Good vs. Bad Competition
- mikeinnella
- Sep 24, 2021
- 2 min read
People who have worked with me have heard me talk about “good” competition versus “bad” competition among colleagues. What do I mean by this?
I am a firm believer that success in a government contracting company is a result of teamwork across the company. To use winning new work as an example, I worked at a company where a business development executive would approach me about a lead on work that, assuming we won, would be executed out of my organization. We would discuss the opportunity, identify potential candidates in my organization for key positions, consider strategies, assign technical writers and reviewers from my organization, etc. The Contracts, Finance, and Human Resources organizations were a critical part of the capture and proposal process. Finance would assist with pricing strategies. Contracts would ensure we were cognizant of any important or unusual clauses. Human Resources would often write the staffing and retention portions of the proposal as well as identify contingent hires.
One might say there is nothing competitive about this process, that it is simply collaboration. That is true. However, we were very competitive in that company. We competed to hire the best people, provide the best work environment, the best leadership team, the most interesting work, and so on. We never competed on things where “winning” meant someone else in the company lost something.
Conversely, I also worked for a company where upon arrival, I learned that none of the delivery organizations would willingly cooperate with the business development organization. Additionally, the delivery organizations didn’t even like to cooperate with each other. Each group operated in a silo with no real incentive to collaborate.
What accounts for these differences in approach? In my experience, culture is a factor, but even more important is the company organization and rewards systems. For example, delivery organizations should have a clearly outlined “swim lane” defined by either customer or type of work. Otherwise, there is a risk the executives in charge of those organizations will broadly define their areas of responsibility and compete for the same work. I actually did submit a proposal once where one part of a large company was subcontracted to my company while another part of the same company was subcontracted to a competitor.
Rewards programs also play a big part in building good competition. If delivery executives are bonused the same way as sales executives, then that reduces the incentive to work together. One company I worked with rewarded sales teams for making sales with no check on pricing with the result that some contracts were effectively bid at a net loss in profit.
As a consultant, I recommend company leadership routinely review their organization’s structure, roles and responsibilities and rewards systems to ensure they foster “good” competition. In my experience, this results in increased success in growth as well as contributes to a positive company culture.
– Mike Innella
Comments