Are you able to see the "Bigger Picture"?

When your competitor’s business is undergoing crisis, which may have a negative impact on its earnings for few quarters. How should you respond?

Should you:

a.      see it as lifetime opportunity to highlight and propagate it and gain market share?

b.      hire an agency to create ads and make the world aware that your organization is not facing such crisis which competitor is going through, thus yours is a “cleaner” organization?

c.      Poach the distributor, channel partner of your competitor and increase your geographical reach resulting in increase in sales, profitability?

For some it may seem to be a right move. They may argue, after all its business and there is nothing wrong in capitalizing on this opportunity, it’s all fair in love, war, and business. Ethics and values are no more important to them. Concept of Co-existence is a foolish idea. Such moves are short-lived. The market share gained doesn’t last long. We have seen this during Maggi crisis in 2015.

In this Obsession of tracking what the competitor is doing and how to beat them, businesses lose track of its purpose. These businesses do not know what business they are in. Their purpose gets restricted to profitability and market share, the near-sighted focus on competing in existing space rather than seeing “Bigger Picture” of what customer wants. They suffer from Marketing Myopia- A term coined by Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt. The businesses or organizations having such characteristics have either matured or are in a declining stage of their life cycle.  

For a well-educated youth ready to join the workforce or for an entrepreneur willing to create something different, how much sense does it make to think of beginning a career or entering such organization or industry? Well, it depends.

 Being part of an industry or organization which believes in creating demand rather than exploiting demand, making competition irrelevant rather than be part of competition obsessed ecosystem, believe in co-existence of organizations, believe in creating superior product and delivering superior customer experience, ready to listen rather than dictate, and last but not the least being close to its customers….the probability of being relevant and opportunity to grow and prosper is exponentially higher.

Conditioned to the idea of being part of the crowd and feeling of that illusionary “security” stops you.

To quote Robert Frost,

“ I shall be telling this with a sigh,

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”