Competing

I was late in the game on discovering how brilliant Seth Godin is. When I did sign up to receive his blog, about a week in I thought how in the world does he keep it fresh? How does he write what he writes without a care in the world whether someone gets it or not? He just writes. Smart, witty, most always on-point. He’s a legend in my mind. My daughter recently sent this post to me as it was High Point Market and I wasn’t reading much of anything. I was just in the mindset of making sure all was done and done perfectly. 

Godin’s post “What are you competing on” (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/03/what-are-you-competing-on.html), as usual, really made me think. In it, he lists about thirteen areas that people/businesses are competing on. Personally, I’m still reflecting on whether I’m competing at all as I hope I’m not. I hope I’m just doing the best I can to be the best version of me, and not playing that off of others. (The jury is out- wink). Professionally, I look at this daily as I believe knowing your ideals amongst others as being the best driver of success. So with that, I evaluated Godin’s “competing” theories against CCS’ culture and values.   

According to Godin, “In a hypercompetitive world, whatever you're competing on is going to become your focus.”. I thought long and hard on this and on this point I don’t agree. Our company’s 3 competitive drivers in his list of 13, are smarts, responsiveness, and trust. I don’t agree that these drivers are our focus. I would argue that instead, for us anyway, they’ve just been the drivers that have built our business, enabled us to really connect with clients, and build long-term relationships.  I didn’t even think of these as being competitive advantages until I looked at them through Godin’s lens. I will say though, that in a list that also includes competitive advantages of being picked, hustling, generosity, and so on, I like the lens our company is operating through. When I think of our innate, not focused competitive advantages, I’m prouder than ever of what we’ve built and are building.