At the core of the three levels of competition are the Personal Competitive Forces. They are the most basic of the competitive forces at play in a business, and they reside within each of us as business leaders. While they may be most visible when a company is younger or smaller, they are always present and will always influence the way in which we respond to the other competitive forces.
What’s more, mastering our Personal Competitive Forces is fundamental to growing a company, not just addressing competition. As a result, when we fail to gain command over these forces, our company will struggle to grow to a size where the other competitive forces come into play. Let’s take a closer look.
As I’ve written in the past, small businesses are reflections of the owner. They’re “lifestyle” businesses. This means they typically grow to a size that reflects the owner’s competence in making appropriate decisions and performing work—confidence in their technical skills, business acumen, and comfort with the lifestyle they provide both professionally and personally. When the business reaches the limits of the owner’s competence or confidence, or when the owner becomes comfortable with the pace of the company’s growth, they take their foot off the accelerator to slow the pace of the company. So before outside competitors can even become a factor, the growth of the company is affected more by the owner’s capacity for risk and change. If the owner is risk-averse or more comfortable with predictability than with change, the company’s growth will be directly affected.
Adding to the Personal Competitive Forces are the entrepreneurial behaviors that a business owner manifests in their company. I write about several of these behaviors in my book The Entrepreneurial Conspiracy. While all the behaviors profiled in the book will impact a company’s growth, there are a few that stand out. No Accountability is an owner’s unwillingness to accept responsibility to follow through on their commitments—in this case, the growth of their company. E-Drift describes the easily distracted, easily bored behavior that prevents a company from getting the traction they need to achieve their goals. And Hiding Out refers to an owner’s aversion to tracking their company’s performance, addressing tough issues, and making the tough decisions that are always part of growing a business.
These are just a few examples of how an owner’s Personal Competitive Forces sabotage the growth of their company, despite their most compelling arguments to the contrary. There’s no need to worry about outside competitors. They’re not getting out of their own way!
To paraphrase executive coach and author, Marshall Goldsmith, the larger a company becomes, the more their challenges are behavioral. And the owner’s behavior will determine the course of the company. So the first step in addressing our Personal Competitive Forces is to recognize that simply being a business owner places us in a high-risk category of being affected and that these forces are always present to some degree, regardless of the size we grow our business.
