We run a 14-person business, and we look after our people very well. We throw parties for birthdays, babies and marriages, and take a real interest in each individual, both personally and professionally. Still, people complain incessantly that there's too much politics, not enough appreciation and so on. I am about to tear my hair out because nothing seems to make them happy.

A

Stop trying. With the best of intentions, you have created a classic entitlement culture, in which your people have the deal exactly backwards. They think you work for them.

This phenomenon is not uncommon, although it tends to be more prevalent in small organisations, where employees can more easily develop casual, familial relationships with their bosses, and bosses more often blur professional lines themselves. In the end, such cosy familiarity can backfire, as is happening with you and your moaning, groaning employees.

It's irrelevant, however, how you got yourself into your predicament. It only matters now that you get out quickly, and the first person you need to get straight with is yourself. You are running a company, not a social club or a counselling service. Your number one priority is to win in the marketplace, so that you can continue to grow and provide opportunities for your people.

Of course you want your employees to be happy. But their happiness needs to come from the company's success, not from their every need being met. When the company does well because of their performance, they will thrive, personally and professionally. Not the other way around. Consider this way of thinking your new creed.

Next, gather your people together and let them know about your conversion experience, and your plan to convert them too. Together, you and your staff will need to create a list of behaviours that will result in the company's winning. These behaviours will become your new company values . . . guidelines, if you will, to live by. For instance, one value could be "We will respond with a sense of urgency to customer requests", or "We will ship only products with zero defects".

The point of this process is very simple: to help your people understand that work is about, well, it's about work.

Without doubt, you will hear yelps of pain as you dismantle your entitlement culture. Indeed, some employees that you like and value may leave in protest.

Take the hit and wish them well. They will soon find out the grass is not greener on the other side, and you will discover how much better your company operates when your main concern is not whining, but winning.

Q

"It is not sufficient that I succeed. Everyone else must fail, " is a line attributed to Genghis Khan and sometimes quoted by the moguls of our own era. In the cut-throat, hypercompetitive business world of today, what is your take on this attitude?

A

It's nonsense, of course, because it's just not the way business usually works, nor should it be. Now, obviously you're not going to sit around wishing your competitors well. All tough-minded businesspeople want to win . . . they want the most sales, the biggest market share, the highest profit margins and so on.

But tough-minded businesspeople also realise that competitors, for all their aggravation, serve a purpose.

They sharpen your focus.

They keep you fierce and hungry. And the best of them raise the bar on every aspect of performance, from innovation to delivery.

Without competition, companies usually get fat and lazy. Case in point: all the bureaucratic monopolies out there that have foundered, largely due to the selfsatisfaction and arrogance that came with achieving the very success they were after.

So, look, you may not want your competitors to win, but unlike Genghis, you want them around. It's good for customers, it's good for you (albeit sometimes painful), and it's good for business overall.

Now, taking the quote to the individual level. Again, wrong, even for the most ambitious among us. We're not going to deny, of course, that schadenfreude exists.

It's human nature to feel a small twinge of relief (or worse, happiness) when a colleague screws up. But the most successful people fight that instinct with everything in them. They know that someone else's candle going out, as the old saying goes, doesn't make their candle burn any brighter. It just makes the whole room darker.

The best thing that can happen at work . . . and in life . . .

is to be surrounded by people who are smart and good.

As with tough competitors, you learn from them and improve because of them. When they do well, so do you, either by their example or by being part of their team.

So maybe Genghis Khan was on to something 750 years ago, fighting other warlords with spears and clubs on the Mongolian plain, but in today's world, mogul or not, his advice seems ready to retire.

(Jack and Suzy Welch are the authors of the international best-seller, Winning. You can e-mail them questions at Winning@nytimes. com. Please include your name, occupation, city and country. )