Who Is Your Competitor?
"If you don't know where you are going, you cannot get lost!" Sound advice for a lot of drivers and travelers you would think. Rascal Rusty had once said "When in doubt, it is a safe option to ascribe any saying to Confucious. After all not too many people will be able to check back with him." Whatever be your stance on Confucious, you cannot deny that it helps to know who you define as your competition. The moment you know who your competition is or is likely to be you can start punching in that direction.
Sports makes things very simple. They mark out a territory within which you fight and the opponent is usually made to wear different colored clothes. That helps. There are of course moments in sports where such clear cut visual cues still result in mistakes. Anyone who has seen a player score a self-goal will know what I mean.
In business, there is much scope for confusion. There is no defined arena within which to compete. You could sitting pretty in your false leather couch sipping martinis and getting ready to count the money. Life is looking good. You are surrounded by the beautiful people and suddenly someone tells you that your world has crashed and that you have to crawl back into the boat and start rowing. You think that's cruel? Well, that's how life is in the fast lane. You have to keep punching away at every competitor all the time if you have to succeed. There is no room for complacency. Hence the warning - think hard and ask yourself who is your competitor. What does that fellow have that will pulverize your being - metaphorically speaking. You may not believe this, but I would recommend that you do this every few months or whenever you jump a traffic light, whichever is earlier.
You would think the Swiss know their cheese and watches. There is more to them, but we will stick to the watch industry. In the early part of the last century, the Swiss were sitting pretty on a reputation for building carefully crafted watches. A Swiss watch was a family heirloom. If you dropped it the owner was authorized to boot you out. We all accepted that state. Then Japanese watches happened. These were digital wannabes. If you dropped it, the watch would still tell the time. The once thriving watch makers of Switzerland were finding it hard to compete with the Japanese watches. Then Swatch happened in 1983 from the Corporation for Microelectronics and Watchmaking Industries, SMH. The teens loved it. It was no longer cool to wear only one watch, they said. You had to wear one for every piece of cloth. Then they said, you need a watch to reflect your mood. Round one goes to Swatch.
That was then but ask any teenager, they will tell you wearing a watch to tell the time is like so last century. Like man, you got your cell phone. Use that to set the alarm, snooze for another five minutes and then roll over in bed and call your boss to say you are late because you are caught like in one traffic jam of a lifetime. Who do you think makes the most watches today? I am told it is Nokia since every mobile handset has a watch built into it and the number of cell phone users is growing faster than corruption in some countries. Watch manufacturers not only compete with other watch manufacturers, but accessory (watch is a fashion accessory after all), and even mobile phone makers. Just being aware of who you are competing with helps you plan your responses better like running away before getting mauled by a ginomous beast.
In Sociology competition refers to the rivalry between two or more persons or groups for an object desired in common, usually resulting in a victor and a loser but not necessarily involving the destruction of the latter. In business life is less forgiving. So when leaders define the company's vision and mission, they also need to define the current and potential list of competitors. That lists needs to be frequently revised. Many market leaders define competition as "share of wallet" - and by that we don't mean your teenage children but the amount of business a company gets from specific customers.
When the teenager buys a packet of potato chips with her pocket money, the manufacturer has a share of wallet. If the next time she has it, she chooses to buy chocolates instead, the share of wallet has been redefined - this time from the salty snack segment to the sweet snack. If the next time, the teenager decides to spend her pocket money buying extra "talk time" from the mobile phone company, we have the telecom sector competing with foods. The argument goes on and on. So not only do you need to know where you are going, but it also helps to see the invisible competitors racing you to the customer's wallet.