As A Leader, Welcome Common Enemies

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As A Leader, Welcome Common Enemies

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I have talked before about the loneliness of the leader. You feel it most strongly when things are going badly. The entrepreneur, in particular, owns the company and carries the ultimate responsibility. I am reminded of ship captains in the age of sail. They were responsible for getting their passengers and cargo safely to the destination while dealing with terrible weather and even worse pirates. The modern company captain faces different dangers, but the responsibility is just as real. People's livelihoods depend on the decisions we make. Get things badly wrong and we can bankrupt the company or become vulnerable to a takeover that destroys what we have built. When a powerful competitor appears, though, there is another way to look at the situation. That rival may actually become one of the leader's most useful tools. Why can a strong competitor actually help a leader? A powerful external competitor can give the team a common enemy, creating greater unity, urgency and commitment around winning in the marketplace. Instead of allowing the rival to generate fear, the leader can use the competitive threat as a rallying cry. This becomes particularly important when industries are disrupted. The Covid years damaged long-established companies across sectors affected by lockdowns, government restrictions, declining customer demand and supply-chain problems. M&A activity followed and, in many cases, the strong devoured the weak. Perhaps your company survived. Great. But now you may be facing larger, better-funded competitors with greater resources. That can be terrifying. Or it can provide the team with a clear external challenge around which everyone can unite. The leader's job is to convert anxiety into purposeful action. Do now: When a powerful competitor appears, don't communicate only the danger. Frame the challenge around what the team can collectively do to win. Why are internal enemies so destructive to organisations? Competition should be directed outside the company rather than between divisions, departments or ambitious individuals inside it. Internal rivalry consumes energy that should be directed toward winning customers and beating genuine competitors. I have experienced this myself. In big organisations, ambitious people sometimes eye your patch and decide they should be running it instead of you. Before you know it, the elbows come out. Political alliances form. People start protecting territory. Information gets withheld. The other division gradually becomes "the enemy". This is madness. The customer doesn't care about your internal politics. Neither does your external competitor. While everyone inside the organisation is busy fighting over the main deck, the real pirates may be pulling alongside the ship. Well-run companies squash destructive internal rivalry before it develops momentum. Do now: Make it absolutely clear that the competitor is outside the organisation. Internal functions may disagree, but they should ultimately be fighting on the same side. How should smaller companies respond to powerful competitors? Smaller companies should resist trying to match larger rivals dollar-for-dollar or entering destructive price wars; they need to compete through differentiated value. When a powerful competitor starts flooding the market with advertising, smaller companies can feel helpless. Usually, we don't have unlimited financial reserves. Trying to match their advertising spend may simply burn through the cash we need elsewhere. Price wars are equally dangerous. They are a race to the bottom, and the bigger rival may have enough financial muscle to absorb the pain much longer than we can. So don't fight exclusively on their terms. Instead, ask how you can strengthen the value offering. Perhaps the product line-up needs changing. Maybe the packaging of the offer needs adjusting. Perhaps customers need a clearer reason to choose you rather than the larger competitor. Differentiation becomes the battlefield. Do now: Instead of asking how you can match a larger competitor's spending or pricing, identify where your value proposition can become meaningfully different and stronger. How can leaders persuade teams to accept competitive change? Leaders can use the external competitive threat to explain why change is necessary, but they must create urgency without generating panic. This is a delicate balancing act. As with many things in Japan, adjusting to change isn't necessarily the strongest suit of every team. People may prefer the familiar processes, products and methods that have worked until now. But tough times demand tough changes. The external competitor can help the leader make the case. "We aren't changing this because management suddenly became bored with the existing system. We are changing because the market has changed, our competitors have changed and we need to become stronger." People generally don't enjoy the idea of being beaten by a rival. Use that competitive pride. The ...

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