Agency in a zero-sum environment is not necessarily a good thing.
- Agency in a zero-sum environment is not necessarily a good thing.
- In a zero-sum environment, it's a push and pull between many different ideas fighting over the same turf.
- "It should be green!" "No, it should be red!" "No, blue!"
- Which one wins doesn't really matter in that case. It doesn't create anything more.
- People tend to believe that their solution is special and better.
- "This one is special because it's mine".
- So they think they're doing a positive-sum thing for the collective organization ("I'm pushing to ship a much much better option than the others") but really what they're doing is pecking at the other mostly the same alternatives and making it less likely that other things ship.
- Which, if everyone does it, means that despite tons of effort, very little might ship at all.