In today’s business, we have little actual influence in how the marketplace grows or what other business sectors do. We do, however, have complete control over what our mentality is, the level of service we offer, and how much innovation we introduce into our area of business.

One of the fundamental dangers many organizations face today is complacency. Even small, fast start-ups can quickly become complacent as they grow and begin to adopt more and more of the “established” business practices, the same practices that complacent, established businesses are practicing.

Bill Taylor, with HarvardBusiness.org explains:

When it comes to creating the future, the only thing more worrisome than the prospect of too much change may be too little change — especially in an economy where there are too many competitors chasing too few customers with products and services that look too much alike. Now is the time to rethink long-held strategic assumptions inside your company, to challenge decades of conventional wisdom in your industry, and to push yourself to learn, grow, and innovate.

What can the established companies looking for something to re-light the fire of innovation do? What can small start-ups do to prevent them from becoming like the boring giants in their field? A recent article in HarvardBusiness.org discussed 9 questions change agents should ask themselves. The questions are especially important for entrepreneurs and for business managers looking to develop an advantage over the competition.

1. Do you see opportunities the competition doesn’t see?
IDEO’s Tom Kelly likes to quote French novelist Marcel Proust, who famously said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” Do you believe that what you offer is truly better than what the rest of the competition has to offer? Take a close look at your mission statement and your actual business practices. Do they clearly set you apart from what else is available in the marketplace?

2. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?
Ideas that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another industry, especially when they challenge the prevailing assumptions that have come to define so many industries. Do you see that “next thing” that will be a hit to your customers and clients? Do you have a clear direction for your organization in the next 2, 5, and 10 years or are you simply just expecting things to be the same they have always been before? Do you see where the next great opportunity will be for your organization? Are you always looking for and making new contacts that may generate future business opportunities or partnerships?

3. Are you the most of anything?
You can’t be “pretty good” at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something: the most affordable, the most accessible, the most elegant, the most colorful, the most transparent. The marketplace today is saturated. So many areas of business have too many competitors competing for the same number of customers. If you are currently not the best at any one thing it’s best that your organization “re-think” who you are and focus on establishing yourselves as the premier provider of something. The new wave of organizational marketing is establishing yourself as the best at (something). Once you have done this, the customers will follow.

4. If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
Simple yet profound. If you can establish yourself in a way that if you’re gone tomorrow your customers would clearly be missing something important in their lives, you’re set. They will keep you in business. It’s a little like the opposite effect of a monopoly. Just like monopolies are stopped because they create an over-dependence on one single company, you can establish the same dependence on your level of service…and it’s not illegal.

5. Have you figured out how your organization’s history can help to shape its future?
The essence of creativity, Psychologist Jerome Bruner argues, is “figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.” The most creative leaders rediscover and reinterpret what’s come before as a way to develop a line of sight into what comes next. Do you and your organization’s employees/workers know what the organization stands for, where it came from, and where it’s going?

6. Can your customers live without you?
If they can, they probably will. Are you just offering the sprinkles in your customer’s ice cream? Or are you the ice cream shop that offers the service and products that satisfy your customer’s needs? If what you offer is just a nice thing for your customers to have, there will probably come a time when they will do without your services. Re-invent your organization and its offerings so that you become the meat and potatoes to your clients.

7. Do you treat different customers differently?
If your goal is to become indispensable to your customers, then almost by definition you won’t appeal to all customers. Look for your best clients and make sure that their needs are met. Once you’ve solidified these clients, move on to developing new clients that use your services and develop them into your star clients.

8. Are you getting the best contributions from the most people?
These days, the most powerful contributions come from the most unexpected places — the “hidden genius” inside your company, the “collective genius” of customers, suppliers, and other smart people who surround your company. Does your organization allow for these hidden gems in your organization to be discovered? Is your organization open to ideas from the inside? Do you recruit from the inside when searching for talent to fill new positions? Remember, your existing employees know your business, services, and the environment of your organization better than anyone else on the inside. Tapping talent from the inside gives the individual in the new position an even greater chance of becoming successful in meeting the needs of the position.

9. Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
Great leaders can never stop learning. How do you push yourself as an individual to keep growing and evolving — so that your company can do the same? Part of being a game changer in business is to keep yourself on top of the innovation. If you’re not leading the innovation, you’re likely not part of the core group that will survive in today’s marketplace.

I recently came across TweetPsych, a tool that analyzes linguistics to psychologically profile an individual based on their Twitter updated and conversations. I was immediately intrigued since I use Twitter on a fairly regular basis to promote articles, stay up-to-date on my niche topics I like to follow, and to see what others are up to on a day-to-day basis.

What my TweetPsych analysis revealed was very interesting. It was very accurate as describing the type of person I am, what I like to talk about, and the way I think and speak when conversing with others.

TweetPsych uses two linguistic analysis algorithms (RID and LIWC) to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets. The service analyzes your last 1000 tweets and works best on users who have posted more than 1000 updates. It also works best on accounts that are operated by a single user and use Twitter in a conversational manner, rather than simply a content distribution platform. For more information, read Dan Zarrella’s blog post explaining TweetPsych.

Without further ado, here are the results from my Twitter profile. As you can see the bulk of my Twitter updates are related to the workplace, and self-improvement in the business field.

There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs in the business world. This cartoon from Geek Hero Comic captures the essence this key to employee performance and motivation. I have to say that I absolutely love it. Dave Thomas has talked about this for years in his classic Developing Expertise presentation, supported by the following quote:

Interestingly enough, a friend of mine (who is a quality control manager in a hospital) often makes identical statements in reference to doctors: Polite requests, coercion, etc. are useless at best and often detrimental. Peer pressure and competition are the key.

It’s a terrible way to manage employees, but I love the cruel reality the cartoon depicts. Although you will be getting a level of performance you never imagined you could get out of your employees, it comes as a Catch-22, because at the same time you’re introducing an extremely negative influences at the same time which will errode any sense of teamwork that you’ve ever had in your environment. Plus, you also introduce a sure-fire way to begin decreasing the quality of the work outputted by your employees.

I’ve personally been a witness to this several times in my career. I remember a number of years ago when I was working at a fast-growing Web-hosting company. Our support team, though of good quality, lacked tenacity in getting things done fast. I have always competed with myself wherever I have worked so I would turn out insane numbers while others would be just plain mediocre. Eventually, they introduced performance bonuses (kind, of). For every employee that reached a certain number of tickets completed per week, they could draw an envelope which would contain a random amount of cash ($5-$100). A list was emailed each week showing every employee and their efficiencies in their daily tasks ranging from number of calls, time on phone, number of email tickets, chats, etc.

Soon after this the place caught fire. All day long you would see smoke coming from the keyboards as the support reps raced through as many tickets as possible to meet their weekly quota. Soon enough, though, most people caught on that you could get your quota by cherry-picking the easy tickets and at the same time the real questions and issues that customer had would sit for a long time. No one would dare touch them because you could do 5-10 easy tickets in the time it took you to complete one difficult one. Furthermore, you can probably guess the types of answers you would get from the reps, short, abrupt, non-informative, not very customer-friendly.

I think that peer pressure and competition have their place in business. However, implemeting these influences should be done carefully, and employee performance must be carefully monitored so that quality is not sacrificed in behalf of quantity.

In the end, it’s necessary for any successful organization to implement, at least, some form of motivating atmosphere in the workplace. Whether it’s a healthy competition for best performance, or a board that shows output by each employee, implemeting these factors into the day-to-day activities of the organization will ensure that employees are motivated to perform at their best throughout the day. It’s amazing to see the change in a group of employees the moment there’s a list showing who has done how much of the work. Suddenly, the people at the top push a little harder to make sure that they are on top. The people close to the top work to improve a bit more so that they can get to the top, and the people at the bottom are faced with the ultimatum that they either get into gear and out of the bottom or they are probably facing a job change.

Managers are the key. They ensure that these competitive influences are kept in check. They are the key to ensure that there is enough competition to keep the team working at their greatest level of output, while at the same time, the manager is performing a good amount of quality control to ensure that the overall quality of the group does not destroy or undermine the overall mission of the organization. This then becomes the best way to improve performance.