DO YOU HAVE A SLITHER?

In this episode I’d like to introduce you to a man named Josh Linkner. Josh is the CEO of a company named HelloWorld, formerly called ePrize, which is a marketing company that creates and manages digital promotions and loyalty programs for some of the worlds largest and best known companies and brands. They create little virtual games, text to win campaigns, hashtag contests, quizzes, surveys, and coupons programs, among many others, to help increase engagement and brand loyalty for their clients. The company was founded in 1999 and quickly grew to become the industry leader in that field. They didn’t necessarily become the industry leader due to how innovative, lean, or savvy, however, they became the industry leader because, in 1999 through around 2006 or so, they simply didn’t have that much competition in the digital promotions and brand loyalty software platforms. There were some, to be sure, but nobody scratching at the heels of HelloWorld in any significant way. Josh, the CEO, was getting a little concerned with motivation levels of his teams as they seemed to be getting a little cocky, fat and happy so to speak, since they knew they were already the biggest and the best. He knew what was to come next if he didn’t do something. He knew that creativity, motivation, and inspiration were likely to start declining since the team didn’t have any real compelling reasons to keep pushing the innovation envelope. I mean, they were already the market leader by far so what impetus was there to keep innovating and getting better. What’s better than best, anyway?

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There have been many studies done over the decades on the science of competition and whether or not it’s a good thing, a bad thing, whether it’s a natural human trait, or whether it’s a created trait. Of course, we know in nature there is vast evidence of competition and how it drives each species to be ever vigilant, creative, and cunning as different species compete for often limited resources. We see inter-species rivalries over food, sex, and dominance within a family or a pack. We know it exists and we know how it influences the decisions and behaviors of those involved in whatever competitive environment they’re in. Personally, I have a long history, like I’m sure many of you do, with competitive sports, competition in academics, and competition within my own head to achieve or accomplish something. If you’ve ever played the game of golf, you understand very well how this competitive drive concept works, even when you’re not competing against another human being. Each time you head out on a golf course, even if you ARE playing against others, you’re always competing against your last game, your last best drive, and your last best putt. If you have no competitive drive whatsoever, any drive, any chip, or any putt is good enough and maybe just the smell of freshly cut grass is enough for you. We also know from science, and many of us from personal experience, the role competition plays in the attraction and mating dance. When there is no outside competition for what we have, we can tend to get a bit complacent about it until some kind of potential competition comes on the scene. We can see in nature that the interest level between potential mates increases drastically when there is some kind of competitive drive to ‘win the girl’ or impress the male of the species. Without the ‘other guy’ or ‘other girl’ in the picture, the natural drive to impress and compete for the potential mate’s affection drops drastically.

We all know that in our own industries, whatever those may be, we have some kind of competition. Often times, however, the source of our competition is misdiagnosed and the responses to the perceived competitor can be misdirected and wasted efforts. One of the biggest wastes of time, energy, and resources, is, of course, complaining about it. We see it in variety of industries where the players, no less in the appraisal and real estate industries, just sit around and complain about what they perceive to be the forces killing their industry. Technology is a competitor, speed is a competitor, the guy down the street is a competitor, the algorithm is a competitor, and the guy I spent the last 3 years training is a competitor. And while all of these should be taken into consideration, sometimes the most valuable competitor that exists is the one you create as a way to drive you to be better.

Remember Josh Linkner, the CEO from HelloWorld? Well he did just that. As the story goes, by 2004 or so, HelloWorld was fat and happy as the market leader in its industry. They were riding high in the pole position so Josh decided to have an offf-site meeting for his top executives and key department heads. As Josh said, “We’d been enjoying a lot of success and so my team was feeling a little cocky. I said, “ok, guys, I want you to close your eyes and imagine this.” He goes on to say how he began describing this company nobody had heard about that was beating the pants off of HelloWorld. He could see that he ad everybody’s attention so he asked all of them, “if this were real, how would you feel?” From that moment on, a company named Slither was born. It wasn’t a real company, but not everybody in the company knew that. The CEO created and sent out a press release to the team a week later announcing Slither’s first quarterly numbers. He followed it up with a fake Wall Street Journal article announcing that Slither was so confident in what they were doing that they were revealing to the world that they beat their quarterly numbers before the quarter was even over. The buzz around the whole company was one of surprise and serious interest! “Who are these guys?”, some of the execs exclaimed. “I don’t know, I looked for their website and couldn’t find it”, another quipped. Of course, after a while they figured out what Josh Linkner had done and how valuable the exercise was for them. Every now and then, Josh will send out another press release or quarterly numbers for the fictional Slither Corp. and the team will use that as competitive motivational energy to ask some very important questions. Slither has its own logo now and lives within the walls of the HelloWorld corporate headquarters as an avatar, a hologram if you will, of what the company needs to keep its eye on if it wants to remain competitive and continue to deliver the absolute highest quality service, product, and client experience possible in the face of competitive pressures.

Slither has become HelloWorld’s motivation and competitive inspiration. The company now has challenges where they will form into teams and each team gets 30 minutes to figure out how Slither would approach a particular business problem or situation. In an interview with Inc. Magazine, Josh Linkner said, “Introducing Slither has done three things. First, it’s helped us avoid complacency and maintain urgency. Second, it has given us something better than reality to benchmark against. Third, and most important, it engenders free thinking. When you ask a question that requires innovative thinking, people’s natural filters come into play. If I say, “What product should we launch?” they immediately think, what products do we have and whose pet project is this and what’s our software engineering availability? But when I say, “What products do you think Slither is going to launch?” suddenly it’s a blank slate. People will say, ‘Oh, I bet Slither is going to do this!’… It’s become part of the culture. People use it as a verb. They say, ‘you don’t want to be slithered.”

So what keeps you competitive? Do you have a Slither? What would the value be in asking yourself or your team every now and then, “what do you think Slither is doing?” of course, make up your own name and competitive avatar for what you think your next closest competitor might be doing. And please don’t say, ‘we don’t have any competitors Blaine’, because everybody has competitors. I often say within our own business that, as a philosophy, we don’t believe other appraisers are our competition because we believe there is enough for everybody. We don’t have to undercut fees or low ball to the work. However, having a prosperity mindset and culture is different than not having any competition. Even though we don’t look at other appraises as competition, we know full well that our biggest competitors show up in a variety of ways. Quite often the competition shows up in the form of stagnation. It shows up in the form of boredom. It shows up in the form of business as usual. It shows up in the form of ‘this is the way I learned it so this is the way I’m doing it.’ It shows up in the form of complaining and being your own worst enemy, which is the negative form of competition. You’re competing against the wrong kind of ghost when you do that. When you complain you compete against yourself which means there can be no winner, but guarantees one big loser. Competition shows up as an ‘it ain’t my job’ attitude. It shows up as a ‘the customer is always wrong’ attitude. It shows up as an ‘all realtors are jerks attitude’, and sometimes it shows up as a ‘we’re all gonna die so whats the use’ attitude. Understand, when you fail to recognize those forms of competition within your own business, you fail to correct some of the biggest potential causes of your own demise. There are competitive pressures all around us and often we fail to recognize the most dangerous ones.

It might just be time to create your own Slither to compete against. And when you do, ask yourself and your team, ‘what would slither do in this situation to beat us?’ ‘What would Slither do to wow the client or customer?’ ‘What would Slither do to be more streamlined and profitable?’ ‘What would Slither do?’ Talk with you next week.