If the 2017 Super Bowl champions played the 1967 Super Bowl champions, what would be the outcome? Most likely, it would be a rout – a basketball score for the winner, possibly a triple digit score. The great Vince Lombardi Packers destroyed by the Patriots – how could that be? It would happen through 50 years of nonstop competitive evolution.
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I love competition and I am wired to compete, sometimes to a fault. I recall trash talking to my seven-year-old son during a game of Chutes and Ladders. That’s just how warped an untethered competitor can be. I wonder what I did to my son’s psyche from those early competitions? He is 26 now and I think he turned out OK, I say tongue in cheek with a question mark.
During high school I would cut classes so I could work out more to be more competitive. In college, all I cared about was competing. School was for sports, right? I competed in two sports during college, an individual sport in the spring and a team sport in the fall. I much preferred team sports as they relate to life and just the overall dynamic, a team win is an indescribable feeling. We may see business as war but I prefer to use the sport/competition analogy as it is less violent.
In business, I have the same mindset – COMPETE! There are times that I go through a phase of an overflow of operational and bureaucratic noise and I lose my way, mired in what I don’t like to be involved in. This barrage of cacophony waters down and usurps my competitive spirit. The fact is I am writing this article to reenergize my passion for competition to get those innovation juices flowing! All of you reading this have had this happen to you – weighed down by the junk of running a business.
I am in many ways a person of the glass-half-full group. If my company were cheese, it would be Swiss cheese, because all I see are the holes. The empty spaces of our ineffectiveness. For a competitor, that just means an opportunity to get stronger, because a competitor never rests on his laurels.
Do I respect my business competitors? I not only respect them, I need them. We need competition and in the absence of competition, I think a good manager will manufacture it. My overall won/lost record is probably not very good with the caveat that I always think of a loss as an education. I can apply those lessons to both myself and my company’s evolution. I am always on the lookout for the next “business athlete” who can join our team. I do my best to recruit for those types. You know the kind of person I mean; they are a lot like YOU.
I will leave you with three quotes:
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi
“Avoid your competitor’s strength, and attack their weakness.” – Paraphrased from Sun Tzu
“If you just think you are good – you are gonna get your butt kicked.” – Don Davies