A former boss of mine thought it would be a good motivational strategy to try to create a little "friendly competition", as Dave Thomas puts it, by putting me and my coworker at odds with each other with various petty, fabricated psychodramas in the hopes that we would both try to compete for Daddy's favor. It didn't take long before both of us quit. This might work with sheep and race horses but simplistic algorithms like these have a tendency to not be very reliable when dealing with human beings. There are too many variables, such as, in the case of me and my coworker, going for a drink after work and realizing the design behind the conflicting narratives our boss was telling each of us in the absence of the other. It's probably quite a common strategy for managers but the dishonesty and apparent disrespect of it didn't sit too well with us at the time.