Don't Let Peer Pressure Ruin Your Business
One of the most pernicious problems affecting business managers is
, and always has been, the deleterious effect of peer pressure. Anyone who's ever managed a business, a department or his job, should know enough to avoid it. Still, the opposite appears to be true.Peer pressure is that never-ending force exerted by others to encourage a person to change their attitude and behavior to conform to that of the group.
Everyone has experienced generous helpings of this pressure as teenagers when, for better for worse, we're cajoled into "going along with the crowd." And while that might be an unavoidable accident of growing up, you should have outgrown that need to cave in to the group when you become an adult.
Copycat Business Management Seems to be the Rule
The "accepted" rule of business seems to be that the goal is to keep up with the other guy, the other businesses in your industry. Not only are you coaxed to keep up, but you're often persuaded to copy what the others are doing in hopes you can achieve a result similar to theirs.
Business mangers that chase the actions of peer group put themselves in a disastrous management position. Yet, this "lemming-to-the-sea" behavior is rampant in many industries. The recent mortgage meltdown provides a classic example of peer pressure run amok. Scores of mortgage bankers and brokers were pressured by peers to join the sub-prime fracas; nobody wanted to be left behind.
The result? They wrote billions of dollars worth of higher-risk loans including short-term adjustable-rate mortgages, especially so-called "option ARMs"; home-equity loans and lines of credit; and sub-prime loans.
We now know what that kind of peer pressure delivered to dozens of major players in the home loan mortgage market. They caused a crash in the housing market from which we may never recover. And in the meantime, their brought their own business to ruin. All this in a fruitless attempt to "keep up" with what others were doing.
How to Avoid Peer Pressure
This sort of peer pressure has a lesson for all business managers. Simply put, your rule should this: Ignore peer pressure and look for a better way. Be aware, but don't compare your business to others. Always find a better, more creative way to best the competition. Above all, don't try to beat them at their own game.
If others businesses in your industry are, for example, cutting prices and you feel you must "keep up" and respond to this onerous pressure but cutting prices toodon't. When they engage in business practices akin to cooking the books or writing high-risk loans, don't. Find a better way.
Yes, that's easier said than done. But when you're in business, any business, the easiest and yet the hardest thing is to do the right thing. And that means keeping your own counsel. Be a congenital bad listener when it comes to comparing your business to others. If you have studied your market, considered what is right and what is wrong, if you have put all the major players in your business scenario on a parallel course, the easiest thing is to do the right thing not the same thing.
The way to cheat on the peer pressure rule is not to chase the competition, but rather to create the competition. Make other people compete against you as opposed to you competing against them.
Don't Let Peer Pressure Ruin Your Business
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