The fluorescent light above the conference table is flickering at a frequency that suggests it might explode, or perhaps it’s just trying to communicate in Morse code to someone who cares more than I do. The air in this room has the consistency of warm soup. We have been sitting here for 126 minutes, and the primary takeaway from the Chief Operating Officer is that we are ‘doing just fine’ because our nearest competitor still requires clients to mail in physical copies of their invoices for verification. The CEO, a man who wears suits that cost more than my first car but fit like a rented tent, leaned back and nodded as if this were a revelation of divine proportion. ‘At least we have a web portal,’ he said, his voice dripping with the kind of unearned confidence usually reserved for toddlers who have just successfully used the toilet. ‘Acme Inc. is practically still in the Stone Age. We’re 16 steps ahead of them.’
I found myself thinking about my Uncle’s funeral. It happened 26 months ago. The silence in the chapel was so thick it was physically heavy… And then, at the exact moment the priest paused for a dramatic breath, a pallbearer’s shoe squeaked against the marble floor. It sounded like a frantic, dying mouse. I didn’t just smile; I let out a sharp, involuntary bark of laughter… Comparing yourself to a dying competitor is the corporate equivalent of laughing at a funeral. It’s a coping mechanism that masks the fact that the industry is moving on without you, whether you’re the one in the casket or the one holding the squeaky shoe.
The Diagnosis of Relative Success
Greta R., a bankruptcy attorney I’ve known for 36 years, once told me that the most dangerous companies aren’t the ones that are failing. They are the ones that are ‘winning’ by a 6% margin against a failing industry. She sits in her office, surrounded by stacks of paper that represent the collapsed dreams of 566 entrepreneurs, and she sees the pattern clearly. ‘They tell me they were the best in their class. But they never realize their class was the remedial group in a school that was being demolished.’
[Survival is not a relative metric.]
In the world of invoice factoring, this provincialism is a plague. You see it in the way firms handle their risk assessment. They look at a 26-step manual verification process and call it ‘thorough’ because their competitor has a 36-step manual process. They ignore the fact that the world has moved to real-time data integration. They are measuring their speed in knots while the rest of the financial world is launching rockets. If your strategy relies on the continued stupidity or technological stagnation of your rivals, you don’t have a strategy. You have a prayer.
The Speed Disconnect (Conceptual)
The Ceiling of Mediocrity
There is a specific kind of arrogance that comes from being the tallest midget in the room. It prevents you from looking out the window to see the giants walking past. This inward-focused benchmarking is a recipe for collective decline. When you only look at your competitor, you are essentially letting them set your ceiling. If they are incompetent, you aim for ‘slightly less incompetent.’ If they are slow, you aim for ‘mildly sluggish.’
To truly modernize, you have to stop looking at what the guy across the street is doing and start looking at what is actually possible. The goal shouldn’t be to be 6% better than Acme Inc. The goal should be to make the very existence of Acme Inc.’s business model irrelevant. This is why tools like invoice factoring software exist. They aren’t about being slightly better; they are about changing the fundamental physics of how the work gets done.
The Prison of Proven Process
I remember a specific instance where I tried to explain this to a branch manager. He was proud of his 156-page manual that dictated every possible interaction… To him, the reduction [from 256 pages] was progress. To the market, it was still a tedious barrier to entry. He stayed in that mindset for 16 months until his top 6 clients left for a provider that didn’t have a manual at all, just a clean API and an intuitive dashboard.
Tedium vs. Modernity
High Friction Barrier
Instant API Access
Greta R. often says that the most expensive thing a company can own is a ‘proven process’ that hasn’t been updated since 2006. High-performers don’t want to work in a museum. They want to work on the edge of what is possible.
The culture of mediocrity is self-reinforcing.
The True Competitor
We need to stop using the word ‘competitor’ as a shield against our own obsolescence. The real competitor isn’t the company in the next office suite; it’s the absolute standard of excellence that technology has made possible. If your software feels like it was designed by a committee of 86-year-olds who hate sunlight, it doesn’t matter if your rival’s software was designed by a committee of 96-year-olds. You are both losing.
How long does it actually take to verify an invoice? What is the actual friction for the client? These are the questions that lead to growth. The rest is just noise at a funeral.
Walking Into The Darkness
I finally left that meeting. As I walked out, the flickering light finally gave up and died, plunging the hallway into darkness. I didn’t laugh this time. I just walked faster. I had 16 emails to answer and a lingering sense that I was the only one who noticed the ship was taking on water.
The moment you realize that your competitor’s stupidity is a liability for you, not an asset, is the moment you actually start to compete. Until then, you’re just part of the procession, wondering why everyone looks so sad while you’re busy admiring your own shoes.
But that’s the thing about industry standards-they are only standards until someone decides they are no longer enough.
