Your One And Only Competitive Edge
By Dave Anderson
What an incredible time to be in business! The pace of change and certainty of uncertainty is exhilarating! The nerds we belittled in school have won. The stock market value of Microsoft and Intel combined is greater than the total stock market values of: General Motors, Ford, Kellogg, Caterpillar, Kodak, Boeing and J.P. Morgan. Out with the stodgy "old guard," in with the fast, fun age of the brain wave.
More change: Customers are smarter and pickier. They demand faster processes, better products, "WOW" service, less hassle and lower prices. And if we don't deliver, they don't have to come to our dealership. Instead, someone who has never sold a car, who owns an Internet company that brokers cars, will buy the car from us and deliver it.
And more change: Generation "X" and "Y" workers are the biggest free agents ever. They want more power, respect, freedom and remuneration than past generations. If the grass is greener, color them gone.
And more change still: Manufacturers need therapy to sort out their identity crisis: What is our role? What do we want? Who should we buy? How should we sell? When will they learn? Where will it end? With all the other challenges on our plate, the words of a dying-and betrayed-Caesar seem appropriate, "Et tu Brute?"
Considering the commotion, how do we develop an edge? How do we shine amid competitive complexity? Here are four strategies that aren't the answerand one that is:
1. Location: It ain't what it used to be. The Internet is shrinking the world. Distance is dead. Great locations will become less significant and those in the "boonies" will be less geographically impaired. With the right people, message, service and product, you can build it anywhere and they will come.
2. Technology: Little technology is proprietary and most can be copied in short order. Technology will level the playing field for anyone willing to buy it. No real edge here.
3. Employee Empowerment: This buzzword has been so overused and abused I need Pepto-Bismol when I hear it. It's pointless to empower employees when they work in restrictive, hierarchy-heavy environments where managers treat initiative like insubordination. And it does more harm than good when poorly trained people are empowered: after all, when you empower an idiot, the only logical result is an empowered idiot. Until managers understand empowerment is an environmental issue first and a people issue second, efforts to empower will continue only to sap morale.
4. Cutting Costs: Yes, it's important-but it's not an edge. After the excesses of past decades, more businesses have become proficient at controlling costs. But you cannot shrink your way to greatness. And while cutting jobs is hard work, creating them is pure genius. Besides, when most managers wield the axe, they cut the wrong things: training, benefits and customer care. They treat advertising as a sacred cow since they're too lazy and/or incompetent to strike at the root of their problem-developing better people and happier customers- and instead hack at the leaves: buying more customers to replace the ones they run off with poorly-trained people and inefficient systems.
So what's the "secret" to a competitive edge? It's no secret at all: It's people. Okay, that's the easy part. The tough part-the "catch"-is that the quality of your people, attracting, developing and retaining them is dependent upon the quality of your personal leadership and that of your managers. That's tougher. Here's why:
One of the great dangers for organizations today is the high number of people in leadership positions who aren't leaders. They're good managers: smart with systems, processes and controls, wielding sharp pencils with bottom-line focus. Good management is vital to the survival of our business; these managers lack a balance of leadership ability. They don't inspire, cast vision, develop people, take risks, make tough decisions, think creatively or build work environments rooted in focus, energy and urgency. They don't understand how to leverage momentum, grasp the value of going for big gains, or have a philosophy and strategy to build a team of all-stars instead settling for a mob of also-rans. They fail to communicate uncomfortably high performance standards and don't hold people accountable. They won't collaborate, listen or seek feedback, opting for command-and-control operating styles.
They're hung up on hierarchy, comfortable with bureaucracy and resist flattening structures and increasing speed. They have an unhealthy and unnatural affection for the status quo, are wed to strategies of the past and have ceased growing and demanding enough from themselves. They are efficient when they should be effective, maintain when they should grow, are distant when they must be accessible and spend major time and money on minor things and minor time and money on the majors. They boast of being "open to change" but fail to do so until they're stampeded into it. They're enamored with success, embracing it and playing it safe, sitting on the ball when they should be running up the score. They'd rather imitate than initiate, prefer being served over serving others, value titles more than teams and place more protocol on position than performance.
Too many "leaders" would rather talk than train, criticize than coach, menace than mentor. Thus, they reap average performances from nice, mediocre people who deep down inside want a mission, not a job, but are conditioned to comply with "getting by" instead of committing to excellence. Most managers have a corrupt understanding of leadership, were never trained to lead, become a lid on the people they're leading and an anchor around the organizations they're running.
If you want a competitive advantage, it starts with you and your leaders. You'll have to give more than lip service to the worn-out expression, "people are our best assets" and start putting your money where your mouth is by providing quality coaches, effective training and creating a focused, fast, friendly, flexible and fun environment. You won't "manage" your people to become your competitive edge; you'll have to lead them there. After all, "managers" are a dime-a-dozen. They're easy to find and cheap to keep. Leadership makes the difference because, while management works on systems, leaders work on people and people will be your edge when -and only when-you and your top managers have the personal leadership ability to attract, develop and retain other key people. When this happens, you will have an insanely unfair edge over your competition.
Dave Anderson is president of The Dave Anderson Corporation, a sales, management and leadership training concern. danderson@dealeronline.com
