What’s the fallacy of ‘Musical Chairs’?

During recent discussions about the best approaches to leadership and change for individuals and organizations, a number of friends and I realized that our society is being moved more and more into a constant game of musical chairs.

For those of you not familiar with this game, it’s actually something children play for attention and agility. You take a group of kids and provide chairs for them. The number of chairs is one less than the number of kids. Then the music begins to play and when it stops all the kids circling the chairs rush to take a seat. The one who doesn’t find a chair is out of the game. In the next round, everybody gets back up, one chair is removed and the music begins playing again. At the end of the game, only two individuals are running around the last remaining chair and when the music stops, the person who gets to sit on the last chair is the winner.

The question is: “Is he or she really the winner”?

What’s interesting is that during the game more and more people get eliminated and have to watch, rather then being involved. In addition the notion of the winner as one person is manifested in the game. Often the last person, the perceived winner, in actually hated by all the other players.

Why am I writing about children’s games? Lately it appears our society is moving into the game of musical chairs all over. In American Idol we are to elect the last one standing and crown him or her the winner. In some cases, it’s not even the most talented person, but the most popular person, who wins. In Dancing with the Stars, 50% of the vote comes form the public, most of which has no clue what the important aspects of ballroom dancing are – so guess what – they vote by what’s most popular, appealing and looks the prettiest.

A new show in TV called Phenomenon doesn’t celebrate the amazing abilities of the artists but eliminates everybody but one person and then crowns that person to be The Phenomenon, same with Survivor, American Inventor, and a host of other shows using this format.

It’s not only on TV. In music we award the one who is most popular or has the most sales of records, and CD’s. In politics we are moving towards unilateral action against other countries. In business we see more and more slogans claiming to be the bets, the biggest, the highest, the one and only.

What happened to community, working together, achieving more as a team then the some of its parts?

As leaders and influencers and change agents, it becomes more and more important to bring the notion of team, community, common ideas, agreed upon vision, and achievements in a group, department, division, or company back. If we want to succeed in the future, we need to pool our abilities, knowledge, and strength, rather than playing a game of musical chairs on all levels, only to be surprised that the winner is hated by all other players and lonely in his or her glory.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC