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September 10, 2005

Competitive Advantage

As a former athlete, former coach, and older guy occasionally playing against much younger guys, I sometimes get really sick of hearing all the rap about a "competitive advantage". It's too often brought up as something you take into the game instead of something you make during the game.

So much of the time it has the same problem that comes with the chatter about saving costs. You remember the ridiculous business blared across TV advertising of discount sales in the 80's -- "The more you spend, the more you save!" This makes sense only if you were actually going to spend the money on that stuff anyway.

The point here is, what are you willing to spend to get the advantage?

First of all, heads up: that "advantage" that you're most likely to get is probably an advantage only compared to whatever else you were already going to do. The first order of business is to make your next self better than your current one.

But how hard is it to get a competitive advantage versus a top opponent? If you already have one, it's likely because they're not ready for you. If you don't already have one, it's WAY hard. It makes sense to think in terms of maximizing what makes you different from them, and then playing where your difference counts the most. But either way, the difference will be an effect of an ability. Unless you actually create the effect, there's no real difference and thus no real advantage.

Maybe it takes an older guy to spell it out. Here's my favorite competitor, Andre Agassi, talking about playing against Roger Federer (as compared to Pete Sampras) and bringing it to the point:

"There's no weakness to speak of," Agassi said. "You play a bad match against Pete, you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a good match against Pete, you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a good match against Federer, you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a bad match against Federer, you lose 1 and 1."

And Andre has to play Federer, a genius, on Sunday. Given Andre's outlook, he obviously needs a competitive advantage.

Realistically, he needs to be better than he was today or yesterday, taking out Ginepri and Blake. But he just strung a historically epic match of will and technique together with a slugfest. How on earth could he be better?

We can leave that open to speculation, but while Andre's objective is of course to actually beat Federer, he is all too aware that this could be the last time he plays in a US Open Final, and you can bet that he totally intends to not go down 1 and 1. He's looking first for what he minimally needs to reach 4 and 5, AND he's hoping that Federer makes some mistakes.

If he can get those two things at the same time, he could win.

But what is the situation in which having both of those things is likely?

Again, we can speculate: if things go into the fifth and fatiguing set, or if Federer lets the heavily partisan crowd (favoring Andre) get to him, or some such thing, then being good enough to take 4 and 5 games can be hugely helpful to Andre, while making a few mistakes could be hugely detrimental to Federer.

Whatever it is that would likely do the trick, we can summarize its ideal magic like this: Andre needs something to happen that both makes his own good stuff more valuable and makes Federer's bad stuff even more harmful to Federer. If that condition arises, then meanwhile Andre's own efforts to make Federer's good stuff less valuable (by preventing it!)can become decisive, as long as Andre's bad stuff is avoided.

The punchline: Andre knows that what he needs to do is put himself in a position where circumstances can help him enough to win.

Going into the match, Agassi said he plans to do it like this: "You hit it in that corner and that corner and that corner and that corner, over and over again, and you beat him," is how Agassi described the ideal strategy. "But you've got to [actually] do it..."

I'm not saying that execution is the same as advantage. But obviously, getting the right thing done gives you a shot. Staying focussed on the competitive opportunity is what we should be telling people. Enough about advantage. First things first; it's tough enough to manage opportunity.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at September 10, 2005 8:22 PM

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