Poodle Wisdom for Leaders: Lessons from Coyotes About Competition
Over the last few years, coyotes have made themselves at home in urban and suburban areas across the United States. They’re an almost daily sight in communities in and around Boston.
With many individual dens in our neighborhood backyards, it’s not unusual to see at least a dozen a day. Most nights I hear their howling as I fall into a deep sleep, only to be jolted awake in the middle of the night as the howling reaches a crescendo. My standard poodle Jazmine, with her extremely developed sense of smell, knows when they’re in the neighborhood.
Native to the western two-thirds of the United States, coyotes expanded their range in the early 1900s, and since the 1950s they’ve increased their habitat in 49 states by forty percent.¹(There are no coyotes in Hawaii.) It’s no wonder that most Americans have had at least one live sighting of these wild animals.
Unlike the classic cartoon character Wile E. Coyote — always outwitted by his clever nemesis, road runner — the real-world coyote has become a paragon of adaptation, resilience and frustration for humans and dogs.
Now, it seems, humans and dogs are the ones needing to adapt, as coyotes broaden their territory and compete with dogs and people whose property they’ve claimed to raise future generations.
Long-time standard poodle guardians such as myself are continually learning from our dogs. With that in mind, here are six core poodle lessons for leaders on successfully handling — and outwitting — the competition.
Understand your competitors. Poodles have a keen sense of intuition and enhanced emotional intelligence, or EQ. When their normally swishing tail stiffens upright, they’re on high alert and their olfactory has kicked into high gear.
Poodles smell coyotes long before we humans see them. And poodles know not to confront a coyote head on. Instead, they often bark hard at the animal, and it leaves.
When Jazmine smells the coyotes she also paces a bit, then puts her nose in the air to really smell the scent. She’s within her fenced area when she exhibits these behaviors. But as soon as she begins this behavior I bring her in immediately for her safety, because coyotes can jump a fence that’s up to six feet high.
THE LESSON
Know your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Respect their strengths and learn from them if possible; focus on how you can use their weaknesses against them. Apply your strengths with customers and prospects for sales growth and business expansion. Use these same strengths to form key strategic partnerships.
Sharpen your senses and fine-tune your competitor intelligence so that you’re on high alert when a competitor is thinking about making a move that could affect your business in the short or long term. Determine when a pivot is needed to achieve more substantial business growth.
Fence them out: Poodles love light and being the center of attention and admiration, whereas coyotes abhor light shining directly in their eyes. Using safe red lights at coyote eye level, we’ve fenced them out of our property. For the most part, they skulk off quietly into the shadows and other places for comfort.
THE LESSON
Create your company’s center of attention through competitive strategies such as rapid scaling that forces competitors to seek their comfort zone in other markets. Plug holes in your competitive strategy. Don’t inadvertently allow your competition to encroach into your market and customer base. Identify and understand threats to your market share. Be sure to proactively protect your intellectual property, whether trademarks, trade secrets, copyright or patents.
Don’t encourage competition. Mark Twain mentions the coyote in his book, Roughing It, as “a living breathing allegory of want, he is always hungry.” Poodles also get hungry. Their palate is extraordinarily discerning. Not so coyotes: so long as it’s food, they’ll eat it. To discourage coyotes, don’t leave any kind of food out. Not only will it attract them, they’ll return to that same feeding spot in expectation the food will be there.
THE LESSON: Don’t encourage the competition to come into your market. Identify untapped markets and rapidly build up market share before the competition even knows about the market. Erect barriers to entry such as unique technology that would take a huge investment to duplicate, endorsements from key industry opinion leaders, exclusive targeted distribution channels, and any regulatory approvals to enter the market.
Be strategically noisy. Many poodles bark incessantly at coyotes until they leave. Even if your dog doesn’t bark, as a family do what’s known as coyote hazing. Make a lot of noise with your human voice, whistle, or bang metal pans.
Create “visual noise” by moving towards the animal and making yourself look big by spreading and making large moves with your arms. Eventually the coyote will retreat. Neither your dog nor you should ever turn your backs on a coyote, as it will likely come after you. Bottom line: do what makes them uncomfortable, and they will seek more comfortable ground.
THE LESSON: Don’t stay silent. Silence will make your business invisible. Instead use targeted media in your market through a variety of platforms — video, e-blasts, social media, web presence, tradeshows (in person and/or virtual live). Work to garner earned media in market publications to get your message out. Focus on publications that give you maximum visibility. If your business is seasonal, time your media exposure to ensure your message gets in front of your audience precisely when needed.
Be bold. As any self-respecting poodle knows, retreat is never a good option as a coyote comes towards you. Instead, the poodle raises her tail and stiffens it while moving towards the animal with her human beside her, both looking very tall and big.
THE LESSON: Stay strong and push forward with confidence. Customers will embrace you and competitors may not like you but will respect your strength, and may even back off. Although competitors may be larger, they’re frequently not as nimble or able to adapt quickly to market conditions. Use this slow pace to your advantage by seizing market and sales opportunities before they know what they’re missing.
Learn to live with them. This is probably the hardest lesson. In their fantasies, poodles wish all creatures were as playful and fun as they are and could embrace life as they do. They sense coyotes are not to be played with and wish they would magically disappear. Alas, this won’t happen. Poodles and humans have no choice but to coexist with coyotes. One of their biggest benefits to humans: the coyote daily menu includes insects, a dinner feature that protects farms from insect invasions.
THE LESSON: Competitors can be future allies to your business. Look for areas to strike new strategic alliances together. Arguably the most famous example of “coopetition” involves Apple and Samsung: both make competing smartphones, and Samsung continues to make Apple smart phone screens.
If the primary way you experience coyotes is by watching a nature program, you’re fortunate. That would be akin to leading a business that has no competition — and that’s not going to happen. As my poodle has come to terms with coyotes using calculated strategies for handling them, you can similarly approach your competition with caution, respect, and calculated cleverness.
¹ November 2019
© Marjorie Radlo-Zandi
Author Marjorie Radlo-Zandi is a board member, advisor and mentor to founders on building and scaling their firms, provides angel funds to promising startups, invests for impact, consults on business growth and encourages a more diverse and inclusive startup ecosystem.
