I’ve been thinking a lot about competition lately. We compete in business, politics, global affairs, sports, and even in many personal pursuits (I know people who live in angst because they have fewer twitter followers than a competitor). Competition can be good because it can bring out the best in us, but other times it can be ugly and harmful. The trick is knowing how to manage our competitive instincts.
One easy junkyard tip to share on this is to first identify who your competition is.
A recent conversation had me thinking about how our competitive natures can interfere with our effectiveness because it can cloud our thinking. It’s not the competition itself that is a problem. The problem is not fully understanding who our competition is. We begin to see partners as competitors.
In ministry, for instance, the competition is not the colleague down the hall who “steals” volunteers from you. In non-profit work, the competition is not the other non-profit that is doing work much like yours. In business, the competition is not the labor union, the boss who won’t give you a raise, or the supplier that wants a high margin. In all of those instances, these folks need to be part of the team that help you compete. Mislabeling them as the competition creates a lot of headaches. So job #1 should be to identify the competition before you jump into competiton mode.
When I was in my late 20’s I was managing properties that had about 400 tenants. With each tenant I negotiated or dealt with a lease, an annual rent raise, maintenance problems, possible late payments, or even an eviction process. Since I spent so much time negotiating or resolving problems with the tenants, and since it was often contentious, it was easy to see them as the competition.
But they were not my competition. This became clear to me when a tenant had a lease ending and asked about extending it. I told them I’d consider some numbers and call them back. Before calling them back, I got a phone call from the owner of the property right next door to my tenant. It turns out that my tenant was also leasing space from the neighbor. The neighboring property owner wanted me to work with him and dramatically raise our rents on this tenant because, as he said, “They have no where else to go and have to pay whatever we demand, so if we stick together on pricing we can get a lot more money out of them.”
At first glance this was a tempting idea. But I quickly realized that I was confusing who my competition was. The competition was this neighboring property owner, not my tenant. My tenant was a partner who paid the rents…which paid the mortgage, the property taxes, the insurance, my staff, and me. The neighbor was a competitor hidden in sheeps clothing.
Having figured that out, I acted accordingly. Suffice to say that my neighbor was not pleased that I wouldn’t play his monopoly game, and my tenant was happy to sign an extension that kept them as a good partner for another 10-years. It worked out great for me and my tenant. Not so great for my neighbor.
Competition can be a very good thing. Just remember to figure out who your competition is first.