By Wes Ball, author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. Read all of Wes’ posts here.

I sat through a meeting a couple of months ago wanting to scream in agony, but knowing that I could not really blame the participants for what I was hearing.  This meeting simply pointed out the misery of most businesses when they think about how they might strategically create growth.

The context of the meeting was this:  I had been hired to help them find new ways to grow, because they were continually finding themselves losing to “stronger” competitors, especially one key competitor.  What I knew was that their competitors were not strong at all, but rather they were just as confused as this team.  The only difference was a history of one of those competitors being the lead dog (not the controlling Alpha, but at least the name that everyone knew).

The men and women around this conference room table were desperately trying to figure out what they could do to become “the Alpha.”  It wasn’t happening, because every time I pointed out the path that had been clearly defined by some research I had done for them (and they had witnessed to the point of actually hearing people say they would change their behaviors if they were offered these solutions), they immediately dropped back into their “following” mindset and believed that they could not get there.  They believed that the bar that the “lead” competitor had set was too high for them to hurdle.

The final straw came when we started talking about pricing strategy based upon the research findings.  All through the discussion, they kept referring to this one competitor’s price as being the one they had to “compete” against.  They saw that as needing to be below it. This was despite the fact that they claimed their product was superior in every way to this competitor’s product.

I gave them an alternative that was clearly supported by the research:  Someone could easily take a price position 5% to 10% ABOVE this competitor and make themselves the new leader that everyone would look toward. I could count the heartbeats.  The fear in their eyes clouded the entire room.  They said their product was better.  They said they wanted to take a leading role.  But when it really came down to pushing the button, they just could not believe that they could do it.

That company is still sitting there with a “superior” product, unable to take the step to prove it to customers with a price that proves its worth.  They have come no closer to becoming an Alpha than they were two years ago.

Sadly, this is all too common.  We set our own limitations. It’s what makes an Alpha capable of controlling an entire category with just a few well-thought-out strategic moves.  People and companies convince themselves that they must follow someone’s lead, even though their own demise is driven in that following.

What’s your mindset?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 3:30 am and is filed under About Leadership, Culture, Followers, Wes Ball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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