“And He Kicks Children in the Face,” and Other Insane Approaches to Competing

October 27, 2010 By 10 Comments

Right or WrongAs business leaders, we make decisions every day about how our firms and our people compete.

Most of us choose to focus on creating value and solving problems. A few resort to “win at all” costs type behaviors. This latter group poses some vexing problems for those of us that prefer the high-road style of competing for business, but the problems are not insurmountable.

The current competition for political office offers an interesting learning opportunity for all of us. And just when you think that the negative attack ads cannot become any more blatant or vicious, this season’s crop of politicians have managed to outdo themselves.

Political Buffoonery is the New Competitive Strategy:

Political ads this season have in my observation managed to hit a new high in audacity and ridiculousness, correlating to a new low on my informal Fair Competition Meter.

Perhaps it’s the state that I live in: Illinois, where serving as Governor typically translates into indictment on several counts and some quality time in jail, but the attack ads are over the top this year. And darned funny in some cases.

I love (He says sarcastically) the ones that put some real heart into their production value. They typically start out with soft music, a soft voice and a pleasant scene, right before resolving into something that positions the hapless opponent as someone sent from the lowest tier of Dante’s Inferno on a mission to lure us back into the pit.  I would love to be a fly on the wall in the production meetings for these ridiculous commercials. Sadly, they probably do sway some voters.

My favorite dumb political ad comes from our friends up north in Winnipeg.  This video starts out with the expected claims about the incompetent incumbent mayor and resolves with what can only be described as an emmy-winning scene produced by complete morons.  I’m sorry, but I laughed out loud at the ending of this commercial, because I cannot believe that someone actually thought to package this scene and use the words, “And he kicks children in the face,” in an ad. (Note: it’s not clear whether this ad is genuine or a spoof, but enjoy the chuckle, and frankly, it’s not far off of what we’re seeing and hearing ever day.)

Six Ideas on Forming the Right Competitive Culture:

1. Choose to compete with class and professionalism. We all choose our style of competing in business. We have the opportunity to attack and assassinate the character of our competitors, or, we can go about winning business with class and professionalism. Opting for the latter doesn’t mean that you don’t compete with ferocity, it just means that you do so in a manner that allows you to comfortably look in the mirror at yourself.

2. Use negative competition as rocket fuel for your team. Competition is inherent in business (and life). Recognize it as fuel that catalyzes action and drives improvement. Use it to motivate, energize and foster innovation.

3. Don’t flirt with character disaster. The philosophy of “Win at All Costs” is an invitation to flirt with and engage in unethical behavior. Resist the flirtation. The cost of your character should be higher than winning the next deal.

4. Negative attacks showcase hollow strategies. Attacking competitors in front of your customer shows how weak and unarmed you truly are. The negative attack is the last resort of the desperate and incompetent. If you have no way to truly create value for your customer, your last and best attempt is to discredit your opponent. This is not a sustainable strategy.

5. Recognize that some people buy the negative sell and you cannot control it. Don’t reduce yourself to your competitor’s level and start launching missiles in return. Focus on solving problems, creating value and resist being baited into a war of mutual destruction.  You might lose once in awhile to your muck-raking competitor. That’s OK. The negative buyer is typically the worst kind of customer.

6. Don’t be baited into playing the game. It is good to understand your competitor’s style and tactics. However, resist the urge to build your messaging as a point-counter-point response. Instead, ensure that your process of engaging the client and building value for your offerings makes the negative attacks look like the childish, desperate attempts that they truly are.

The Bottom-Line for Now

Negative political ads are as old as this republic (and older), and likely won’t disappear anytime soon. That’s too bad. The same goes for negative tactics in business.  As a leader, you set the tone for how your firm and your team members compete. I vote to focus on creating meaningful differentiation from my competitors and to putting all of our energy into solving customer problems. While the noise from the muck-raking competitors is annoying, it’s rarely fatal to anyone other than those raking the muck in the first place.

Filed Under: Leadership, Marketing, Values Tagged With: , , ,

Avoiding Another Dumb Management Mania-The Disposable Worker

January 20, 2010 By 9 Comments

Don't Fall Off the CliffNote from Art: my rant is dedicated to helping keep what is in some circumstances a reasonable business tactic from becoming the latest value-destroying mania.

I wrote last week on “Thoughts on Leading and Managing in the Era of the Disposable Worker.” The post was prompted by an article in BusinessWeek, outlining this latest gem of management wisdom that has organizations of all types rethinking the need for employees and shifting to contract workers.   Positions from the CEO suite to those types of roles that we’ve become accustomed to outsourcing, and everything in-between, are fair game.

I’m traditionally leery of fads of all sorts, as they tend to be driven by hysteria, causing normally sane and rational people to act in a manner that defies explanation. I’m fearful that we are on the brink of another horrendous, value-destroying mania as we embrace the short-term cost convenient fad of creating disposable workers.

A Few Examples of Manias Gone Horribly Wrong:

It wasn’t’ so long ago, that almost everyone wondered for just a moment whether the laws of economics had been suspended as the internet gold rush began. Those of us on the sidelines were left to wonder why we weren’t as smart as everyone else and still valued profits over clicks and eyeballs.  For a short period of time, our world was one where gobs of money flowed to people with ideas that included losing all of it and then some, and market valuations for firms without a single customer exploded from here to Jupiter.  Anyone that dared to question this environment ended up running away from a bunch of options-toting visionaries lest they be trampled in the stampede of outrage. How dare we not understand that clicks and eyeballs were the new replacement for profits and that anyone that could throw around the phrase “data aggregation” was worth funding.

Eventually, the laws of physics and economics reasserted themselves, the dot come bubble burst and we spent a decade creating a new mania in the housing market.  Once again, the rules of common sense and gravity won out, yet tens of millions of normally rational people succumbed to the mania and many have lost much more than paper options.

As a wise teacher once indicated, “There is no such thing as a money machine.”

Opinions, Thoughts and Irreverent Observations on this Potential Next Mania:

All of this brings me back to the latest rage of firing your employees and hiring contract workers to staff your business.  For those of you new Management Messiahs that are leading the charge here, I have a few questions, observations and answers for you:

  • Opinion: Turn core, value-creating roles into contract workers, and you will be selling your soul to pay the number crunchers and analysts.
  • Opinion: You cannot sustain any form of business performance excellence with a transient workforce.
  • Question: How will you replace that invisible but palpable thing called culture and how will you build a high performance culture around nameless, faceless drones?
  • Observation: Once your competitors identify all of the talent that you’ve alienated, it will be open hunting season and you’re what’s for dinner.
  • Observation: your global competitors are not foregoing their futures by emphasizing the numbers in the present.  A short-term time orientation is a powerful dimension of U.S. business culture and thinking, and it is a weakness.
  • Question and Name Calling: Why is this your BEST answer for competing?  Is that all you’ve got?
  • Double-Dog Dare: Study firms that have made a near religion out of valuing the employee.  Start with SAS Institute.  There is another way if you have the courage.
  • You’ve Been Served: in case “maximizing shareholder value” is driving your decisions, consider Drucker’s rebuke of that modern rationalization for the organization: “the purpose of the firm is to acquire and keep customers.”

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The future of business and any company and perhaps of America is based on finding, cultivating and keeping the best talent.  There are no circumstances that I can imagine where shifting core value creation roles to contract workforces will help you succeed in this increasingly complex world.  Resist the urge to follow the herd and challenge yourself and your team to focus on solving vexing customer problems and building value in meaningful ways.

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Performance Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Increase Your Team’s Global Awareness or Risk Being Run Over

December 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Run OverNote from Art: this post is written from the perspective of U.S. industry and business.   For my many overseas readers, I suspect that you face similar issues with slightly different context. Also, I’ve endeavored to not stray too far into the political arena on this topic, although in my opinion, the politicians and their policies are at the root of many of the current problems.  Of course, we as citizens hold the key to solving that issue.  However, that’s another post for another day.

Consider this post as one of robust encouragement versus a scolding.

Too many of our businesses, business leaders, citizens and politicians fail to understand, pay attention to or even appreciate the impact of the ever-changing global business environment. Or, if they do appreciate the impact, many are caught like the proverbial “deer in the headlights,” staring as the global competitors approach at an accelerating rate.

We’ve all known for a long time that the world is flattening and the advance of global trade in large part through the elimination of historical trade barriers has created a rising tide effect. We also know that for some countries, the tide has risen and continues to rise faster than for others.  Consider the emergence of South Korea, India and China as economic powers over the past two decades as three prime examples.

In my own career experience, embracing the creeping globalism and leveraging the powerful forces behind it to compete and profit have been and continue to be much like breathing.  However, step outside of the walls of your global giant or innovative tech start-up and spend some time in one of thousands of little industrial parks around the country, and you are liable to find very different circumstances.

Much of my work now occurs inside smaller firms that sprouted from entrepreneurial seeds and specialized know-how.  These firms lived and thrived for a time and many have grown considerably during the past twenty years.  A good number of these firms are specialized manufacturers or packagers and instead of expanding and adding to the job rolls in their communities, many are on the brink of extinction as a result of failing to adapt to and embrace a global world.

Disturbingly, instead of searching for solutions, adapting their strategies or even taking on the tough task of reinventing their businesses, many of these firms and individuals are standing in the road staring at impending collision and death. Often, their first response is to reach out to the politicians for “protection,” but the reality is that artificial barriers do more damage than good.

In part, I believe a root cause of this seeming inability to move and adapt stems from a still very-much-alive global ignorance on the part of U.S. business owners and operators, as well as everyday citizens. Whether it is ignorance or arrogance or, as I suspect, a bit of both, many of us lack context for anything outside of our own culture and language.  Some of my clients are puzzled at how quickly their businesses have declined and didn’t see it coming.  Much of this stems from a “head in the sand” view of the world.

Wake up people! It’s a big, competitive, inter-connected world filled with firms that want to eat you for lunch and spit out the bones.

While there are no easy or quick cures for coping with global competitors or having to serve customers that demand the lowest prices, you can certainly improve your chances of survival by challenging yourself and your team to become citizens and competitors of the world, not just American business-people and firms. You need to consider the future of your business armed with the context of a much bigger picture than the one from your office window in the suburbs of Chicago or Detroit.

A Few Starting Suggestions for Improving Your Global Awareness:

  • Instead of glossing over the World News sections of the Wall Street Journal, study it closely.  Subscribe to publications like The Economist and The Financial Times, where much of the perspective comes from outside the U.S.
  • Watch carefully and monitor as the new global economic battleground is increasingly shaped by countries other than the U.S.
  • Support the global education of your team and hire talent with a global experience.
  • Identify partners to help extend your reach or improve your ability to source and compete on the global stage.
  • Seek out the many resources available from the U.S. Government, local Business Development Centers and of course, qualified consultants.
  • Constantly rethink your business strategy from a global perspective.
  • If you don’t have a strategy, it’s time to get one.
  • Pay attention to the manipulations and machinations of our elected officials on global trade issues.  That special interest they are protecting today might sew the seeds of your industry’s doom tomorrow.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

There are no easy answers or simple solutions to playing and competing successfully in this fast changing and very, very tough global world.  However, you might start by jumping out of the way of that oncoming global competitor.  It’s time to raise your game by raising your team’s global IQ and then doing something with this knowledge.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Crisis Leadership, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,