I heard this many years ago, can’t remember where or from whom, but it continues to ring true: “Choose your enemies carefully, for they will define you.”
A powerful tool is the ability to choose who/what your team or organization is competing against.
Steve Jobs famously said that Apple needed to compete against IBM and Microsoft. Sports teams get especially psyched up against their biggest rivals. We have a long history of painting our political and military enemies with scathing portrayals.
The ‘enemy’ can also be a situation you don’t want to be in – bankruptcy, #3 in the market, reduced optionality, limited freedom to operate because your competitors have strategic patents, too much (or too little) inventory to sell, and so on. Paint a vivid picture of that situation to energize people into actions to avoid it.
