As humans, we naturally tend to inertia. Change is hard. It’s the unknown. What will happen? It could be bad! Most of us are happy with our familiar, cozy ways of doing things. But what if our familiar, cozy ways aren’t working? Or could be working a lot better? How do we convince ourselves, or someone else, to try something different?
Today we discuss the first, and possibly least sound, way of making the case for a new approach: the competition is doing it.
But will that change anyone’s mind?
Although on closer inspection, ‘everyone else is doing it’ is not a great rationale for making a process change, it is undeniably effective in business.
(Maybe not so effective at home, though. “I suppose if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, you’d do it, too?”)
But because we cannot see behind the curtain of our competition’s external messaging, we assume they are geniuses and have unlocked a key to success that remains hidden from us. When multiple competitors are doing “whatever the thing is”, so much the better. They’re all geniuses! It’s working for all of them!
Maybe so. Maybe not. But we cannot know until we try it ourselves.
Study the competition, infer their reasoning, set up a testing plan, and analyze the data once the plan is in place. With a clear structure and benchmarks for results, you may just make your case.