Who Is Your Real Competition?

Know yourself and you will win all battles

Sun Tzu – Art of War

The Chinese Miltary General, Philosopher, and Strategist lived over 2000 years ago and his book, The Art of War is still read by CEO’s coaches, and people who want to sound more worldly than they are.

It has many quotable passages about conflict, but the general take is to avoid conflict when you can.

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

Most of the passages are about your decisions, not the enemy, they are about you.

“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

You vs You

We love the idea of a massive battle. The idea of battle is romantic, cinematic, and costly.

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

“who wishes to fight must first count the cost”

But in sports and in business we don’t battle anyone. In sports we have competition, and they try to make our progress difficult, they are trying to make us do more of what we are less comfortable doing, as we do the same to them.

In business, we have fellow contestants in a very long game but they don’t directly oppose us, they are just active at the same time we are active.

The competition you truly face is yourself.

The Ultimate Competition

If you haven’t put in the work, you will be shown up on the court. The challenge isn’t the game, it is being consistent, persistent, and relentless with your improvement, both as a player and a leader of your team.

You generally win before you step on the court, but you definitely lose before you step on the court.

In business, the other companies have no actual effect on you and your team. How you work internally, how you market, and all of the decisions you make every day, they aren’t stopping you.

There is no shot clock in business.

Act or React?

If you are watching, waiting, and reacting then they are making your decisions for you.

You don’t control what they are doing, you only control what you and your team are doing. What the other businesses are doing is irrelevant.

You don’t know how they view the world, you only know how you view the world.

Your drive is to figure out where you think the world is going, what will it look like in 5 years and how are you making that happen.

It definitely isn’t happening if you are watching what others are doing.

It is not you vs them, it is you vs you.