dispatches from the new world of work

When The "Enemy" Really Wins

Business Brickyard book cover "Lose Your Nemesis": "Obsessing about your competitors, trying to match or best their offerings, spending time each day wanting to know what they are doing, and/or measuring your company against them—these activities have no great or winning outcome. Instead you are simply prohibiting your company from finding its own way to be truly meaningful to its clients, staff and prospects. You block your company from finding its own identity and engaging with the people who pay the bills. ... Your competitors have never paid your bills and they never will."—Howard Mann, Your Business Brickyard: Getting Back to the Basics to Make Your Business More Fun to Run*

*Mr Mann also quotes Mike McCue, former VP/Technology at Netscape: "At Netscape the competition with Microsoft was so severe, we'd wake up in the morning thinking about how we were going to deal with them instead of how we would build something great for our customers. What I realize now is that you can never, ever take your eye off the customer. Even in the face of massive competition, don't think about the competition. Literally don't think about them."

Tom Peters posted this on 06/24/08.

Comments

In addition to the "back to basics" business wisdom in this book, I LOVED the elegant simplicity of its design, which makes you WANT to pick it up. How many biz books can you carry in your coat pocket and finish on a 90 minute flight? I'm ready for Volume 2.

Posted by John O'Leary at June 24, 2008 2:22 PM

As the world’s best coach in football (soccer to some) Sir Alex Ferguson would say - "Don't worry about the opposition - let them worry about us"

Posted by Trevor Gay at June 24, 2008 2:37 PM

Amen, brother.

Posted by Mike at June 24, 2008 4:32 PM

i have heard many opinions like that after 99 - network economy. they were justifying such statements claiming that companies are loosing globally competitive advantage. those voices were against benchmarks, best practices but also.. against MBAs, global consultancies which more or less implement the same models in all world.. one professor apeaking about it in an angry manner started speaking about closing his business school;-) not to let competitive advantage leak out..

still i this apllies to competitive advantage. there are some good practices that companies can learn from each other.. like customer service etc... and to innovate.. only innovation would save them from this hipercompetitive clash. and still i think there are many companies lacking knowledge.

Posted by Ania at June 25, 2008 2:05 AM

Your post set me free - we recently had a situation where a long-time supplier of training through our organization decided to compete and go direct - violating a long-standing channel relationship. It was hard not focusing on their every move. Since reading your post, I will know be obsessing over our customers and the experience we can give them. You are 100% right - the customer is the only one that matters. Thanks for making us better!

Tom

Posted by Tom Hood at June 30, 2008 5:01 AM