Don’t Get Dragged Around By The Competition

Simply put, being too reactive to your competition will eventually sink your company. If you’re too focused on what your competition is doing, then you’re not focused enough on your own strategy. If you’re always thinking about counter attacks, you’re not thinking with a clear head. This pattern can actually become your strategy if you’re not careful. As a small company, your biggest advantage is your focus and you can’t let anything get in the way of that.

Over the weekend I was reminded of this in a very unexpected way…while playing a family board game called Blokus. This is actually a pretty cool game for all ages where the object is to place as many of your block shaped pieces on the board as you can. The more people that play, the tougher it gets because the board fills up quickly. The one with the least blocks left at the end, wins.

I’ve developed a pretty simple and effective strategy for this game and it tends to work most of the time. So, I had a pretty solid strategy going in.

We played the first game, I followed my strategy and it worked to perfection. Winner! So, now I’m feeling pretty good and actually found myself wanting to preserve my Blokus family superiority. In hindsight, I was actually tightening up a bit and playing to not lose instead of playing to win. You could say that the competition was starting to distract me.

We’re starting to get near the end of the game and it’s pretty clear to me that my dad and I were going down to the wire. So, instead of sticking to my tried and true strategy that’s worked so well in the past, I started paying too much attention to his moves and reacting. I was more focused on making sure he lost instead of being focused on me winning. Because of my loss of focus, I missed several moves that would have won it for me. At the end, we tied. I let the competition dictate my strategy. Game over.

This is a silly and fun example, but also a pretty good lesson. Don’t let this be your company. Competitive awareness is good but don’t let it turn into your strategy. Pick your focus, set a plan of attack, put your head down and go for it!