|
|
|
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2005. THE FRESNO BEE Whether the lion or the gazelle, competition makes you better In a Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams, the boss says to two of his managers: “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that huge companies like us can’t compete against small, nimble companies. The good news is that at this rate, we’ll soon he the smallest company around.” No doubt about it, 2005 is going to be a very competitive year for businesses, both large and small. Of the 500 companies on the Standard & Poor’s Index-in 1957, only 74 still were on the list in 1998. Fast forward to 2020, and do you know what will happen? More than 325 of the S&P 500 companies will most likely be firms we don’t know about or may not even exist today. And many of the firms included on the index today will have fallen by the wayside. As will many of their employees. Competition is healthy. It keeps you sharp. It makes you better. It improves quality. Love your opponent — the only one who makes you as good as you can be. Former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey was once a famous basketball star at Princeton University and later with the New York Knicks. When he was at Princeton, Bradley’s father used to tell him, “Son, when you’re not out practicing, someone else is. And when you meet that person, he’s going to beat you.” In Minnesota, we’re in the heart of winter right now, and you won’t find many dead squirrels on the roadside like you do in summer. Why? In summer nuts are plentiful, and it’s easy for even the slowest squirrel to survive. With easy living the squirrels get fat and lazy and cars pick them off In winter, things are just the opposite. Nuts are few and far between and they have to hustle to survive. The fat and lazy squirrels have all gone to their maker. The survivors are sleek, fast and smart. No cars catch them unaware. One could say the same thing about businesses that become complacent and lose their old fire-in-the-belly. This leaves them wide open to business predators that soon put an end to their well-being. Steve Jobs, the computer genius who co-found-ed Apple Computer, was and is a very charismatic leader of technical people. When his group was designing Apple’s new Macintosh computer, Jobs flew a pirate flag over his building. Its purpose? To signify his team’s determination to blow the competition out of the water. You can’t be complacent or arrogant. Herb Kelleher, head of Southwest Airlines, preaches that arrogance is the greatest danger to a successful company. He says, “A company is never more vulnerable to complacency than when it is at the height of its success.” Amen. Looking back on his extraordinary career of 35 years, NASCAR driving legend Richard Petty noted that during his first 20 years of racing, he had an excellent record of winning. He won the Daytona 500 seven times. However, in the late 1970s, his career went into a decline from which it never recovered. Other racing teams had gone high-tech, refining their cars with ever-more sophisticated engineering, while the Petty team was complacent and set in their ways. We’d been winning steadily for 20 years and decided we wouldn’t change,” Petty said. “We should have led the way in developing new technologies, but we didn’t even follow.” Petty, one of the greatest drivers in racing history, ended his career without a win in his last eight years. It goes to show that resistance to change and complacency can defeat any person or organization, no matter how talented. Playing by the rules set by the leader in an industry is certain death over time. The leader understands the rules better. The leader designed them. A better approach is to change the rules of play that fit your modus operandi. By changing the rules of play, you neutralize and sometimes paralyze the leaders. There is an old saying in Africa that goes like this: Every morning, a gazelle gets up and knows that it must outrun the fastest lion or it will get eaten. And every morning, a lion gets up and knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. So, whether you are a gazelle or a lion, every morning when you get up, you’d better start running. - MACKAY’S MORAL: If you can’t win, make the person ahead of you break the record. Harvey Mackay can be reached at Mackay Envelope Corp., 2100 Elm St., Minneapolis, MN 55414 His e-mail address is Harvey@Mackay.com; Web site — http://www.mackay.com. In the book of PHILIPPIANS in the Bible, written by Paul, the 3rd chapter states this so well. He writes for us to pursue Jesus in this same way, in the 13 & 14 verses he says, I strain toward the mark---bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing, the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. |