What ain't good for the hive, ain't good for the bee Success is no good if it comes at the expense of another.

Competition doesn't deliver what we think it does. I'ts time to dismantle structures that reward individual bees and start thinking in terms of what good for the whole hive.

As a child at school, I thrived on getting gold star stickers from my teachers. As an adult, I strived for excellent performance reviews and employee of the month recognition. And then I won a testing industry award, the Rising Star award back in 2018, and I was in heaven. However, lately, I have come to realise how damaging these (old) competitive and hierarchical structures are. Especially within teams that rely on working well together. So, I have decided to recover from my love for gold stickers. Here's what I want to explain to you: Competition doesn't deliver what you think it does. Rarely does competition enhance collaboration or mutuality, but it does reinforce siloes and restricts the flow of information. Let's also discuss why the following ideas don't work well for the hive: -We need someone the ‘steer the course’. Someone must 'run the hive' and this means setting direction and telling us what to do. -If competition disappears, people will stop doing work well. -I like the organisation setting clear goals for me to work on so that I can easily tell if I'm successful. As a recovering gold-sticker-addict, I'll share how my thinking on these topics has changed. We are all bound up in this thing called software development together and these old structures hurt us, it's time to dismantle them. Let's build some excellent beehives instead.