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down-to-earth character.
As usual, the introductory part of our competitions is spiced up by intimidatory tactics amongst competitors.
We looked at the humble tackle in Munodawafa’s tackle box and laughed our hearts out. He did not seem moved by our sarcasm and our empty intimidatory tactics.
He just kept his cool and focused on the game at hand. After an hour Munodawafa was leading the pack. He had caught five bassfish while the rest of us were still looking for our first bite.
By the lunch hour, he had outclassed us completely. Surprisingly, he did not scale down his catching rate.
He kept on catching bass with alarming precision. By the end of the day he probably caught more than five times what the six of us caught combined.
Alan asked him why he kept on catching bass when he realised that he was far better than all of us.
He replied: “If you beat all your competitors convincingly for a sustained period of time, you must shift the focus from the known competitors to yourself.
“By lunch hour, I was convinced that your level of fishing was peripheral, I then shifted my focus to upping my game on my own.
“So I started setting new and ambitious goals for myself without focusing on how you were performing.
“Each time I pressured myself to perform better than the previous hour.’’
The explanation given by Munodawafa is akin to competing with yourself. This a new management philosophy which emphasises that once you beat your competition convincingly it might be time to focus on competing with yourself.
In Zimbabwe if a company outclasses all its competitors, it might have to shift its focus to competing on the global arena.
If the company dominates in the global village it must shift its competitive arena to competing against itself. To achieve the best out of yourself, you must continuously raise your bar to new levels every year.
Benchmarking against your fellow competitors is an important tool used for measuring your services or products effectiveness in the market place.
However, if the company is so effective and domineering to the extent of commanding market share of above 60 percent, it might not be very wise for the company to limit its competitive horizons to weak competitors locally.
This is the most difficult position to manage because it will be difficult to motivate staff to perform better when they know that their company is the market leader.
Managers and employees working for these companies tend to change their focus to consumption instead of refocusing their energies on producing more.
In most cases managers and employees would like to consume a lot while putting in very little effort into their work.
Only those employees and managers with adequate exposure and character will continually seek ways of growing their businesses even though they are dominating.
One clear testimony of someone competing against himself is that of Barcelona star player Lionel Messi. One of his main advantages was his exposure to La-Maisa (youth academy) for Barcelona Football Club at a tender age which helped in sharpening his skills.
His parents’ decision to emigrate from Argentina to Spain (Barcelona), assisted in catapulting his talent to greater heights.
He raises his footballing excellence to a new level every year. Every year Messi performs better than the previous year in terms of football artistry, goalscoring and assists.
He is no longer comparable with the current crop of football players. In my view and that of a good number of football stakeholders, he is arguably the best footballer of his generation by a mile.
Marca, the Spanish biggest selling daily and a favourite for Real Madrid fans, describes him as, ’’Unique and unmatchable Messi’’.
Last year he surpassed the 40-year goalscoring record held by Gerd Muller for most goals scored in one calendar year.
He won the Ballon d’Or for four consecutive years – a feat never accomplished by anyone before, thereby dwarfing and superseding the records set by Marco van Basten (who won it three times in five years) and Johan Cruyff (who won it three times in four years).
At 25 years he is set to break more footballing records than any soccer player who has ever lived.
He sets his sights stratospherically high every year. This is also collectively done by other players and management at Barcelona.
Evidently he is competing against himself. Another sportsperson that comes to mind is athlete Usain Bolt.
Every year Bolt sets new records in 100 and 200 metre races.
He doesn’t benchmark his speed against fellow competitors, for he could run slower and still win the race but every time he sets new records for himself and thus improves with each outing.
The theory of self competition is simply a mindset which tells one to set higher goals once the goals one has set have been achieved regardless of the fact that your competitors are way behind you.
To compete against yourself successfully, you have to be a global player.
In Zimbabwe, a few companies seem to be competing against themselves. Econet, Old Mutual, Innscor and Delta come to mind.
Limitations of self-competition
If one continues to succeed more than anyone else, one will get a lot of recognition from the reputational agencies.
These accolades can make someone arrogant. Arrogance and sustained success are strange bedfellows.Businesses which are competing among themselves tend to be complacent in the long run and they eventually lose focus.
Complacency will assist the small competitors to catch up with them and overtake them. Most complacent businesses take customers for granted and stop adding value to their products.
The successful companies at times believe that they will always be successful even without putting extra effort.
One reasons advanced for this is that in the general mindset of these monopolists is that there is no need to bother themselves since they are at top of the game.
One of the major enemies of self-competition is the advent of technology.
Technology disrupts some of the sources of competitive advantage.
This therefore entails that self-competition must be accompanied by serious innovative minds which is anchored by technology.
In smaller economies, if a company dominates the market it must refocus by benchmarking itself against global players to determine its global competitiveness.
The writer is a managing consultant at CLC Training International. E-mail [email protected].
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