How often do you discover that companies do the same thing in the same way as your competitors? Many managers are trapped in this cycle of operational efficiency: performing the same activities in the same tactical way as others. A study of 200 companies found that 93% of the top 20% of performers had strongly different forms. The core of this difference is the basis of their competitive advantage. Answer these three questions to see if you compete exactly the same as the competition (operational efficiency), or if you created a different course to run (strategy):
1. What activities do we do for clients that are truly different from the competition?
2. What resources do we have to provide for customers who are truly different from the competition?
3. What is the main differentiated value our products provide to our customers?
In my new business graphic novel Strategy Administrators and Counter-Strategy Squad: Use strategic thinking to defeat bad strategies and save plansthe villains representing this issue are the same.
