How to keep flying in a dream…
When we talk about business one of the first things that comes to mind is “competition”, and how couldn’t it be if the market preaches this intrinsic aspect to every business as a primary issue and inherent “risk”? Analyze, always keep an eye on it, spend sleepless nights thinking “What is my competitor doing that I’m not? What does they do better than me?”. Just as we look both ways before crossing the street, or at least theoretically, having our competitor in mind is important, but how much?
Thinking about competition triggers our mind to automatically activate the competitiveness feature: “I have to compete and I have to win!”. But this reaction deeply rooted in our subconscious holds in itself a trap that we do not look at first: we get extremely limited! Our neural network, coupled with our most primitive survival instincts safely accommodated within the amygdala for millions of years, function as a virtual machine at the moment they are faced with a threat.
Our brain captures the immediately available information as if it was the only thing in the existence at the time to feed the “fight, flight or freeze” response, and nothing else, creating a virtual scenario from scratch with all possibilities, increasing the chance of survival in that given moment. The problem is that we are limited to the resources around us, failing to see much beyond them and keeping us always in the same reach of ideas and solutions of our competitors. Does this sound good to you, by any chance? For me it’ss clearly being doomed to stagnation one step behind the competition.
Maybe you disagree, but in my opinion, to make competition obsolete you have to use creativity and it’s directly opposed to the competitive perspective. Understand that I’m not judging if one is better than another or which one you should use, for both are part of a much larger perspective. My goal here is to show how balance is a crucial part of a good strategy.
You know when you are flying in a dream and when you realize it you fall because you have become aware of the fact and do not know how to consciously continue the action and the more you think the more you fall? Well, “competitiveness” is like the conscious act of flying and “creativity” is the automatic mechanism that was allowing us to fly unconsciously. So when you just think about competing you are actually leaving out the one thing that gives you real edge over your competitors and allows you to make them obsolete.
The different ways to balance the focus between competitiveness and creativity must integrate a good strategy, and it’s equally important to remember that everything we do is itself part of a strategy, whether consciously or not. My recommendation: redefine “competitiveness” as just another input to creativity that can lead to the innovation that will make your competitors obsolete.
