The Competition Is Real

by | May 24, 2023 | Leadership

In the dark, early mornings, it is tempting to think that all is quiet and peaceful. You might think that at that hour, the world is filled with people still in bed or slowly getting ready to start the day.

It’s not. Even at that hour, there are plenty of people getting up to bring their best.

By 5am my gym is FULL of people getting after it.  Many of them (like me) cram in some learning from podcasts while they train. I even see people with books on the stair-stepper. Hotel gyms are often full in the mornings too.

There are plenty of people up early to grind and improve.

Here’s the point: There will always be a population of people out there ready to hustle and bring their best. You may not ever see them, but they are out there.

Some of these will be working for your competition. And they want what you have. They want your customers. They want your market share. They want to thrive more than they want you to thrive.

Every team you are on has competition out there somewhere.

So ask yourself:

Is your accounting/Finance/marketing/HR/Operations/Leadership team as hungry/gritty/disciplined/focused/skilled as your competition?

Or are they suffering from being too comfortable?

Many teams are working below their potential. It is often a result of being too comfortable.

When teams are comfortable, their alignment is often off. They may hesitate to be accountable for results versus tasks. They might make things more complicated than they need to be. They can get dragged down into the urgent and forget about the important.

And that’s a big risk.

Competition is constant and unrelenting. Believe it when I say someone wants to eat your lunch.

I don’t say this to scare you. I say this to fire you up.

Get gritty and ready to fight to help your customers in more and better ways every day. Don’t get complacent. Constantly work to improve as a team. (If you are not getting better you are probably getting worse.) ALTERNATIVELY you can HOPE the competition is very comfortable and simply doesn’t want to win more than you. To that I might invoke my good friend Red from Shawshank Redemption…