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If you Can’tWin the Game…

On Competition and Changing the Way You Look at Business

Recently, I sat down to play a Chutes-and-Ladders-type game with my 8-year old niece. It was a lot of fun to see her little mind at work, but she had one annoying peculiarity: she was continually bending the rules, reshaping roles, changing the boundaries, reversing strategies. Everything I took for granted, she challenged. Cheating? I don’t think so.

When we decide that we are in competition, we implicitly agree to play the game the way it has always been played, to abide by the formal and informal rules and roles, as well as the unspoken rituals. Although competing can be fun and exciting, it is not very creative and definitely limits the imagination. It is because of this experience that I have concluded that competition encourages conformity.

Kids are always changing the rules and the way the game is played. Research shows that kids spend more time creating and re-creating a game than actually playing it. So, why not ignore the competition—and start to re-create the way the “Business Game” is played??

When you compete head-on, you are just agreeing to play by the old rules...to conform to the way it has always been done...to stay in the lines! Innovation simply means to change the way we do things. I believe that ‘There is no such thing as a new idea—only new was of presenting old ones.’ This hits at the very core of our business persona. Once you make the decision not to “compete”, but to define your own market, you can find solace in the fact that you don’t have to “re-invent the wheel” to be successful. Approach the market with the mindset that you are simply going to find new ways to present what you already have. Maybe that means simply presenting your service, your product or yourself differently.

When you begin to accept competition as a head-to-head battle, then there are no winners and you tend to lose any advantage you ever had in your marketplace. Look at what has happened with airline frequent-flier programs. What was once a very unique, innovative idea now has been copied so many times that no airline has the advantage in this arena. As a matter of fact, I would venture to guess that there is many an airline executive who rues the day that the concept of frequent flier bonuses was ever developed.

It would be naive and foolish of me to say “Don’t compete”. I realize that anything you can do nowadays to beat your competition to the punch, can give you some small advantage in the marketplace. Though you will gain one-time “one ups” on your competitors by facing them head-on, competing will never present the breakthroughs that you are going to need to really move ahead of the pack nor the staying power you need to survive in your business.

Remember, every new and innovative idea in any business has always---ALWAYS---broken with tradition. I love to repeat the advertising copy of one of the large auto-makers from years ago, ‘THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER’S OLDSMOBILE”.

This is not the way your business has been conducted in the past. I have enjoyed challenging many audiences to “stop looking in their rear view mirrors to see how it has always been done in the past. Start looking through your windshield to see what is coming down the road ahead of you in your profession.” If you spend your time considering the way things have always been done in your organization, you are not prioritizing your energies.

Start asking yourself, “How can I present my company’s ‘experience’ differently than all the others professing to be in the same business?”

By changing the rules to the game, you get outside of your comfort zone and begin looking at volatile business challenges from a whole new perspective. We are not going to be comfortable any longer and we can either accept the challenge or get left behind. Wayne Gretzky, one of the all-time greatest hockey players, was once asked by a reporter how it was that he always managed to be where the puck is. With much thought, Gretzky replied, “I’m not always where the puck is. I am always where the puck is going to be!”. Are you where your profession IS, or are you where your profession is going to be???

Helen Keller once said, “The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision”. Rather than looking at the competition that IS, why not start to create what ISN’T?