The Ultimate Competitive Advantage
September 2, 2017
Teamwork is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage. It allows organizations to maximize resources and opportunities, to get ahead and stay ahead of competitors!
Every organization is looking for the ultimate competitive advantage over their competitors. This is why businesses (at least ones who want to stay relevant) are always looking for the next best thing. In many cases, organizations think cutting edge technology is the only way to gain an advantage.
However, purely adopting cutting edge technology into an organization does not always provide the desired outcome. In some cases, it can actually make things worse, or even kill an organization entirely. I have seen organizations buy the latest a greatest technology with the idea of increasing productivity and driving down costs, only to shut their doors permanently soon after.
IS THERE SUCH A THING AS AN “ULTIMATE” COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE?
Yes, there is. Patrick Lencioni said it best,
“It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”
In the end, cutting edge technology can never replace teamwork. In fact, effective technology cannot reach its full potential, unless an organization operates as a team. Technology can improve and amplify teamwork. Technology alone cannot create teamwork where it does not exist. In other words, technology cannot make something out of nothing.
The USA had less experience and less money than Britain. However, their teamwork magnified their limited resources, lack of experience, and led to the successful revolutionary campaign.
WHY IS TEAMWORK SO POWERFUL? Team work ensures that all resources and opportunities are considered. Every member of the team is given a seat at the table to share ideas and talents as an equally valuable member of the team. Too many organizations only value members of their team based on position, pay-scale, and influence within the organization. The valuing of an organization’s members by position, by pay scale, or by influence prohibits creativity and opportunity. Anyone who is treated as less valuable will hesitate to share their talents or their ideas, and the organization will suffer from a less diverse set of ideas to compete, in order to get the best possible idea from the team. The most underused resource within any organization is its employees. This problem is many times directly a result of poor leadership (a topic for another time).
Teamwork leads to endurance. An organization that is soaked with teamwork from top to bottom has a greater level of endurance. Endurance is critical to overcoming of seen and unforeseen difficulties. An organization that works as a team has a greater appetite to keep enduring together during hard times and usually have a kaizen mentality.
We constantly seek for a competitive advantage to get ahead and stay ahead of our competitors.
WHY IS IT SO RARE?
We live in a society where loyalty is grossly undervalued and under-appreciated. People and organizations are so quick to cut ties at the slightest site of hard times. This mindset of under valuing loyalty leads to decisions that do not foster long term relationships. The lack of long term relationships not only drives costs up but also decreases the organization’s ability to survive difficult times. If the relationship it has with other organizations is not a teamwork based relationship.
All good things take time. There are 3 main scenarios that play out when teamwork is pursued. The first and best scenario is when an organization already has some level teamwork already in place and just a couple improvements or infusion of technology can result in rapid improvements. The next scenario is an organization needs to learn how to work as a team and once they learn (which usually takes time and patience). The last and least favorable scenario is that people in the organization resist working together which can result in catastrophe for all involved.
An organization with more money, more technology, and more experience is always at risk of losing to an organization that has next to nothing in money, technology, and experience but have the Ultimate Competitive Advantage……..TEAMWORK!