I don’t know if you have heard of John Nash. There was a movie about him more than a decade ago. In the movie, there’s a breakthrough moment in a scene. John is with his friends in a bar, looking for women to meet. Some girls come in, and one is gorgeous. The others are pretty too, but she is outstanding in every way. They talk for a moment about Adam Smith and his economic theory, that individual accomplishment and motivation wins the day. John realized it wasn’t true: Adam had described a win-lose.
John had been working on a theory, and called it “governing dynamics”. He had been noticing patterns of the behavior of people and birds in groups, and wondered what was driving their cooperation and conflict. He discovered the answer in the bar: the woman was the prize, and he realized she was unobtainable: it would be a win-lose if they tried. Or most likely he said a lose-lose: no one would win, because of the governing dynamics.
So he realized then, in this breakthrough moment, that truth lies in win-win.
And there’s more of course, this is the story of the movie A Beautiful Mind, and John became a Nobel prize winner. The story is wonderful, its a romance too, and a story of struggle. But John found only the win-win.
There’s really a win-win-win, you see. A truth in our reach: that all parties can win, not just one set of individuals in a group. John realized in his breakthrough moment, if the members acted to support both the group as well as themselves, they would get the best outcomes to their situations. I call these groups spheres because they are the network of connections of the group members. Each one generates a unique perspective, perspectives which point to an outcome, the truth for that situation. The lose-lose happens when no one acts with integrity. The win-lose happens when there is noise, and one of the parties doesn’t understand things, so they either withdraw or try for a win for just them.
The win-win happens when the individuals and the group itself acts in alignment, towards the true best outcome. When the win-win is the goal, a certain kind of uncertainty fades away into meaninglessness. It turns out uncertainty is noise or interferences with seeing the best outcome, the real truth. Noise interferes with our intentions, the ones we need to create the best outcomes and truly win the situation. When we are in alignment, then conflicts of interest or misalignment of intentions disappears and we build strength in common objectives. The real truth is when situations are truly resolved: they never need more work or improvement, and it happens when all intentions align towards true best outcomes.
You can get the win-win in situations by dropping uncertainty, but that takes real the awareness of what all of the compadres are thinking, what they think is a win for them and others. Once the truth is apparent, we all know it, and we act in a coherent manner. We act to realize our intentions: to create that win-win best outcome.
We can go further though, you see, because there’s more to it. John described mathematically the “governing dynamics” of behavior of what I call spheres, these individuals and groups. John identified three levels: the individuals, or what I call entity sphere; the pair spheres, each connected pair of individuals in the situation group; and the network of those entity and pair spheres interacting as a whole, as a situational action group.
There’s really 7 layers of spheres involved in situations, so John had the first three levels. We can also count full corporations or institutions of some kind that have an organizing mission. There are resource groups too, banks and coops and such are resource organizing entities which enable resource flows to other layers. There’s more going up the chain: religion and politics who make our rules, and entities organized to develop and share ideas.
To get the win-win-win, you have to think about all layers: the real truth lies in satisfying them all. The ultimate truth to a situation is one where all seven layers are happy: no more work needed on that situation, it is fully baked.
So the win-win-win is possible too. Martin Luther King Jr. described it so eloquently. His speech, I Have a Dream describes issues relevant and unique to all seven layers, and a way of satisfying them all too: he described real truth in civil rights, his speech accomplished that in minutes, and I think the whole world knew it. So John Nash and MLK deserve a lot of credit. For they saw what was real truth with just a vision. A vision of a world where there’s cooperation instead of conflict, and everyone truly wins.
So now we have more insight to how we can get the true win-win-wins to happen for us too, now that we know all about it. Because it makes sense to cooperate, instead of have conflict. We can reach a common understanding of integrity, and a common understanding of how to drop everyones’ uncertainties down to the point when you and everyone else can be fearless. We need to go for the win-win-win, and not settle for half-truths and unsatisfactory, temporary solutions we will have to work harder to fix someday. The real truth will out in the end, it always does. When we are fearless, we can realize our true best outcomes soonest, the ones everyone agrees will be lasting and true, so we can all win together.
Bill Custer's thought sphere 