Why your company needs an enemy
The moment a company runs out of enemies, it starts to eat itself. I’m re-reading The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant, a short book on how humans actually behave over thousands of years, and one chapter on competition and cooperation explains why company cultures do this so reliably.
The hidden job of a leader
History, the Durants argue, is not peaceful. Life is competition. When food is scarce, tribes fight. When power is at stake, factions fight. When markets open, firms fight.
But mature societies don’t become less competitive. They just get smarter about how they compete. They learn to cooperate inside the tribe so they can compete more effectively outside it.
War is their sharpest example. In peace, a city can afford to squabble. In war, those same people suddenly line up, take orders, and accept hardship. Not because they turned into saints overnight, but because the external threat makes internal coordination non‑negotiable.
The tribe doesn’t “get along” because it discovered empathy. It gets along because it wants to win.
Durant generalizes this: families, companies, parties, and nations cohere internally to increase their odds in external contests. Cooperation is mostly a tool and form of competition. We bind together in groups so our group can beat other groups.
You see this everywhere once you start looking.
Startups that see themselves as underdogs in a clear market fight rarely drown in internal politics. They don’t have time. There’s a scoreboard outside the building. Every engineer, sales rep, and operator knows which game they’re playing, and what “winning” looks like.
Mature organizations often lose this. The external game is fuzzy or feels already won. Revenue is fine, brand is strong, the castle walls look high. So the energy turns inward. If we’re not united against something out there, we quietly start competing in here: for credit, for status, for resources, for narrative control.
History would say this is not a moral failure. It’s just humans doing what humans have always done when the real enemy disappears: they nominate a new one, usually from the neighboring department. You see the same pattern across eras: once the outside invader or shared threat is gone, the factions that once cooperated often turn on each other. Remove external pressure and competition doesn’t vanish; it just moves inside the walls.
The uncomfortable implication: if you are a founder or senior operator, part of your real job is to define the war. Not in a macho way. In a clarifying way.
What game are we actually playing? Who or what are we trying to beat? On what field? By when?
If you don’t supply those answers, people will still compete. They’ll just compete with each other.
The leaders who last seem to understand this. They use cooperation as a designed tool: shared enemies, shared metrics, shared rituals, shared sacrifices. Not as feel‑good posters, but as competitive infrastructure. They give people something big enough out there to fight for so they don’t burn the company down in here.
Lessons
Cooperation is strategy, not sentiment
Groups don’t cooperate because humans stop being competitive; they cooperate because coordination increases their odds of winning an external game. Culture and org design are tools for performance, not decoration.When the external game is unclear, internal games multiply
As soon as people can’t see a real, urgent contest outside the walls, they shift their competitive energy to status, politics, and turf wars. Misalignment is often a missing enemy, not missing values.Your job is to define the war and the scoreboard
Founders underestimate how much energy comes from a concrete opponent, problem, or target. People will endure a lot if they believe it clearly moves the group closer to winning.Strong teams pick alliances to sharpen their edge
We don’t cooperate randomly. We pick families, firms, and partners that increase our leverage in the real contest. Who you invite “inside the tribe” is a strategic decision.
On Monday, do this
Name the game. In one sentence, define the primary competitive game your company is playing this year (for example: “Become the default X for Y in Z market before [year].”). Share it with your leadership team and force agreement.
Clarify the enemy and the metric. In your next all‑hands, spell out the specific external opponent or constraint you’re organizing against (a problem, a category, a standard) and the one or two metrics that define “winning” this year.
Kill one internal game. Identify one recurring meeting, process, or KPI that mostly optimizes for internal comfort or optics rather than external advantage. Change or remove it, and explain why in terms of the external game.
Align rewards with the real war. Choose one visible reward (bonus, shout‑out, promotion criterion) and tie it explicitly to moving the external scoreboard, not to individual heroics disconnected from the team’s win.
History’s reminder is quietly optimistic: humans are wired to compete, but we’re also exceptionally good at organizing ourselves when the stakes are clear. If you keep your people pointed at reality outside the building, not at each other, you give them a better story to be part of and a better chance to win the next chapter.
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I’m Harsh. I build businesses with extraordinary people. I’m helping grow Ideals Virtual Data Rooms, I am bootstrapping a food startup and I invest through Marcellus Investment Managers. I send one email each Sunday for founders and senior operators who want useful ideas to win in business and life. If that’s you, you can join the newsletter here. Connect with me on LinkedIn here.