Simon Sinek contrasts two approaches companies take toward competitors using a personal anecdote from education summits: Microsoft presenters focused on beating Apple, while Apple presenters focused entirely on helping teachers and students. He illustrates the difference with a story about receiving a Zune from Microsoft and an Apple executive’s unconcerned reply, highlighting mission-focus versus competition-focus.
You can pick your own worthy rivals. You can pick any company for any reason and say they're better than us. You know, what can we learn from them? I'll give you a real life story that really captured this for me and it's in the book, but I'll tell it to you.
I spoke at a education summit for Microsoft, and then a few months later I was invited to speak at an education summit for Apple at the Microsoft Summit. This is back in the Steve Ballmer days. In the Microsoft Summit, the vast majority of the presentations by the executives spent most of their time talking about how to beat Apple. At the Apple Summit, 100% of the presentations were how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn. One was obsessed with beating their competition. The other was obsessed with advancing their mission.
At the end of my talk at Microsoft, they gave me a gift. They gave me the Zune when it was a thing. This was Microsoft's response to the ipod. And this little piece of technology, I have to say, was really very, very good. It was quite a good little piece of technology. It didn't work on an Apple, so I couldn't use it. That's a different problem. But it was very good. So at the end of my Apple talk, I was sharing a taxi with an Apple executive and I couldn't help myself. I just had to stir the pot. And I turned to him, I go, you know, Microsoft gave me their new Zune and it is so much better than my ipod touch. And he turned to me and he said, I have no doubt. And the conversation was over.
Because he understood this was an infinite minded organization. He understood that sometimes your competitor will do something better than you and sometimes you'll be better than them. There's no such thing as winning or losing. There's only a head and behind. And where Microsoft was obsessed with beating Apple, Apple was obsessed with outdoing itself. And so the great irony is just a couple years after that, Apple released the iPhone. So where Microsoft was obsessing with how to make a better ipod, Apple was on to the next thing, didn't even care. And that's the whole idea, which is absolutely study and learn from the other players. You see, I don't even call them competitors. The other players in your industry see what they're doing better. Like I said, it reveals your weaknesses and say, we can do better than ourselves, grow. Eventually they no longer become worthy of comparison anymore because you advance yourselves. But the whole idea is Apple was thinking about what they could do next, not how they could beat Microsoft to get more market share for an ipod. So learn from others and how you can be better. Absolutely. Like I said, their strengths reveal to your weaknesses, and that's a gift.
