How can “The tragedy of commons” destroy your team?
By: Hasan Noori
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Teamwork, Management And Leadership, Organization, Group Dynamics

Imagine this scenario. You’ve gathered the most awesome team of co-founders for your company. With a clear and exciting goal to achieve, and a well-structured team, you start your awesome work.

In the first stages of your company, you will face one important issue: Scarcity. Be it in your financial resources, time, energy, and dedication (yes, you may have to work beyond your limits in the beginning) and other resources both in the team and personal level. A company needs some sacrifice in time and resources, but the co-founders have an unwritten agreement to do all they can to make the common goal happen. Amazing!

As time passes, some minor problems start to emerge. One (or more) team member appears to be following some personal projects, outside the scope of the company’s activities, and it seems they have more free time than the other members. Some other members are getting easier, less stressful, and less energy-consuming tasks. And maybe even one of the team members appears to be getting more money than the other members.

Money, Time, Energy, and Dedication are some of the most essential resources that members of a team may bring to the table. Normally, everyone’s expected to give the best they can (time-wise and energy-wise), for the sake of the team. Doing less than that may seem unjust in the eyes of the other team members.

As the team makes progress, there will be more and more resources: money, team publicity, growth opportunities, and many more. All team members know that they should use these resources carefully, and they all expect to have a fair share of them. So, what happens when they feel one or more team members are getting more than the fair amount?

The tragedy of commons

In 1967, Garret Hardin (American ecologist), in “The tragedy of commons”, discussed the situation in which people are engaged in a shared-resource system. There is a common good, benefiting everyone, as long as they use the shared resource carefully. But in this situation, competition between the individuals, causes them to follow their own self-interest, in contrast to the common good. In the end, these selfish actions cause them to spoil the resources and destroy everyone’s interests by destroying the common good.

The simplified form of the tragedy of commons. (Image source: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/)

A famous example of the tragedy of commons, as described by Hardin, is a group of cattle ranchers in a shared pasture. There’s a limit to the pasture’s resources, so there’s a limit to the number of cattle it can support. Now, as long as the ranchers keep the balance, by keeping the number of the cattle in check, the pasture will hold and they all can benefit from their existing cattle.

Given the situation, now imagine if one of the ranchers tries to cheat the balance by having one extra cattle. They will gain more profit from the extra cattle, but they’re using more resources now, and hurting the pasture (thus betraying the common good). What happens when the other ranchers find out about this? Naturally, they will try to make things just. They will do it by adding one or more cattle to their own.

The situation can easily get out of hand, as it won’t stop there and the ranchers most likely will start a competition on adding more and more cattle to maximize their personal benefit. Now, they will end up with way more cattle than the pasture can support, and before they know, the pasture is destroyed, and they will lose all their cattle. By betraying the common good, now everyone has lost all their cattle.

The tragedy of commons is used to show how when people follow their self-interest in a shared environment and betray a balanced resource-based system, they can lose everything, by spoiling the system.

The tragedy of commons in the team

How can the tragedy of the commons relate to a team’s work in the company? As we talked earlier, there’re many tangible (e.g. time and money) and intangible (e.g. publicity and growth opportunities) resources in a team or company. The common good here is to help the team or company grow and achieve its goals, and everyone should use these resources carefully to make it happen. Now imagine one team member tries to follow their self-interest despite the common goal. For example, they spend less time on the company to make free time for themselves to follow other interests. Or, they choose their activity based on how much publicity or growth opportunity it brings them. They are using the resources selfishly and triggering the tragedy of commons. The other team members, seeing the selfish acts of this individual, will try to make things just. How will they do this?

When people face an unjust situation in the team, they may use one of these options. 1. Bring back the previous and fair situation (e.g. solving the problem by talking to people and refer to the agreements), 2. Bear with the new and unfair situation (which will most likely reduce their satisfaction from the team, and in the long run even cause them to leave the team), or 3. Try to make things just by their own means (e.g. they too will try to follow their self-interest).

Of the three mentioned options, the first one is usually the best option for the team, but it’s not always possible and can cause its own new problems. The second option will harm the team, but to a lesser extent, and in most cases won’t end up in a catastrophe. But the third one, which is a highly likely option, can cause a case of the tragedy of commons.

When team members try to make their own justice, they will do it by increasing their own interest, to match what they believe to be just. When someone gets the feeling that they’re getting less by doing more, they will try to make the equation right but doing less (depriving the team of the time and energy resources) or trying to get more (demanding more money, opportunity, or publicity…). Either way, now the balance in the team resources is starting to shake. The tragedy of commons is triggered, and things are likely to worsen.

After the tragedy of the commons is triggered in the team more and more team members will feel things are unjust, and more and more people will try to fix things by their own means. Now everyone will put less effort into the work, will only engage in the activities which will bring them more personal gain, will demand more money or praise, and many more problems will arise.

Slowly, the team will be deprived of its vital resources, team members’ time, energy, and dedication, there will be many important tasks that no one’s willing to do (because they’re not much rewarding on a personal level), team’s publicity faces many problems, as everyone tries to make a personal brand, using the team’s brand, and the team will have many faces, and even financial resources will be drained, as many people now demand more money for their work.

Once triggered, the tragedy of commons can cause great damage to the team, and even cause it to fail. It can be hard to detect (as in this situation team members will hide their selfish actions), and even harder to stop (because now people are losing their trust in each other and the team). And in real-world cases, many teams fail because of this, even if they never find out what was the real problem.

How to prevent or stop the tragedy?

One problem with the tragedy of commons in the team is that you don’t really need a selfish person to start it. All it takes is for someone to feel that the situation is unfair. For example, one team member may think that the other teammate is getting more opportunities for growth than the others. And that’s it, they can start their effort to make things just. The other team member may not even be getting more opportunities, and it may be just a false feeling. But, at this point, it doesn’t really matter, because now the tragedy is triggered!

One important key to preventing the tragedy of commons is to have clear expectations from the team and each team member. If we want to go back to the classic example if it’s clear that how many cattle each rancher can have, or how many resources each rancher can use, it will be easy to find out if someone’s cheating. Rather than just judging by a feeling, we can assess the situation by facts.

One issue here is that in many cases it’s really hard to measure how much resource each person has given and received from the team. For example, it’s easy to measure the time each team member spent and how much money they have received, but it’s really hard to measure things such as dedication in teamwork, growth opportunities, etc. For things you can measure, make sure to have clear expectations, and for things that you can’t measure, there’s one thing you can do: Talk!

Open communication is crucial for any team. If people can talk, they can manage their expectations, solve their problems and misunderstandings, and reach better agreements and goals. If you can have good communications in your team, you can clearly see if a tragedy is being (or has already been) triggered, and find its root. Once you find the root, you will be able to solve it and prevent it from doing any harm to the team.

There will always be people who will want more, and there will always be some selfish acts in almost everyone. The way to prevent it from harming the team is to make it clear for everyone that the common goal will end up the best for each individual, and the team goal is aligned with every members’ personal goal. Aside from this, the team should always be able to prevent selfish acts, through agreements, regulations, and proper action. For example, the team may have a rule that each member should get the team’s approval before following a personal project. In extreme cases, the team will have to face people who have only their own interest in their mind, and won’t work for the team. Always be ready to take proper action when facing these members.

And finally, maybe the most important thing is to make sure that the team is fair, and its goal, the common good, is in fact good for all members. After all, if the team goal is not just and fair for each individual’s personal goals and interests, it’s not a good team, and its goals should be reconsidered.