The UN

When I think of Model United Nations, I tend to imagine a few hundred kids sitting in a room raising placards on vote after vote after vote, or nations declaring war on each other.  I recently attended my first Model United Nations conference, and yes, that impression was partially true.  (Zambia floated the idea of declaring war on Slovenia during the final moments of the conference.)

The goal of any General Assembly committee was to pass a resolution to help resolve some of the major issues in command and control of military nuclear technology. Most of my time and energy, however, wasn’t spent on debating the technical specifics of military technology – it was spent on building coalitions. As my partner put it, Model UN is like a debate tournament in which you must convince the other team to agree that you should win. 

The task at hand in the chamber is to author a resolution, but to most of the delegations, it is not about passing any resolution; rather, it is about passing their resolution.  Although all the draft resolutions were, substantively speaking, very similar to one another, people became attached to their own ideas.  (Understandably so – if they didn’t like their ideas, they wouldn’t have written them in the first place.)

The United Nations, Congress – any deliberative body – poses a problem of self-interest versus altruism.  Putting on a show is part of politics.  As Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at an event I recently attended – and I’m paraphrasing here: “The effect that a camera has on a Congressman is that of a full moon on a werewolf.”  Theater takes a backseat to policy.

The UN isn’t exactly the same, since its members aren’t elected.  But the issue of altruism and self-interest is still there.  Part of what makes the real UN so ineffective at times is that all nations are, first and foremost, self-interested actors and their sovereignty permits them to act on that self-interest.  Language and policy has to be watered down so much that everyone can agree to it.  Model UN operated much the same way.

Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?

I recently came across a fascinating New York Times article about Professor Adam Grant, who could certainly be described as an altruistic guy.  The youngest professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, he writes over 100 letters of recommendation for students every year.  He sits down at his computer, opens up his email inbox, and responds to literally hundreds of questions.  One might think that he just doesn’t know how to say “no.”

Professor Grant, despite his "pushover" tendencies, is actually incredibly productive in his own personal work. He’s famous for proving the theory that we are more productive, and that we tend to accomplish more, when we perceive that we are helping others.  Some of his psychological studies, for instance, have proved that doctors will apply more soap when in the presence of a bathroom sign cautioning against harming patients than a sign cautioning against harming themselves.

The applications of this theory in the business world are particularly interesting. (And hence his job at Wharton.)  He used to work for a phone bank that sold a product which helped other people.  When he brought in a beneficiary to talk to the employees about how much their work meant to him, sales shot up big time – much more substantially even than financial incentives for salespeople to perform well.  In essence, the will to help others can be more powerful than cold, hard cash.

But if we are armed with that knowledge that helping others will help ourselves, does altruism cease to be altruism and become self-interest?  Perhaps, to an extent, that is true.  That gets into a whole debate about psychological egoism, which I’ve already written about.

According to the article, “Grant would be the first to say that he is not purely altruistic — that pure altruism, giving without regard for one’s self-interest, perhaps does not even exist.”

Motives aside, I think it’s hard not to get excited about a proven business model that promotes helping others as a means to perform better.  It’s a win-win; actually, it’s a win-win-win because it helps management, employees, and customers.  Management rakes in the dough, employees feel good, and so do the customers.