Us and Them Archives - understand-culture

Us Versus Them

Us versus them. There are two sides, and the speaker’s group is one of them.

The competition. This is the rival company or team, as in “What is the competition doing?”

Not invented here. This is the habit of rejecting an idea because it came from another team.

Circle the wagons. The group closes ranks against a threat from outside.

Bulletin-board material. This is a remark by an opponent that a team pins up and uses as motivation.

Friendly rivalry. This is competition between groups that still like each other.

Crosstown rivals. These are two teams from the same city.

Homecoming

Homecoming week at an American school or college ends with a big game, normally football. Before it come a parade and a pep rally, which sometimes ends with a bonfire.

Several universities claim the first homecoming. In 1910 two Illinois seniors organized an event to rally support against the University of Chicago, which had beaten Illinois for seven years. Illinois won 3 to 0. The University of Missouri is most often given the credit. In 1911 its athletic director and coach, Chester Brewer, called alumni to come “home” for the game against Kansas.

The Soul of a New Machine

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder appeared in 1981. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It follows engineers at the computer company Data General.

Most senior designers went to Fountainhead, the company’s high-profile project in North Carolina. Tom West led a smaller team in Westborough on a backup project called Eagle. He relied mostly on recent college graduates. Management backed the other group, but the Eagle team came out on top.

Warring Gangs

In 2011 the cartoonist Manu Cornet drew the organization charts of large tech companies, among them Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft. In Satya Nadella’s words, he “drew the Microsoft organization chart as warring gangs, each pointing a gun at another.”

Nadella quoted the cartoon on the first page of his 2017 book Hit Refresh. He wrote: “But what upset me more was that our own people just accepted it.” When he became CEO in February 2014, he told employees that renewing the company’s culture would be his highest priority.

Crush Adidas

Crush Adidas. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras give this as Nike’s goal in the 1960s. Philip Morris had a similar goal in the 1950s: “Knock off RJR as the number one tobacco company in the world.”

The examples come from their 1996 article “Building Your Company’s Vision” in the Harvard Business Review. The two authors call such goals “common-enemy BHAGs.” BHAG stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. They write that common-enemy goals “involve David-versus-Goliath thinking.”

The Jets and the Sharks

West Side Story opened on Broadway on September 26, 1957. Leonard Bernstein wrote the music and Stephen Sondheim the lyrics. Arthur Laurents wrote the book. Jerome Robbins directed and choreographed. Two street gangs fight for control of their Manhattan neighborhood. The Jets are white. The Sharks are Puerto Rican.

Early in the show the Jets sing the “Jet Song.” In it they swear loyalty to the gang for life and mock the Sharks. Sondheim later called the song “very mildly threatening and menacing.” The 1961 film won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The Team Up North

At Ohio State, people avoid saying “Michigan.” They say “The Team Up North” instead. The coach Woody Hayes gave Michigan this name so that he would not have to say the name of the state and the school.

The custom outlived him. The coach Urban Meyer refused to say the word. The coach Ryan Day explained the rule: “We’ll say the state up north. We’ll say Ann Arbor. We’ll say the blue team. Maybe even say the Wolverines. But we certainly can’t say the M-word.”

Go Army! Beat Navy!

“Go Army! Beat Navy!” Cadets at West Point hear the chant from their first day. Army and Navy first played football on November 29, 1890, at West Point. Navy won. In 1917 and 1918 the War Department canceled the games. In 1928 and 1929 the academies could not agree on rules for player eligibility. The game has been played every year since 1930.

Before the game, the two academies exchange “prisoners,” so that cadets and midshipmen can cheer from their own side. After the game, both teams sing both school songs. The losing team’s song comes first.

Pirates, Not the Navy

“It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy.” Steve Jobs gave this saying to the Macintosh team at a retreat in 1983. A black flag followed. Susan Kare painted a skull and crossbones on it, with the Apple rainbow logo as the eye patch. The flag flew over Bandley 3, the Macintosh building.

The Macintosh team and the Lisa team both worked inside Apple. Both were building computers with a graphical interface, and tension grew between them.