Six uncommon characteristics of the most competitive businesses
Image courtesy of Rob Wingate on Unsplash
Competition is complex. Yes, the objective is to get ahead and stay ahead of marketplace rivals. But to do that, a business needs to be able to participate, and to participate it must first define what success looks like. Defining success is the ultimate challenge of competitiveness because success is a fluid construct. As such, the demands of competition today are likely to be very different to what they look like tomorrow. It is those businesses that best understand the fast-paced and dynamic nature of their operational space, that will be better placed to have and hold the competitive edge.
As is often the case with these blogs, there is an intentional deviation from the ‘common’ to highlight the things that are ‘uncommon’. Why? Well, if (given the subject matter) doing the common things made every business competitive, then there would not be exceptions to the rule. However, there clearly are exceptions across the competitiveness spectrum, which implies that some businesses are doing things that make them more competitive than others. The challenge, therefore, is to pinpoint the specific areas of distinction that give some a unique advantage over others.
So here are the six uncommon characteristics of the most competitive businesses.
1. Magnifying glasses versus microscopes
Like so many, I am a big Formula One racing fan. In that sport, the margins of error are minuscule. In a typical qualifying session for grid position; the top-performing teams are separated not by a second or half a second, but by milliseconds. Take the 2019 Grand Prix at Silverstone in England, as a case in point. During qualifying for that race, Valtteri Bottas achieved pole position by just 0.006 seconds or 6 milliseconds. As an industry, Formula One defines competition, not through the lens of a magnifying glass, but through the sights of a microscope. Therefore, from the perspective of business competitiveness, what you are looking at may be far less important than what you can see.
2. Creation of ‘alternative facts’
Although not advisable as a general principle, the idea of ‘alternative facts’ works well in this context. There is a quote attributed to Henry Ford, which goes like this: “if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”. To compete you must be willing to view the world through a different prism, create a parallel universe and even deny the facts and realities before your very eyes. The lesson here is that exceptionalism is not to be found in the ability to compete successfully within existing frameworks. Rather, it is to be found when the very definition of what constitutes success is redefined and reimagined. This approach to competitiveness is not for the faint-hearted. However, for those courageous enough to take the plunge, the rewards are enormous.
3. Spreading contagion
With competition, the natural impulse is to outperform your rivals and then systematically, drive them out of business or into irrelevance. However, as counter intuitive as it sounds, strong and active competition is the most effective complement to continuous improvement. Yes, the rule of thumb should be to outperform your rivals, but to do that you still need viable competition to outperform. Becoming the only horse in a one-horse race, suppresses the organisational appetite for innovation, drives down performance standards and reduces choice for your customers. In such an environment, complacency is likely to set in and gradual decline is never far behind that. Competitiveness is a contagion; you need to find ways to spread it.
4. Recognising that it is good to get it wrong sometimes
To be competitive, any organisation must be fleet-footed and agile. There are few more effective ways for an organisation to remain on its toes than when it miscalculates or even blunders. Think back to the ‘old Coke’ versus ‘new Coke’ debacle from the mid-1980s. Without intending to, that strategic and marketing misstep revived the fortunes of the Coca Cola brand in its ‘cola war’ with PepsiCo. Clearly, no serious-minded business should make a habit of becoming ‘study material’ for what not to do, as that will sap the confidence of customers. Notwithstanding, in a competitive context, there is something nutritious and therefore healthy, about an organisation that is constantly reminded of its own mortality.
5. The rope-a-dope
Those of a certain age will remember the 1974 world heavyweight boxing title match between then champion George Foreman and challenger, Muhammad Ali. Forever remembered as the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, the bout saw Ali defeat Foreman for the title using a tactic that would be popularised as the ‘rope-a-dope’. Roughly translated, the ‘rope-a-dope’ is the science of competing effectively by conserving energy efficiently. Deployed in a commercially competitive scenario, a business performing the ‘rope-a-dope’ would likely allow its rival to expend energy in developing the market-place, whilst positioning itself strategically, to capitalise on the opportunities that emerge from those efforts.
6. Relevance to cardinal points
We all know the cardinal points of the compass. But how well do we understand the way in which cardinal points shape and inform the approach to competition? In simple terms, cardinal points reflect how we compete with those that are in front of us (north), on either side of us (east and west) and behind us (south). The cardinal points underline the fact that not all competition is homogeneous. An entirely different mindset is required to meet the standards of those whose levels of performance and success exceeds our own. Likewise, to maintain pace with those whose standards match ours requires a different set of skills as does the requirement to remain in the ascendency over competitors, whom we currently outperform.
For any business, competition is a journey. You compete to become good and then you compete even harder to become better. The skill is to ‘remain competitive’. Dwell on that for a second, because one of the biggest misconceptions about ‘remaining competitive’ is the notion that you must be aware of who your competitors are and they must also be aware of you. However, neither premise is completely accurate. In fact, competition is not so much a function of how you act in response to your rivals or for that matter, how your rivals act in response to you. Rather, it is a function of how you think. So, let’s end with this curveball: you may not have to be in actual competition with anyone to be competitive, if you know how to think competitively.
