A great story -- rather entertaining, and full of taste of trium

In this story, the author devised a strategy that fit the situation very well: transparency and comparability, division of the tasks made the comparison easy and obvious, while transparency made his/her opponent nearly impossible to fool around. The author had an overwhelming advantage in the skills for the tasks involved, her victory did not come as a surprise.

but i have a few what-if's for people to think about:

what if the tasks are not easily divisible?
what if the author has a level of skills that are only slightly stronger than her opponent?
what if the manager asks the author instead to complete all the tasks and does so by giving some encouraging words of compliment, while letting that guy move to a different task which would utilize his "soft" skills or "communication" skills, and such tasks would somehow let the guy build a brand of "leadership". Can the author take it? it is not a totally unimaginable scenario. I witnessed such things sometime somewhere.