Co-Opetition - Adam M. Brandenburger [100]
The domain of perceptions is universal. Everything is a matter of perception, even perceptions themselves. Reflecting the breadth of this topic, the chapter draws examples from several different spheres of life—the business, the personal, and the everyday.
Change people’s perceptions, and you change the game. Shaping perceptions is the domain of tactics. By “tactics,” we specifically mean actions that players take to shape the perceptions of other players. Some tactics are designed to lift a fog, others to preserve a fog, and yet others to stir up new fog. We’ll look at all three possibilities.
1. Lifting the Fog
Some people say it’s a jungle out there; or it’s a zoo. Either way, we can learn a trick or two from the animals. That’s why we start with an example from the animal world before turning to the business world.
The Peacock’s Tail One of the puzzles of evolution is why the males of certain species of birds, such as birds of paradise or peacocks, sport such extravagant tails. If it’s survival of the fittest, having a long tail would hardly seem to help. At first blush, the tails are a big liability: they are heavy, get caught in bushes, and attract predators. But Charles Darwin had an explanation for these extravagances. Dr. Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, zoologist and author of The Selfish Gene, puts the Darwinian explanation this way:
Females followed a simple rule: look all the males over, and go for the one with the longest tail. Any female who departed from this rule was penalized, even if tails had already become so long that they actually encumbered males possessing them. This was because any female who did not produce long-tailed sons had little chance of one of her sons being regarded as attractive. Like a fashion in women’s clothes, or in American car design, the trend toward longer tails took off and gathered its own momentum.3
So when it comes to a peacock’s tail, beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder. Rather, beauty is what a peahen perceives to be in the eye of other peahens. Attractiveness is a self-fulfilling perception. If the other peahens perceive long tails to be attractive, then any one peahen has no choice, so to speak, but to be drawn to peacocks with long tails. That way, her male offspring will be attractive to the next generation of females. Perception is everything.
The essence of Darwin’s explanation of the peacock’s tail is that a fashion, once started, feeds on itself. For Darwin, it’s accidental that the peacock’s tail has turned out to be so extravagant. But zoology professor Amotz Zahavi of Tel Aviv University has an explanation for why long tails are the fashion: they credibly demonstrate superior strength. A peacock with a long tail is telling peahens, in no uncertain terms, that he’s a fit male. Dawkins describes Zahavi’s view:
[Zahavi] suggests that the tails of birds of paradise and peacocks … which have always seemed paradoxical because they appear to be handicaps to their possessors, evolve PRECISELY because they are handicaps. A male bird with a long and cumbersome tail is showing off to females that he is such a strong he-man that he can survive IN SPITE OF his tail.4
The tail is a peacock’s way of putting its money where its mouth is. A fit male can better afford the risk that a large tail will attract predators. He’s also more able to forage for the extra calories it takes to carry a large tail around.
The peacock’s tail is a display that distinguishes strong peacocks from strutting pretenders. By proving that they’re the ones with the goods, peacocks with long tails succeed in attracting the peahens.
Passing the Credibility Test
The business analogues to the peacock’s tail are expensive displays designed to influence perceptions of who you are or what you’re likely to