If your business plan talks about achieving an edge over your competitors, it’s falling short.
Words like ‘edge’ and ‘advantage’ to describe your competitive intent lack the visceral dimension to create lasting success.
Let’s talk about crippling the efforts of your competitors and prevailing over them.
Being better isn’t good enough.
Sustained success comes from assaulting the competition with the sole purpose of dominating them.
Here’s why:
1. Incremental thinking gets incremental results. An edge to me connotes being slightly better; it is simply not good enough. It implies that you are inches ahead when you really need to be miles ahead to assure longer term success.
2. Bold outcomes need to be achieved to survive. Set a bold goal and you have a better chance of achieving significant progress. Set a weak goal and unfortunately you may achieve it.
3. ‘Dominate’ and ‘assault’ represent a state of strategic mind. A way of thinking. They challenge us to gain quantum leaps. Our customers, employees and owners have a right to expect such outcomes.
4. A domination outcome requires customer value creation of a different scale than a competitive edge strategy. To dominate, HUGE value must be created for customers constantly in unrelenting fashion. A casual approach will not work.
5. The ‘word’ drives organizational energy. How much juice is created with mild milk-toast intent? An adrenalin rush inside your warriors is needed to execute your strategy. ‘Lets go get an edge!’ is not likely to arouse the passion as much as ‘Lets go dominate and cripple them!’ No energy = No execution.
6. True competitive spirit comes through emotion not the intellect. You can’t intellectualize yourself to beat your competitors. You need people who will go to war to create customer loyalty and prevent the hordes from entering your turf. Language IS strategic. Words that appeal to the right brain will help drive the behavior needed.
7. Sustainable differences are needed. Long term success comes from a relentless, constant strategic push. Domination implies a long time horizon. Edge doesn’t even come close.
My reader might say that such strong words are inappropriate; they’re ‘not dignified; they’re ‘unbecoming’ and ‘unprincipled’.
To this I say we, as leaders are charged with the responsibility of creating customer VALUE in the market to ensure people have meaningful and fulfilling work and to ensure that owners get paid.
Tough task. Horrendous roadblocks.
It requires toughness, a high pain tolerance and a strategy that WINS over the long term. If the language that goes along with achieving this purpose offends some, so be it.
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