Cost of Competitive Advantage

In business, competitiveness is the tool that assures its sustainability. Business experts cleverly analyse the competitive advantage to allow their organisations to outperform their competitors.

In functional departments, managers often expect the teams to behave combatively. Doing better than others, selling more than others, bringing more customers than others to support business growth - financially or non-financially.

In society, we carry on the same attitude and we compete on everything. We count who has a higher designation than others, who has a bigger house than others, who has more social media followers than others, who bought bigger cattle than others, whose children are doing better than others, who is wearing the bigger brands, carrying the latest mobile set.

In the family, we continue the same attitude at home. Mom and dad compare who is doing more for their children, which sibling is more professionally successful, whose in-laws have better social status.

In individuals, we recognise our success or failure by the evidence of recognition and performance based on achievements.

Is it what matters most for our Long Term Sustainable Advantage?

In my opinion,

• A competitive mindset is a loop of fixed thoughts and beliefs.
• We can not drive adaptability to change with a competitive mind.
• The ongoing competitive minds will only create continuous pressure to sustain.
• Competitive minds compare and are unable to see the bigger picture behind creating continuous value for long term sustainability.
• Having that competitive mind may find external options more suitable, which may result in leaving the current company and joining the competition or leaving current the partner and joining a new one.

The simple solution to break the loop is to drive the competitive mind into a collaborative one. Moreover, if we can replace our Competitive Advantage with Collaborative Advantage, our result will multiply, we will be able to outperform, most importantly, we will remain mentally healthy even in an unstable or uncertain environment. We do not always need to diversify, we do not always need to differentiate, we do not always need to compete. Leaving that loop is an act of courage. Thinking collectively and long term is hard and hard, but it is also a suitable solution. Thinking short term win is an easy but unsustainable solution. In recent Olympics news, Simone Biles's decision to withdrew from the final is a great example of her courage to step out from the pressure of being competitive.?She took years to be eligible for Olympics, but this one event of quitting does not question her capacity! And we have much to learn from her wise choice.

It's not about I and I, I and you, You and I. It is about us. And our long term Collaborative Advantage.

Onwards,

Ayesha

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