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so in general in any sort of competition
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if you're a sports team let's say you're
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a basketball team trying to win a game
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or you're a group of employees trying to
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win a competition uh your group of kids
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trying to win your school book drive
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something like that in general any sort
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of competition it's good to be ahead if
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you want to win so the more points
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you're ah head in basketball the more uh
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dollars you've raised towards your goal
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whatever it is the further along you are
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the more like you are to beat your
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competitor so uh take sports for example
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um so you wanted to look at NCAA
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basketball uh in general teams that are
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four points up at halftime they win
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about 60% of the time teams that are
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eight point up at halftime they win 80%
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of the time and so in general the more
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you're ahead the more likely you'll be
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to win um but what we looked at in this
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paper is whether losing along the way
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could actually be a good thing being
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behind someone else could actually be
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help you uh to be more likely to win and
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so what we found actually is that
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basketball teams uh as one example that
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are slightly behind at halftime are
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actually more likely than their
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opponents to win so uh you might think
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that a team down by one should lose or
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win less than 50% of their games right
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the team that's up by one should win um
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but we actually find the opposite teams
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that are down by one are actually more
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likely to win and in general they're
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about five to s% more likely than you'd
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expect by chance uh and the reason is
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motivation so we can always uh we can
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all think of examples where where we've
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been a little bit behind a goal
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something we really really wanted we
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almost got there but we just didn't get
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there um and that's exactly what's going
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on in this so being close to winning
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right being close to winning at halftime
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but not quite there is very motivating
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um and so what we look at is we also
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look at what happens at the beginning of
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the second half so you've been in the
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locker room you're down by one how does
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that change how you might come out and
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what it we show is that you come out a
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lot stronger you work a lot harder you
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score a lot more in those first couple
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minutes after halftime um and what we
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also find similarly is if you just bring
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people into a laboratory and you say
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okay have them do a little task they're
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pressing buttons on the computer and you
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tell them they're going to be competing
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against someone else in the room and you
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never show them that person but you give
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them feedback halfway through the task
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how they're doing half the people you
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tell you know what you're almost there
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but you're just a little bit behind and
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the other half the people say oh you're
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beating your opponent what we find is
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that in the second half of that task
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people work harder they pass those keys
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faster they press them very hard um when
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they've been behind and so being behind
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just a little bit can actually encourage
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people to work harder
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sure um so let's say you're a manager
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and you have a group of employees and
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you guys are competing against another
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group uh another company for a
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government contract right so maybe
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you're Boe and you're competing against
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another company for an airline U but
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building Bunch airliners for for a
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government or the the military or your
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some other competition you want to
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figure out how to motivate those
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employees how are you going to get them
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to work harder and how you going to get
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them be more likely to win that
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competition um and so one thing this
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research suggests is that you want to be
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very strategic about the way you do that
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um so one thing you can do is take
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breaks strategically so you could first
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of all you could tell your employees
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that they're a little bit behind but you
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could also you say oh guys we got to
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work harder those guys they're barely
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beating us they're two weeks ahead of us
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we're behind but you could also take
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breaks when you take stock of the the
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progress at times when you guys are a
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little bit Pine so rather than actually
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giving your employees false feedback
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just pick a metric or take a break at a
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time or look at the metrics and ways
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that make your team your employees feel
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like they're not too far behind you
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don't want to make them think that oh
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we're so far back that we can't do it
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but we're just a little bit we're almost
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there but we're just not quite we just
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have to work a little bit harder and
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what this research shows that when
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people feel like they're that just a
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little bit behind they're going to work
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harder and that's going to make them
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more likely to succeed in the long run
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for more business news and Analysis from
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knowledge at Wharton please visit
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