I used to enjoy playing basketball and I got involved with a local team not because I was good but because I enjoyed the exercise. In one of the games we played our opponent had an extremely good player who had played professional basketball. I wasn’t good enough to get on my high school basketball team let alone compete with a former pro. But somehow I was assigned to guard the star player. He was taller than me, stronger than me, faster than me, and much more skillful than me. He was the Michael Jordan of our league and clearly had the attention of everyone on the court.
Unfortunately, because I was guarding him, I also had everyone’s attention. I was getting trounced. He scored effortlessly and at will against me. The pressure to compete was high and my only hope was to keep him from getting the ball. I made desperate moves and fouled him often just hoping to slow him down a little bit. We were obviously mismatched and we both knew it.
After the game I approached him and congratulated him on the win and specifically on his playing. I also felt a tinge of guilt for my sloppy aggressive play against him and part of my approach was to apologize for the frequent fouls. He very graciously complimented my determination and with a smile he acknowledged that in my situation, “the best you can do is get in the way, argue with the refs, and foul a lot.”
In the world of business I am seeing the strategies of “getting in the way, arguing with the refs, and fouling a lot.” Some companies are choosing to compete not by getting better at what they do, but by suing the competition, manipulating their customers, and juggling the books.
A few months ago the WallStreet Journal reported that some retailers were hiring full-time protesters to go into communities and organize protests against building a competitor store. These protesters would also initiate legal action against the competitor as though they were residents.
Manipulating customers is now common in the form of “price discrimination.” This is the practice of charging your best customers more rather than less. It relies on their best customers not finding out about the price that everyone else gets.
It made headlines when Galleon hedge fund manager, Raj Rajaratnam was convicted on all 14 counts of securities fraud, trading on insider information to get ahead. But the talk was about how the ruling would change how business is done on Wallstreet. Since when was it ever okay to trade on insider information?
Talent is hard to develop and takes time and patience; a price that most companies aren’t willing to pay. No wonder markets are being described as “hyper-competitive” with “cut-throat” competition. They are competing in the only way that you can when you don’t have talent; by “getting in the way, arguing with the refs, and fouling a lot.”
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