How to Develop a Winning Competitive Strategy

"Developing a successful competitive strategy requires a deep and thorough understanding not just of your competitors and the moves they are making, but of all of the other factors that have the potential to influence your position in the marketplace. It's equally important to know your internal organizational strengths as it is to know the external challenges and opportunities."

• Know the market. It is vital to conduct research to determine what products are being offered to your target market, and at what price. Without this information you'll be formulating your product development and pricing strategies in the dark.
• Talk to customers. Get to know your customers' needs and wants. Learn what they are saying about your competitors. Expand the market by identifying customers whose needs are not being met, and develop products to meet them.
• Identify your own organization's strengths and weaknesses. Honest evaluation of your company's assets and shortcomings is necessary for effective strategy planning. Leverage strengths to take advantage of market opportunities. Address organization weaknesses that impact your customer.
• Analyze your competitors' products. This will give you ideas on how to improve your own offerings and highlight the superior attributes of your products versus those of the competition.
• Monitor the competition's game plan. Become familiar with their product, marketing, sales and customer service strategies so you can counter any competitive move.
• Form alliances that complement your strengths. Identify partners that fill existing gaps in your knowledge or capabilities.
• Regularly monitor the marketplace. Customer needs and competitor capabilities change every day. Effective competitive strategy depends on staying abreast of these changes. Gain perspectives from customers and other constituents to validate strategic direction and adjust accordingly.
• Anticipate the future. Understanding the competitive situation today is critical in developing a winning competitive strategy. However, to achieve and sustain an advantage, it's equally important to define what the future will bring.

PASS

• Know your market. Maria (who touted her minor in home economics) led the women's team by capitalizing on their fashion sense. Before choosing their product line, they began with a criteria to only accept designs that they personally want to wear. This was a simple but effective strategy. The women's fashion industry is a complex market. Designers who can create fashions that the majority of women want to wear sell the most clothing. The women of Apex wisely understood their market and created a product appealing to them.
   

• Collaboration and creativity.  The women of Apex finally started to gel in this week's episode. Their team worked more effectively together and resulted in higher levels of collaboration and creativity. Although there was still evidence of some backstabbing, it was far less evident than in previous episodes. They were able to rally around a common, decidedly feminine, task that united them.
   

• Identify factors that impact team performance.  Maria, stated that Elizabeth "overanalyzes everything" and believed that Elizabeth would confound and confuse the designer selection process. She strategically evaluated Elizabeth's potential impact in a time-critical situation and made a decision to eliminate this negative threat to team performance. Maria smartly assigned Elizabeth a task that sent her away. Minus Elizabeth, the team reached a decision in less than 45 minutes, eliminating their historical catty bickering and ineffectiveness.
   

• Leaders will rise to fill a leadership void.  Meanwhile on the men's team, Kelly again demonstrated strong leadership and a willingness to help his team when it was needed the most. Raj was continually distracting the time-crunched designer. Understanding that joking and eccentric personalities can be disruptive to team performance and that John, the team's project manager, wasn't handling the situation, Kelly directed Raj to stay out of her way to allow the designer to complete her vital tasks.

  FAIL

• Assess which leadership style to use with individual people.  John announced from the beginning, that his leadership style was to delegate -- with everyone. Delegation can be an effective leadership style when the leader believes that the person they are delegating to has the necessary competence and commitment required for the task. John delegated the critical decision of determining price to Kevin and Wes. What evidence did John have that these two men could competently make this decision? Neither of them had any experience in the fashion industry. Trump clearly defined the reason Mosaic lost was due to inappropriate pricing. I was surprised that John, given his responsibility as the project manager, had no direct involvement in this critical decision. A leader must be involved with, clearly understand and concur with critical strategic decisions. Ken Blanchard, author of "Leadership and the One Minute Manager," describes leadership as knowing when (and when not) to delegate, support, coach or direct with individual employees with different skills and management requirements. A leader must first assess the individual competence and commitment and not simply treat all employees equally. For example, some employees will require more direction, supervision and support than others.
   

• The workplace is not the place to pick up women.  The scene of the men measuring up and trying to pick up Trump's fashion models was highly entertaining TV. I keep saying that "The Apprentice" is far more about ratings than it is about Trump picking the right candidate. In the real world, drooling openly after beautiful women is not professional workplace behavior.  When the men of Mosaic were ogling the models, they had their eye off the ball and the goal. Trump also identified this performance as unacceptable and directly chastised Raj in the boardroom for his "hound dog" behavior.
   

• Know your market.  Granted, the women had a natural advantage for this week's task, but the men should have consulted more resources -- including women -- before making decisions in an industry none of them had experience in. They relied too heavily on their designer, Ilsa, who was overwhelmed with their constant demands on her limited time. There was no indication that the team researched additional resources to provide them with critical market information required to be successful.
   

• Open and continual team learning.  High-performing teams put a high value on learning from their mistakes and their wins. These teams take the time necessary to mine the learning from their team experiences to apply to future scenarios. The men's team failed to learn by their QVC experience from the previous week, that high price and low volume might well result in lower sales. I was surprised that Wes and Kevin, after being given the expert advice of the designer about where to set the price, chose instead to "jack the price up" and without input from the team or manager. This move ultimately cost their team the win and John his job.

MAUREEN MORIARTY
SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER