A corporation has a kind of ongoing scoreboard for its efforts, although it's largely keeping score of itself vs. prior and future efforts. There is also comparison between its score and the scores of its competitors, though they don't really compete against each other directly, but rather they observe a set of rules and vie for recognition of who can do the best under those rules. For the most part it's more like golf than, say, football, since you're competitor isn't standing on the field defending against or attacking you directly (I take that back - there actually are plenty of ways to attack or defend against your business competitors, but the ultimate objective is for your business to do well more so than it is for other businesses to do poorly), but is instead trying to do its best to generate a better score than you. This scoreboard is the combination of financial statements and operational metrics that companies report on and attempt to improve upon.
It would make working life more interesting if there were seasons and off-seasons in these corporate competitions, as in sporting events or even education. Then, at the end of the 9 or 10 month season, winners and losers would be recognized, contracts would be signed or re-structured for the next season, employees could be let go or signed away by the competition, etc. Much the same as it is now in the working world with employees coming and going to and from the competition or other fields entirely, with the exception that your roster would largely be set for an entire season and almost all movement would take place during the off-season. The off-season would also be the time for employees to clear their heads, take a couple of months off, refocus, look at other options, etc. But once they signed for the upcoming season they would be committed to that company for better or worse, as would the company be to them.
I could go on with the analogy, but you get the point. One reason why this wouldn't work: business doesn't stop and take time off. Ever. But there could be staggered seasons throughout the year, all say 9 months long, but with a new one starting every quarter so that a 1000 employee company would actually have 1250 people working for it in a given year but have 250 of them going through a set 3-month off-season at any given time. I think this would keep it more interesting for employees (and employers), allow them to recharge and assess their lives more often than they currently can/do (for employees and employers), keep them more motivated since they'd be trying to make themselves more valuable since they'd perpetually be faced with an upcoming off-season that would require finding another contract (even if multi-year deals were signed with some really great employees, they would know that nothing is permanent, a fact that is already in place but not actually considered by the vast majority of corporate employees). Every benefit to this scenario would work both ways, for the employee and the employer. This actually does sort of exist in some fields such as investment banking, public accounting, law, medical doctors, etc., at least at the level where they recruit from schools at certain times of the year and then evaluate progress at set times/points along clearly laid out career paths - perhaps not coincidentally, these are some of the highest-performance educational and professional groups that exist today. What about everybody else?
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