I’m so happy that Survivor is starting again today. I go into withdrawal when I can’t get my fix of reality TV. Now for those of you philistines who think Survivor is trash, I must tell you that I only watch it for the strategy (much in the same way that as a teenager I only read Playboy for the articles.)

I find it fascinating to watch people try to develop strategies for winning only to have those plans fail when they run afoul of other contestants’ machinations. In terms of strategy, I keep seeing contestants follow Jim Collins’ concept of assembling the right team: “The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it.�

In case you haven’t, you might read Good to Great to get a better understanding of Survivor.

In terms of getting the right people on (or off) the bus, the Survivor contestants usually follow a certain pattern:

• First to leave the bus, ejected with much delight, are those contestants who are misfits, who don’t get along with others and who are just plain too bossy. This is much a matter of corporate culture. Fit is important and people who don’t fit in are turfed.
• The next contestants to leave are typically the lazy; ones who don’t contribute to the campsite or winning challenges. In this early stage of Survivor, much like in an early stage of corporate development, everyone is working very hard just to survive, get food and water, etc, and people who don’t contribute are deadweight and don’t belong on the bus.
• Next, after a merger, one team will try to eradicate the other team’s former members. This is a case of breaking up alliances as only one strategy can ultimately win. The bus can’t take two warring teams, each with a different strategy.
• In the next-to-last stage, we are left with a number of also-rans along with a number of superstars who typically win all the challenges. As the contest draws to a close, the also-rans will try to get rid of the superstars who got them there, as the superstars are too strong in individual challenges. In much the same way, a developing technology company often ends up getting rid of the founding group, as the skill set brought by the superstars is now an impediment to the success of the rest of the team.
• Finally, at the end, we are typically left with a few highly average but strategic players who used the various skill sets and weaknesses of other contestants as a lever and exploited them at the right time but discarded them when they had outlived their usefulness to become the only ones left on the bus.

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