner is not always the one who Wins!
And then the phenomenon called “the winner’s curse” will make its appearance! What does this mean? That either we should not have won this victory, or we could have won it with fewer losses and therefore with more benefits! What does such a realisation imply at a deeper level? On the surface, our circle, the people around us in general, will see us as winners. But deep inside the one who arrives at this realisation, the taste of victory will not be quite so sweet. And the more the losses sacrificed on the altar of victory, the deeper the realisation, the heavier the feeling of the winner’s curse!
Someone will now ask: so what should I do? Not fight any battle? Not aim for victory? Of course not, is the answer. What we should do is choose the battles we are called to fight. The criteria are subjective. The battle that is not important to me may be of the utmost importance to someone else. In this context, the common characteristic is one. Those called to fight a battle, at whatever level, must not allow blindness to appear. They must not allow passion to become obsession and prevail over reason. Because then our losses will be comparatively greater than the size of the victory.
Someone will ask, again: but is it possible to have victory without losses? And the bigger the victory, aren’t the losses bigger too? And in the end, what matters? How you won, or that you won?
Fair questions. Victories without losses, I agree, cannot exist. But there can be victories with the fewest possible losses. And then the benefits produced will also be maximised. How will this happen? Simply by weighing in advance both the size of the battle and the size of the benefits, and comparing them with the size of the losses we may suffer. Let me put it simply. Imagine a pair of scales. Which way does it tip? The ideal is balance, one might say. It cannot be done, in my view. The ideal is the smallest possible tilt of the scales. The fewest possible losses!
In this context, the size of the victory is not related, in my view, to the size of the losses. It is related, however, to the passion, to the blindness, in my own terms, for achieving victory. Victory at any cost is not victory! It is simply the satisfaction of our ego! Not victory!
And of course, in this case, who in the end is the winner? The one who carries the victory or the “defeated”? I am not sure I can give the answer. Many of my own victories, in this sense, are questioned by me. And the defeats I have suffered may, in the end, not be defeats at all. The answer will be given by the greatest of judges: Time!
First published on the blog We Talk About Business on 7 December 2014.