What makes a market leader? (7/7)

In the last three posts in this series, we covered the common and unique characteristics of market leading companies in our research that enabled them to make breakthroughs in performance and cope with rapid growth without losing momentum or focus. In this final post of the series, we describe the characteristic shared by only the market leaders that stayed ahead – the ability to stay uncomfortable.

Participants highlighted two big areas of concern once they were ahead of the field.

The first concern was being exposed to changes in customer demand: with a large share of the market, you inevitably rise and fall with it.

The second concern was complacency: once ahead, companies faced temptations to concentrate on reaping the financial benefits of their strong position, and to stick with winning ways. But the dangers of this “defend and reap” attitude were considered by leaders to be enormous: from outside due to targeting and copying by competitors, and from inside due to the departure of ambitious people lacking new challenges. Indeed one PLC leader attributed its slow demise to the spawning of competitors from within the company.

The most consistent solution that successful leaders gave to both big concerns was to stay uncomfortable and deliberately take the business to the next challenge.

Staying uncomfortable

This wasn’t about asking for more of the same, which is demanding without being challenging at all. It was about challenging where and how the company did business. To achieve this was difficult and needed discipline, and as with previous themes, different organisations achieved it in different ways. For example:

Raising the stakes by increasing the size of the arena the company played in, for example one payroll services company designed its next generation of further services to address the broader challenge of improving the workplace and the productivity of clients’ employees

Moving a local business into dominant positions in new geographical areas

Incorporating a challenge of “Is it brave? Is it original?” in relation to all market-facing and planning activity

Sustaining the challenge by splitting the business into smaller, more focused components every time it became too unwieldy

Establishing restless, constant change as a deliberate policy driven from the top


There was no common individual solution, other than the underlying requirement to stay on the edge of management’s comfort zone.

The common theme however was deliberately to raise the bar rather than to look back and focus on defending an established position, even though this often meant losing key members of the original senior team, who weren’t willing to get back on the tightrope.


So, in summary, we have now covered the common characteristics of market leading companies from Latitude research that were missing in their more mediocre counterparts.

First, relentless focus on a cause based on a combination of passion for that cause and a firm grip of market and commercial reality.

Second, tough action to get the right team in place, based on the right attitude, even at the expense of talented or experienced team members who aren’t up for the challenge.

Third, creation of breathing space so that management can concentrate on important actions for the business and are not continually distracted by urgent firefighting.

Fourth, clear, tangible behaviour boundaries, inside which there is room to perform, but the crossing of which is simply not tolerated.

Fifth, and finally, the continuing challenge from the senior team to keep the business on the edge of its comfort zone in terms of where and how it does business.

These aren’t rationalised steps to success. Rather they are a series of characteristics that should look obvious to experienced managers of high-performing businesses. By presenting them here, our hope is that they provide a nudge to make a decision that the manager already knows he should be making anyway.


Copyright Latitude 2009. All rights reserved.

Latitude Partners Ltd
19 Bulstrode Street, London W1U 2JN
www.latitude.co.uk

For the full text of this series email steve@latitude.co.uk