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‘We have the best working environment around here’ … ‘we changed the whole competition landscape, we are the best now and our competitors have to live with it’ … ‘Our products/services are not comparable to others, we are the best’
Once such kind of mentality starts flying around your organization, then it is in need for a serious therapy; it is going through the ‘illusion of the best’ syndrome! And once you have it, it is the downhill road thereafter.
There is no doubt that the marketplace is a competition arena. However, deciding who is the best should be left to stakeholders and unbiased observers, certainly not to the organization managers only!
And let’s give it some thought; in a business environment, what is the best? the best compared to what? and in which categories? And should we compare our products/services/practices to our competitors only? in our environment only? or should we do that globally? I am sure you can come up with endless series of question like these …
My argument is that the whole concept of being the best should have no place in a business environment. The ‘best in ….’ is a relative term even if based upon ground measurements, because, at the end, those measurements are based on agreements between a number of people.
The illusion of being the best could be damaging on the long run. It generates demotivation and kills innovation; why should we do more, we are the best?!
It happened that I have being sitting once with one of the so-called-managers of one of the biggest companies in the country and he was talking about how they are conducting some of their business. The strange thing is that he was referring to many managerial flaws in his talking, and he was acknowledging those flaws! I asked him ‘it is great that you can put your fingers on the wrong doings that are causing pressure on your staff and your productivity. So why don’t you solve these issues?’ His reply was ‘this is how we do business around here!’ I said ‘but there are many companies around the world that faced similar problems and there are many lessons that you can get advantage of.’ He replied ‘No No No … do not talk about companies around the world. Tell me about local companies. We are the best company in the area and this is how we are running our business’!!!!
I hope you got what I mean now!!
p.s. I think the ‘illusion of best’ syndrome fits Jim Collins’s stage number one of declining organizations; the stage he calls ‘Hubris Born of Success.’ Read more about it in his book ‘How the mighty Fall, and Why Some Companies Never Give in’ published in 2009.
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Saad,
from your point of view, what is the difference between being the best & being the leader in the market & others like followers …. is it the same? or not?
Thanks.
Hello Waleed …
I am afraid the market leadership is another relative term that depends on the angel you see it from. Who is the market leader? the one making more profits, selling more products, having best working environment, etc.
My point is that such labeling should not be taken as granted. Companies should not take this as an opportunity to relax or start acting arrogantly at the market all because they are the best or the leaders.
Being the best is a result of hard work and innovation in organization product’s or services. However, this could be a motivation for some managers to develop their skills and to be more innovative, and it could be vis versa but in this case the mangers are not professional and the sucsse was a result of external factors not a result of hard work and innovation…..
Companies that understands its own abilities, potentials, market position, weak points, and its customers are the ones keep working to be ahead their competitors by providing something different.
It’s motivational, indeed, when you work in a company that is known to be innovative and always looking ahead and not only relying on labels such as being the best. I don’t think Apple, Google, Toyota, and others of known companies would keep being icons if they stopped once and said we are the best, and this is how we run work, that’s it!
ahhh. This cleared up a lot of things.
It seems (in Saudi) as if there is a collective opinion on certain things that almost everyone agrees upon. For example, “Mobily has the best phone service.” And this has got to have some truth in it because so many people agree on it. Yet when I tried the service, I found so many flaws in it I kept thinking “THIS is their definition of the BEST service?”
I agree on everything you said and I think that once companies resonate with the idea of being “the best,” it hurts more than helps them.
Hey Athoug … great remarks.
You’ve experienced the ‘best’ problem form the customer point of view. So now if an organization has the ‘illusion of the best’ and happens to face an irritated customer; I am sure the customer service reps and managers won’t be able to deal with it … they cannot have problems with customers, they are the best!!
In the grand pattern of things you receive a B+ for effort. Exactly where you confused me ended up being on your facts. You know, people say, details make or break the argument.. And that could not be much more accurate in this article. Having said that, let me inform you precisely what did deliver the results. The writing can be quite powerful which is possibly the reason why I am making the effort in order to opine. I do not really make it a regular habit of doing that. Secondly, even though I can easily see the jumps in logic you come up with, I am not really convinced of how you seem to connect the details which inturn help to make the actual conclusion. For the moment I will yield to your point but wish in the future you actually connect your dots better.