Competition Happens At The Bottom Quotes

Itzy Fisher?" Delia accused when I sat back down. "You like her?" And then she got up and ran out of the cafeteria. Groaning, I flopped my head down on my arms. "I isn't make that card for Itzy. It was for Delia." "Delia?" Fitz said. "You wouldn't understand." Fitz stared right at me. "What makes you think that?" In the thousands of times I have replayed this moment over the years, I realize what that happened next could have gone a different way. That had Fitz been less of a best friend, or more competitive, or even more honest with himself, my life would have turned out very different. But instead, he asked me for a dollar. "Why?" "Because she's pissed at you," he said, as I finished into my lunch money. "And I can fix that." He took a Sharpie from his binder and wrote something across George Washington's Face. Then he crested the bill the long way. He brought up the bottom edge and then the halves, turned it over, and tucked in both sides. A few more maneuvers and then he handed me a dollar folded into the shape of a heart. When I found Delia, she was sitting underneath the water fountain near the gym. I handed her Fitz's heart. I watched her open it, read the message along with her: If all I could ever have is you, I'd be a billionaire. "Itzy might get jealous," Delia said. "Itzy and I broke up.

The second way was explained to me by a group of General Electric executives a few years back. I pressed them about their rather extreme ‘rank and yank’ system (which has been modified recently, but not much), where each year the bottom 10 percent of employees (‘C players’) are fired, the top 20 percent (‘A players’) get the lion’s share – about 80 percent – of the bonus money, and the mediocre middle 70 percent (‘B players’) get the remaining crumbs. I pressed them because a pile of studies shows that giving a few top performers most of the goodies damages team and organizational performance. This happens because people have no incentive to help others – but do have an incentive to undermine, bad-mouth, and demoralize coworkers, because pushing down others decreases the competition they face. Performance also suffers because hard workers who aren’t anointed A players become bitter and withhold effort.

The wealth and income levels are so skewed between very top and bottom that “average” indicators are no longer meaningful. As you can see in Figure 10.10, the top 0.1% now own as much of the US wealth as the bottom 90%. The last time that happened was in the 1930s, when populism surged around the world and helped lead to World War II. Today we are seeing similar results.

Like other ingredients of the Slow Fix, collaboration takes time. You have to find and marshal the right people and then manage the creative collisions that ensue. But it works even in the fastest-moving sectors of the economy. Steve Jobs once observed that Apple’s revolutionary Macintosh computer “turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets, and historians who also happened to be excellent computer scientists.” Nearly three decades later, the company is still thrashing the competition with the same recipe. “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough,” Jobs declared after the launch of the world-conquering iPad. “It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” Bottom line: the more people who come to your problem-solving party, and the more varied their backgrounds, the more likely it is that ideas will collide, combine, and cross-pollinate to spawn the Promethean flashes of insight that pave the way for the best Slow Fixes.

Mate, I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but I don’t think anyone even knows my name. I’ve already slipped three spots down the batting order. I’ve got no idea what the lyrics to the club song are. And every time I get a hit at training, I hear the faint sound of blokes whispering that one word under their breath: “Yuck.” What am I doing wrong?’ I began, nervously. Nuggsy paused, took a long swig of his Reschs schooner, and reclined languidly into his seat. He scratched his bald head for a moment, seemingly in deep thought, before embarking on the long-winded response that would indeed shape my cricketing future. ‘Listen, bud. You’re a grade cricketer now. And it’s time you learned a little bit about what that means. This isn’t club cricket, “Shires” cricket, or that stupid school shit that you wasted your time on for all those years. This is grade cricket: the highest level of amateur cricket in the world,’ he said with pride. Just for those who don’t already know, I should quickly provide a bit of background on the grade cricket competition. Grade cricket (or ‘Premier cricket’, as it is known in some states/territories) is the level directly below the state competition.  Despite this close proximity to the professional arena, it is nonetheless an amateur competition. Sure, one or two first graders might get paid a little bit under the table, but everyone else must pay a registration fee in order to play. Normally, each club has four to five grades — first grade being the strongest; fifth grade the weakest. Those in first grade enjoy a status that the fifth graders can only dream about. Being a first grader is like being a celebrity to 50 blokes whose names you’ll never know — or never even need to know — unless you end up playing with them after a severe run of poor form (or a serious disciplinary breach). The rest of the club — seconds, thirds, and fourth grade — is basically an assortment of talented youngsters and ageing desperates. The common denominator between the young and old brigade is that they were all once told they were ‘good enough to play for Australia’. In many cases, it was the first and last compliment they ever received — and the reason why they’re still playing. In all cases, it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to them. The ultimate grade cricketer, therefore, will possess the perfect balance of good and not good enough that will haunt them for all of their playing days. All this of course, is something that can only be learned with experience. At this early stage in my grade cricket career, I considered these young players to be ‘cool’ and the older players worthy of my respect. Nuggsy tilted his head to one side as he lit up a cigarette. He took a deep drag, holding it in for what seemed like hours, before launching his head back to expel a thick plume of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Listen, great man,’ he began. ‘Success in grade cricket has nothing to do with skill, ability, or even results. It’s all about the social ladder, bud. You’ve got the big dogs up top, the peasants down the bottom, and everyone in between is just trying to stay relevant,’ he offered. In many ways, grade cricket social hierarchy bears great similarity to the feudal systems that first appeared in the Middle Ages in Europe — something I’d learned a bit about at high school. As I remembered, kings and monarchs sat at the top, enjoying their pick of the land, women and food. They were the ones who established the rules that everyone had to live under. The barons leased their land from the king; the knights leased their land from the barons; and the knights granted the lowly peasants their land.  The peasants were not allowed to marry, nor could they even leave the manor without permission. Basically, they were the fifth graders of the 8-12th Century.