Collaboration Chronicles

I was thinking about ambition this morning and realized that sometimes slow and steady does win the race.  Picture 100 people locked in a room.  Someone comes in and says “You all have to prove that you’re worth a steak dinner.”  Since there were 100 people that had no food to eat, they all jumped at the opportunity.  Naturally, the best salesman won and got a nice steak dinner that held him over for another couple days.  The problem is, he didn’t share with the other 99 people.  So now there’s a good chance that a few of these people would have some serious problems.

The next day, that same person comes in and says “You all have to prove that you’re worth 100 nights of steak dinner in a row.  If you’ve won a dinner in the past, you cannot participate.”  If this person split up every dinner 50 times or so every night, and let them all eat, they could all survive, albeit very hungry all the time.   Would this person share, though?  The second  best person will probably follow the first and keep it all to himself.  

Where would you want to be in this line of things.  What if the dinners increased to 1000 days, or 2 a day for 100 days?  If you knew this before hand, where would you step in and prove yourself?

This is true for 100 job applicants in a new business, or a new business hiring employees, isn’t it?  So in a recession in whatever field you’re working in, where do you step in with a perfect resume and say “I want the job now?”