As I nest and clean the apartment I find old thoughts that I had locked in laptops like my NEC Versa from the nineties. Here is an example showing that I was still obsessed with start-up survival even back when Survivor's first season came out. I actually watched it back then...
Lessons learned from the TV show "Survivor"
Although the show Survivor is only a representation of a sample of one group of people in a scenario that is obviously contrived, when watching it I can't help but make some observations about the nature of competition among people that can be applied to competing in a high tech new market environment.
The island began with 16 people who were eventually narrowed to 1 person.
At first - The objective was to survive not to be the best.
You need to understand the nature of the game if you want to win. In a competitive environment where only one person can survive, you have to realize that surviving is the objective. Many of the people did not understand this and may have been more fit but didn't win. Greg was an incredible outdoorsman but he wasn't able to last very long nor was a woman who also had significant outdoors experience. Most of the contestants were able to eat bugs or rats but in the end nobody said of the winners that they survived because they had an uncanny ability to eat bugs and rats or walk on fire. It was something else. The skill to handle the competitive environment to survive is different than the skill to survive physical, mental, or environmental challenges. Kelly, who survived until the last round was very quiet and nobody felt threatened by her in early rounds when people were being voted out. Because of this she was able to survive through initial rounds.
The first objective of a start-up or provider in a new market is also to survive. Focusing on survival at early stages is supercedes focusing on being better. Most markets can't support multiple 600 pound gorillas and being too obvious or too capable of intentions at the beginning can endanger survival at an early stage. Allowing others to focus on competing vs. surviving can be an important way to make it through an initial selection. In many ways that is the start-up imperative at first. Just don't be noticed by the more competitive competitors. Stay off the radar screen. So when big companies like Siebel and Oracle keep focusing on being a better CRM provider, staying quiet can be a way to fight them as a PRM provider in the early stages. If they are paying attention to competing and not survival in the new market it can hurt them later.
* Alliances are critical to survival. With 16 potential survivors converging upon one eventual survivor it came down to a group of four people who had formed an alliance early in the process that were able to engineer the survival of the four people Sue, Kelly, Rudy, and Rich by systematically ousting the other players. It is much easier for four to compete against 12 individuals than for one to compete against 15. This alliance was begun by Rich, the eventual winner of the contest at the beginning of the contest.
Strategic alliances determine the outcome of competitive situations. Clearly having a plan for alliances like Rich did at the beginning of the competition was the way to survive.
The need to create alliances when there is a large group is also true in business in an early stage competitive market. With a large number of potential providers in the market it is more competitive to form an alliance with a would be future competitor than to go alone to the market. For ChannelWave this means that forming the right alliances in a market that allow for survival can allow ChannelWave to weather a fragmented market or a new market. This is not something that necessarily happens once in business. New markets emerge from existing ones. The question comes down to who will dominate those emerging markets since that dominance is the prize. Taking on a strategy that uses alliances effectively to lock out the new markets is needed to survive in any round one of an approach to an undefined market.
Also the more fit were less likely to form alliances as was clear later. A company like Siebel is so fit that they are a threat to the survival of any company that wants an alliance with them. This is a disadvantage to them in long term survival since the less fit companies can "plot" to remove them from the market because they are such a threat.
From a product perspective we should note that when winning is about survival, if our product can provide the needed tools to execute strategic partnerships that allow survival than we are providing the "brains" behind the market equivalent of Rich, the eventual winner. The key value in the software for alliances is in the ability of our customer to "win" to win in new markets by first surviving and ultimately out maneuvering even alliance partners when needed. They need to use tools as early as the first day in competition, while they are just planning to compete through the last day in managing their alliances. That was Rich's strategy and it worked very well.
Within the 4 - How to survive in the tight competitive market
Once the field had been narrowed to 4 people how the group dynamics worked differently. The alliance had survived but needed to be restructured with a single winner. One alliance member was singled out by the group for removal, Kelly.
Kelly was able to survive only because she was able to handle the challenges that gave her immunity 5 times in a row. It was clear that she had made mistakes in her relationship with Sue that had ensured that she was going to be voted out from the alliance of 3 Sue, Rudy, and Rich had she not won two consecutive challenges. Basically she was more fit than the other competitors and had in her words only been able to get to the final two because of faith, and a will to survive. Rudy was ultimately removed because he couldn't beat Kelly in a competition to hold on to a pole. Had he been able to do this he would have won the survival game.
Kelly's ability to execute was necessary in order to survive. While alliances are important, they can be overcome by execution of objectives outside of those alliances. Kelly very well could have won the competition on execution alone. Companies like Siebel have been flawless often in their ability to execute. In a tight competitive environment the one who executes can survive longer than one who doesn't. It is better to be a Kelly than a Rudy. Making little mistakes can take you out of the running.
Kelly didn't win though as competitive execution was not enough. She made some mistakes along the way that cost her. One mistake was that she admits to was that she voted to remove Sue from the island. Sue had been one of her allies and later proved her worst enemy in the final decision.
In many ways this comes down to keeping your allies as you compete with them. Rich had a tremendous advantage among the four competitors because two of them were going to vote for him after they were removed. Rudy would because he was loyal. Loyalty was very important. Sue would select Rich because Rich was the lesser of two evils. Again loyalty was important. Sue was Anti-Kelly because Kelly had not stayed loyal to her.
Since former competitors ultimately decided who the winner would be it was necessary to not lose the trust of the other competitors. It meant that Rich had 2 of seven votes going into the final decision and Kelly had none. This was the equivalent of having a 2-0 lead in a seven game playoff series. The challenger needs to win 4 before you win 2 more. Again the alliance returned and execution within the alliance was critical to Rich's success. Had Sue tried to go against Rudy she would have faced the same odds or worse which is why Rich didn't even need to try to win the pole competition. He knew Rudy was loyal, and he knew that Kelly would rather compete against him than Rudy. Rich was also able to win over the doctor with his relationship with him that was not an alliance but the leaving him only needing one vote. Two of Kelly's 2 votes were for "not-rich" except for one which was a performance based approval for having been so capable. Clearly there was a cost to forming alliances, which was that in doing so Rich appeared very politically motivated and unlikable. He would have been a land slide winner had he been more likable. Kelly had spent energy on this and it nearly landed her the competition.
So it was important for Kelly to make it to the tie that she was likeable. It is important to be likeable in order to survive against a strategically capable competitor. Being likable is just as important as being a good alliance strategist and is a form of alliance strategy in and of itself. Businesses should look to be likable if they want to survive. They never know when they'll need a vote for them based on this over loyalty.
From a business perspective for CW and for our customers it should be clear that alliance creation and leadership is very important but in the long term it is the appropriate management of the alliance throughout time that is critical. It is a matter of survival to maintain loyal alliances. These alliances can also allow organizations the luxury to not always win or even compete in execution of a competitive objective.
Luck and chance are always factors
- It appears that the 3-3 voting tie was broken by Greg, who used the number 9 to figure out who to vote for and he voted for Rich because Rich gave him the number 7 when asked and Kelly gave him the number 3.
As a company in competition you can't always win on principles of strategy or execution. These just weight the odds one way or another to get us to a win, a loss, or to stay even enough to let luck take its course in a tie. Luck does not create winners though, it breaks ties among highly capable competitors. You can't easily say that Rich won because of luck given all of the obstacles it took to get to the coin toss. From a business perspective it boils down to opportunity favoring the prepared.
