If you simplify it, competitive behavior has two sides: those who do and those who don’t.
As I promised last week, here are some additional thoughts about what “other people do”.
While Pittsburgh, Tokyo, Mumbai and Guangzhou were investing in internet and manufacturing infrastructure…
- Did you think your infrastructure was “good enough”?
- Did you think that “Made in China” was still a joke?
- When other companies moved call centers overseas, did you follow suit in order to cut costs? Or did you follow suit because they provided better service to your customers?
When Apple was designing the iPhone and Amazon was designing the Kindle…
- What – besides stare and/or cuss under your breath – have you done to respond to those “threats”?
- If you aren’t the most strategically advanced vendor in your market – what have you done about that this year? Next year, will you be in a higher position strategically than you are now? Do you have a plan to get there?
When Amazon spent the 1990s investing in the long term, developing their e-commerce platform and despite their youth, doing e-commerce far better than anyone else, what were you up to?
- Did you spend time thinking about adding an e-commerce component to your business, or figuring out if it even made sense to do so?
- When the Kindle came out, did you buy one to better understand your newest competition?
- When Costco and WalMart started offering best sellers at or below your cost, did you complain about unfair competition or did you do something to make your business a better place for readers to buy books?
As Wal-Mart laid the foundation for today’s domination (over the last 30-40 years), and then continued to improve upon it right before your eyes – what were you up to?
- Were you making it easier to buy?
- Were you making it easier to park and enter your business?
- Were you making is easier to pay your invoice, shop, ship, get a refund, regularly place an identical order, or talk to customer service?
- Were you giving your customers more reasons than ever to come to your store instead of the local box store?
- Did you start to build(or enhance) a high-value relationship with your customers that no one in a blue vest could *ever* break?
As Mumbai built business centers out of slums, trained thousands of workers, and built a modern communications infrastructure – what did your local community do? What did your business do?
- Were you enjoying the legacy of your infrastructure built 40-50-60 years ago?
- Were you letting your city’s transportation and/or manufacturing facilities rot while holding out for another government bailout or sweetheart contract?
- Did you spend more on lobbyists in the last five years than you did on educating your employees or improving your strategic position?
As China and India were ramping up the quality and technological level of the training they deliver via secondary schools and colleges, what did you do?
- Were you complaining about your school taxes or local school boards, or were you working to help make your schools more effective and more relevant in tomorrow’s world?
- Were you complaining about parking problems caused by the local university?
- Did you tell people it was foolish to have a community college?
- Did you roll your eyes after interviewing another under-qualified job candidate?
- Did you complain about the cost of training your staff?
- Are they still running Windows 95 in your schools?
- Were you wondering when the time (and where the money) will come from to retrain teachers or administrators to take advantage of this decade’s technology shifts? Or if it will even happen…
- Have you ever looked at the budget for your local school district?
- Have you thought or said “Yeah, but we can’t do that here…”
Going south
When things go south, our culture tends to lay blame, perhaps because it can’t possibly be our fault.
The person to blame is also the one who can step up and fix it: You. Me. Most of us, in fact.
Enough waiting for someone else to do it. Enough whining. It’s past time to get to work.
Need to hear it from someone else besides me? Let Seth Godin and Kevin Kelly convince you.
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a business, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site or contact him via email at mriffey at flatheadbeacon.com.