Stephen Shapiro explains target fixation, the tendency to become what you focus on. When companies obsess over competitors, they copy instead of differentiate. Study customer pain and the broader environment instead, and you'll find what competitors miss.
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Although I've never been in the military, I've worked for military groups. And there is a term that I believe is sometimes used, which is called target fixation. And target fixation basically means that if you focus on too much on a target, you might end up hitting that target. So if you're a bomber and you're trying to bomb a particular place, you get so focused on it that you might just fly your plane right into it. And I know that skateboarders and motorcycle riders and other people worry about target fixation. I mean, there's videos. If you go onto the Internet, there's videos of motorcycle riders who got so focused on something they didn't want to hit that they were somehow magnetically drawn to it. And if you've walked in a hall of any office or any building for that matter, you probably experienced a version of target fixation. Two people are walking down the hall. One's going one way, one's going the other way, and you sort of lock eyes. You look at them. Now in your head, you know, I see this person. I want to avoid bumping into them. But what inevitably happens is somehow by looking at each other, you are drawn towards each other and are more likely to bump into each other. In fact, if I happen to be walking past you in the hall one day, please don't be offended if I look the opposite direction. I look the direction I want to walk because that will prevent me from bumping into you. The same thing is true in business. There's this concept of target fixation that applies to innovation. We get so focused on our competition, we get so focused on trying to beat the competition, which means, if you think about it, to beat the competition, you probably have to be different than them. Because if you start trying to replicate them, well, then you're just going to be as good as them. And they've already got a head start. But we start to focus on the target. We start to focus on the enemy. And when we focus on the enemy, we are inevitably drawn towards them. We are naturally inclined to think more like them. We're naturally inclined to do things like they do. We're naturally inclined to try to take on habits and behaviors that are like the enemy, that's like the competition. And guess what? As a result, you begin to mimic them. And you know subconsciously or consciously that you're trying to be different than them. You want to differentiate yourself from them. In fact, if you think of them as the enemy, that sort of tells you that you don't actually want to Be like them. But guess what? You do this because you start thinking like them. Sometimes getting in the head of and in the shoes of the enemy, the competition, it's not always a good thing, because then all you can do is think like them. And if they're a competitor who is ahead of you in the marketplace, what this means is that they've already got a head start and you're just going to try to catch up to where they are. But as soon as you're on to their practice, their best practice, they're on to the next practice. So this is not really a very good thing to think about. So just as when I walked on the hall, instead of looking at the person that I'm about to cross paths with, I look in a different direction. And that's what you want to start doing as innovators. Look in a different direction. Don't study your competition. I mean, understand them. Don't get me wrong. You clearly need to know what the competition is doing. But if you're looking at the competition, you're going to bump into the competition. Look in a different direction. Understand what they don't see. See their blind spots, see what they aren't doing. Not by studying them, but. But by studying everything that's not them. Look at the world around you. Start talking to the customers and the pains that they have and really understand how do we solve their needs? Not how do we beat the competition at what they're doing, but how do we offer something to the market that differentiates us? We want to innovate where we differentiate, but if we don't know how we differentiate, then we don't really know where to innovate. And therefore, we spend a lot of our energies and a lot of our time and a lot of our money on things that that just don't matter. Don't study your competition. Understand them, but don't be so focused on the target. Don't get so fixated on that target that you inevitably start thinking like them. You need to think differently. So start focusing elsewhere, start thinking about other things, and this will give you a better chance of differentiating yourself in the marketplace. This is Steve Shapiro, until the next time.
