Managers in an up-or-out organization are expected to advance. Those who don’t are fired, at worst; at best they’re relegated to the outskirts of the organization or placed in stagnant roles. This sort of environment breeds constant pressure to compete with colleagues for the best assignments and promotion opportunities. Many employers (including ours, the U.S. Army) ratchet up the intensity with a competitive evaluation framework, rating people against one another to separate the highest performers from the rest.
Of course, this approach has its flaws: it can cause people to self-promote, burn out, focus on individual performance at the expense of unit performance, and even deliberately undermine their peers. That’s why some in the Army are considering a change in its up-or-out policy. It’s why companies like Colorcon and Deloitte are giving their performance management systems an overhaul. But in the meantime, what can you do in an up-or-out environment to build your career without inflicting collateral damage?
As mid-level managers of separate companies (groups of 140 to 210 people) within the same Army Brigade over the past two years, we were evaluated against each other. If we had viewed each other strictly as competitors, we might have been inclined to guard our successes, hide our shortcomings, and avoid collaborating. However, we had a different outlook. We recognized that the success of others does not diminish our own achievements and thus avoided a “scarcity” mindset. We believed that collaborating toward shared individual success would benefit both us and the larger organization — and that turned out to be true.
While leading our companies and coming up on competing evaluations and promotions, we each failed portions of our high-level inspections. The Command Maintenance Evaluation Team conducts these inspections semi-annually to assess administrative procedures and systems for maintenance, logistics, and communications. We were relatively new to our positions as company commanders and faced intense scrutiny. Therefore, it was tempting to keep our poor inspection results to ourselves and even make excuses for them.
But one of us, Dan, found the courage to share his inspection results with the other, Doug. Dan recognized that his mistakes didn’t define his capabilities as a leader. Having previously worked with Doug in another role, Dan trusted Doug not to hold or use the information against him. He also recognized that Doug was a like-minded colleague and respected his performance. Most important, Dan saw the possibility of working together for mutual reward and decided that making himself vulnerable was a risk worth taking. Doug appreciated the honesty and reciprocated. Our shared vulnerability established an even greater level of trust and opened the door for collaboration. Instead of succumbing to the natural desire to suppress the inspection problem, we joined forces and helped each other address it by exchanging ideas that would benefit us both.
For instance, Doug shared some new concepts for transforming an insurmountable checklist of requirements into manageable benchmarks and priorities, which he had developed after conducting a comprehensive review of his company’s operations. He also shared supply discipline systems that reduced common inefficiencies. Dan implemented these ideas in his group and, inspired by the openness of his competitor, described his plan to incorporate courtesy reviews by the inspection team. Overwhelmed with other requirements, companies in the Brigade often disregarded the inspection team until it came time for their semi-annual review, but the inspection team was more than happy to provide feedback in advance. This service, widely offered but rarely used, amounted to iterative looks at companies’ commodity shops (small functional teams that focus on human resource management, equipment maintenance, supplies, and so on). Dan scheduled a preliminary inspection for each commodity shop on a different day so it would be easier to identify problems in finer detail. Doug embraced this idea and, in turn, explained how his company was using metrics and working group meetings to compel tangible advances in each inspection area.
We were well served by all this collaboration. As a result of our knowledge sharing and the candid feedback we gave each other, both of our companies increased proficiency across inspected areas from “Untrained” to “Commendable” ratings.
Our approach reminds us of how the Jacksonville Jaguars and the New England Patriots, two competitors in the same conference of the National Football League, collaborated through joint practices and scrimmages during pre-season camps in 2017. On January 21, 2018, the teams faced off against each other in their Conference Championship. But it was not a zero-sum situation. Working together in the pre-season bettered each team. Did the Jaguars lose on January 21? Yes. But they were much better as an organization than they were a year earlier, when they not only missed the playoffs but won only 3 games and lost 13. Moreover, the joint practices gave the Patriots their very first look at a completely restructured and very talented Jaguars team under a new head coach (Doug Marrone) and new management (Tom Coughlin). Coming out of these practices, the Patriots knew to respect the Jaguars and keep an eye on them throughout the season — knowledge that would certainly aid them in the AFC Championship several months later.
Similarly, by collaborating, we helped each other improve — and we sparked a culture of trust and mutual betterment. Our company members took their cue from our behavior and began building their own relationships across team lines. Our Senior Supply Managers shared process refinements for utilizing the Army’s digital property tracking system. With time saved in managing weapons and equipment, these managers gained time to innovate in other areas. Both went on to receive Commendable ratings on inspections, along with promotions in rank and pay.
Later, in our annual comprehensive training exercise — a 30-day crucible in the Mojave Desert of California — we continued to benefit from our close collaboration. Doug shared the innovative design for his operations center, a central hub for communications and operations, with Dan — and both companies became more efficient as a result. The plans included analog and digital tracking systems for supply-chain management as well as an expeditionary communications platform designed by a member of Doug’s team, which would make it easier to disassemble and re-assemble radios when it was necessary to move and reestablish communication across the battlefield. Dan helped improve this design, sharing a concept that his operations center used to secure other types of equipment for easy movement. This made both operations centers more expeditionary, a critical capability for the training exercise and beyond.
Deciding to share personal and team failures with competitors in hopes of collaborating can be tough. You have to know whom you can trust. But once you sort that out, there’s much to gain for individual leaders as well as the larger organization. While ultimately ranked against each other, we both benefited from our teamwork. In a competitive field of over 30 managers, there was plenty of room for both of us to succeed, now that we were no longer restricting ourselves to the silos of our own capabilities.