Obama vs. Clinton; Non-Zero Sum gain vs. Zero Sum Gain

In college, I took a class on negotiation. One of the essential theories of the class in successful negotiation is breaking through the traditional paradigm that when someone wins, the other one must lose.

What the old theory says is pretty much typical of sporting events. That there is a winner and there is a loser when the clock runs out. You can't both be winners. Not in the same game. And often times, people apply those same rules to all other parts of life. It's winner take all. And if you don't win, you get nothing so you better do everything you can to win.

This theory is called 'zero sum' because it always adds up to zero. The winner goes up by 1, the loser goes down by 1. It always goes back to the baseline.

For a lot of folks this mentality is pervasive in everyday thinking. Do you sometimes tell someone you know that something great just happened to you, like you got a raise or got engaged. And to your surprise, the person reacts with jealousy or unpleasantness or as if it was an attack on them? In some way, what happened to you has made their 'sum' go negative. I, of course, try to stay away from those folks.

What easily happens with these folks is they easily make enemies, usually in their minds. George Bush falls into this camp. As their need to always define themselves as the 'winner' and the other as the 'loser' often times at all cost, their list of adversaries grow in their head and their circles of allies shrink smaller and smaller. Pretty soon everyone is an 'asshole' or the enemy. I can imagine Bush saying that.

Conversely, the opposing theory or the 'non-zero sum' theory assumes that there is more of the pie out there for everyone. What if a photographer 'A' gets a job and tells photographer 'B'. But photographer 'B' knows that there are literally thousands of jobs out there and if he just does what he does, his business will continue to grow. Instead of perceiving the pie as being fixed, finite, and limited, there is enough for them to share and be content. So photographer 'B' won't have to dislike his peer for telling him about his successes and vice versa. In a larger context, it's not winner take all since there is too much of the world to take.

So what does all this have to do with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? Hillary Clinton is of the camp that believes in the zero sum theory. That means if you are on the other side, we will not talk to you. Whether you are the Republicans, the Iranians, the Obama supporters, fellow Democrats that questions her health care reform in the 1990s, etc. Pretty soon, that circle of influence and support starts to shrink.

More importantly, a zero-sum mentality will not enable a person to think outside of what is possible besides just them getting what they want. In an negotiation with a zero sum approach where each side thinks that there is only one winner, each side will just dig its heals in because it doesn't want to be the loser. There will never be progress as each side just stall until the other side gives up. Nothing creative will ever result.

With all the debate on issues and policies, the details are irrelevant. The difference between Hillary and Barack is that Barack will actually get it done. Ding. The reason being that he thinks in the non-zero sum way. That it is possible to create solutions where there were none, that there could be 2 or 3 or 4 winners in an outcome of a negotiation. That no one has to go home beaten down as the loser. That is the fundamental difference. It is a collaborative approach verses an adversarial approach. We already tried the adversarial approach under a different brand and it didn't work. It's time for something new.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum