Episode #483: As A Leader, Welcome Common Enemies

I have talked before about the loneliness of the leader. This is often felt most strongly when facing difficulties. The entrepreneur, in particular, owns the company, has all of the responsibility on their shoulders and feels the weight of that burden. I am reminded of the ship’s captains in the age of sail. They bore the responsibility for the safe delivery of the cargo and passengers to the destination, dealing with bad weather and even worse pirates. The modern firm captain has the responsibility for the livelihoods of their staff and families. If we get it wrong we can bankrupt the company or see us taken over by an entity who fires everyone and strips the firm of the goodies.

We face many tribulations of late, especially a global pandemic, the scale of which we haven’t seen since the Spanish Flu in 1918. I certainly wasn’t around then, so have zero experience or insight into how to deal with the disruptions. In other words, no smart answers for the challenges being thrown at us. The years of Covid have seen long established companies close in certain industries, especially those most effected by the ramifications of lockdowns, Government restrictions on trading, severe drop offs in client purchases and supply chain issues.

This has thrown up some M&A activity where the strong devour the weak. You may be a survivor, but now you are faced with well funded, powerful competitors. We can see this as a threat and can start losing sleep over erosion of our client base or market share. We can also see it as a rallying cry to the troops to repel all boarders. Often in big companies, the enemy is that Division over there, rather than an outside competitor. I have experienced this myself. Ambitious people eye your patch and decide they should be running it instead of you. Before you know it they start getting their elbows out trying to sweep the main deck like a pirate takeover.

This is highly destructive behaviour and in well run companies is squashed early, before any momentum is generated. In smaller companies, the team can become gripped with fear about their futures, as a powerful rival starts to try and eat everyone’s lunch. As the leader, there isn’t that much you can do about rival’s advertising blitzes or attempts at price destruction.

We usually will have limited financial reserves to go head to head with a rival who is flooding the market with advertising. We don’t want to get into a price war either, as that is a race to the bottom and it seems they can always outlast us, when it comes to absorbing the pain. We need to accentuate the value offering to differentiate what we are doing from the others. This usually means a change in the product line-up or the way we package that line-up. As with most things in Japan, adjusting to change of any sort, isn’t a strong suite of Japanese teams.

In order to marshal support for the changes, we need to employ the rival to help us. There is a balance between making the most of the threat, without pushing people into a panic and we have to tread that line very scrupulously. Tough times demands tough changes and we need to convince the team that the changes are needed and this is the way to defeat the rival. The prospect of the competitor beating us in the market is against the grain for everyone in the team and we need to accentuate the pride they feel in what they are doing and in how they take care of the clients. We always refer back to the WHY of what we are doing. This is an incredibly important component of the culture build in the team and in tough times, we have to make this WHY our North Star to guide us forward. If we believe our WHY is stronger than the rival, we will take confidence in what we are doing and that confidence will be felt by the clients. Fearful salespeople, in particular, can be smelt by the buyers as they sense the desperation and then they start to doubt the stability of your company.

As the leader, despite all of the pressure we feel and no matter how bad things look, we have to seize every tool available to us. Accentuating the WHY within the team and setting up the rival to be defeated are both important means of getting support from the troops. Spreading the concerns the leaders feels across the team is a tricky calculation. Too much gloom and people give up, too little and there will not be enough sense of urgency and camaraderie. Increasing the intensity gradually, rather than a Big Bang approach, would be a better idea. If the leader goes too hard, too fast, then that can be destabilising, whereas a gradual ramping up of the concern factor is more easily digested by everyone, as they gird their loins for the fight.

The key thing is to see the rival as an aid to greater teamwork and commitment rather than a destructive force sweeping all before it. Sometimes, we can feel overwhelmed by all of the personal doubts and fears we have and which we keep to ourselves. In this sense, we can forget we have team members who are there to support and to fight shoulder to shoulder with us. We don’t have to do it all by ourselves, but we must lead with the strong conviction of success. Our very essence, our ki, has to be communicating that positivity to everyone.