Leading for Innovation: And Organizing for Results

8.4. Discourage Internal Competition

Encouraging internal competition is so routine that it is taken for granted. Competition-inducing management practices include forced curve distributions of raises and performance evaluations, so that only some can earn the highest rating or raise; recognition awards given to individuals; contests between departments, divisions, or individuals; and published rankings of unit or individual performance. These practices exist because there is widespread belief that internal competition stimulates higher levels of performance.

And then we wonder why there is so much variation in performance across similar units in the same company and why there is, conversely, so little sharing of best practices and so little ...