WHEN GROUPS COMPETE AGAINST THEMSELVES
       
       Groups of people fail to deliver results that cohere towards their
       collective benefit when people in a group do not share the same
       measure of priority for tasks they need to complete.
       
       Imagine three people---Bob, Alice, George---bound together into some
       kind of arbitrary grouping: a company, an organization, or a team.
       
       Bob has a task he needs completed. After doing his part, the task can
       only be completed when Alice pulls some lever. To Bob, completion of
       this task is essential.
       
       George also has a task he needs completed. After doing his part, the
       task can only be completed when Alice pushes some button. To George,
       completion of this task is nonessential.
       
       Alice has two tasks she needs to complete: Bob's and George's. She
       sees Bob's essential task as nonessential. She sees George's
       nonessential task as essential.
       
       Described above are four distinct priorities for two tasks in one
       group of people. But what kind of group contains multiple
       incompatible, subjectively measured priorities for a single task? The
       very idea is incompatible with the workings of a group. In competitive
       arenas tasks are given singular priorities: the ball must enter the
       opponent's net. This task has a single essential priority shared by
       all people in the competitive groupl.
       
       In our imaginary group, there are two incompatible measures of
       priority for pulling the lever or pushing the button: to one person it
       is essential, to another it is not. If Bob, Alice, and George were in
       a competitive arena they would be competing with their opponent and
       also with themselves. Bob needs to compete against George to get Alice
       to complete his task first. Alice needs to compete against Bob to
       maintain she completes his task after George's.
       
       At this point the problem and its solution should be obvious: Bob,
       Alice, and George need to share the same measure of priority for the
       tasks they need to complete. By some means they need to reach an
       agreement of what gets done first. They can arrive at this agreement
       computationally or collaboratively. In the end, the objective is the
       same: measures of priority for each task must be the same among all
       people involved in each task's completion. In effect, when everyone
       agrees to a single measure of how important each thing is, they agree
       to becoming not individuals working together but a group working as
       one.
       
       My experience working within groups of people lead me towards this
       conclusion. Time and time again, the essential tasks I needed
       completed by others were ignored. After numerous repetitions I
       eventually I understood why my colleagues were not completing their
       part in my task: to them the work was nonessential. Thus the only way
       I could get them to do their share in my task was by bothering,
       pestering, and bugging. In effect: wasting my capacity to work on
       sabotaging their capacity to work. Only by this collective defeat and
       gross inefficiency was I be able to get my tasks completed. Indeed, it
       became an essential task for my colleagues to disburse themselves of
       my annoyances. This was a task in my favor but against the favor of us
       all together in the "group", if you can call it that. In fact, the
       "group" was just a number of individuals in competition with each
       other.