Business Success: Achieving Competitive Advantage
One of the keys to business success is competitive advantage. Lots of businesses talk about it or for it, but very few really understand it. Basically, competitive advantage means being different – a difference that’s substantive, not cosmetic. To achieve that difference, the key people in the business need to actually lead, behave and be different. Different from what? From the norm.
Research indicates that normal people are all the same, they use their mind the same, they behave in the same automatic and reactive way and that they are dysfunctional because they only apply about 1% of their mental capacity to what they do – their mind is otherwise engaged in the formative past of their childhood years. These long-gone experiences enable the normal person get through the day, but achieve little else.
So, it is quite bizarre that, in these challenging times, businesses that want to achieve success continually recruit only those with a proven track record and past experience. Track record in what? In doing the same things, the same ways that led to the economic disaster that we are now living through. I have a client, an innovative thinker and doer, who is finding it difficult to get consulting work in banking. Banks only wish to recruit people with either previous banking or major banking consultancy experience – people who have a track record in… well, let’s be blunt about it, creating the current mess. Let’s have more of the same, eh?!
Real difference, which leads to real competitive advantage and abnormal business success, comes about as a result of a business’s leadership behaving substantively different. And if these people are normal, there is simply no hope whatsoever of their behaving abnormally. Perhaps that’s why there is such little evidence of real leadership – either in politics or business. So-called “Leadership Development Programs” in business are simply relying on broken management theories and are creating a whole new breed of normal, crazy, lazy, automatons who cannot lead.
Real leadership comes from vision and presence. Presence, the hallmark of all great leaders, simply means that those who have it are more present than the normal poor half-wits who are only 1% present. If you want to be a real leader, you’re going to have to develop your ability to be present. There’s no weird complex formula for doing this, nor can only the chosen few be leaders. Neuro-psychology indicates that your ability to be abnormally successful is correlated with your ability to pay attention – more than 1% attention – some call it focus, but it amounts to the same thing.
The process is simple. You have to learn how to pay attention to what’s actually going on here and now. We all have this innate ability for personal development – an ability to come to our senses. Literally. We have five senses. As adults, research proves that we become lazy, no longer paying attention to what our senses are telling us, preferring to experience the moment using what psychologists call our “stored knowledge” – the formative years stuff that I mentioned earlier, nonsense that’s useless to the present moment. Pay attention to what your senses are telling you – don’t re-interpret what’s happening on the basis that you think that you know best. You don’t – the normal person knows precious little when it comes to handling today’s challenges and even less when it comes to spotting today’s opportunities.
So, if you want toachieve real change, substantive competitive advantage and sustainable business success you need to pay attention! You need some mental training – you need to begin each day with a quiet reflective few minutes to set your mind appropriately for the day ahead. You need to meditate – a mental discipline often misunderstood – because through meditation, you develop the necessary mental discipline and attentiveness to be more tuned in, more present and different – the key prerequisite to gaining and maintaining competitive advantage.
April 24th, 2010