The Benefits of Actively Encouraging Competitiveness

Being fairly new to Kelton, I was pleasantly surprised to find an interesting personality trait in common with many of my colleagues and frankly the company as a whole: competitiveness.  I often get teased outside of work for my own competitive nature; I’ve literally spent hours learning how to play board games really well just to beat my friends at them.  While competitiveness may not be a unique characteristic to an individual or even an organization, it is one that I have never seen so actively encouraged.  So needless to say, the competitiveness at work was welcome.

So what do I mean by “active encouragement”?  For starters, the company hosts an annual Olympics where each of our offices are split in two and we battle it out.  Not for prizes or cool rewards, but for bragging rights.  Games and competitions at Kelton vary from Jenga to Blongo Ball (a.k.a ladder golf).   We also run a number of ongoing survivor pools, have game nights, go-cart races, participate in relay races, scavenger hunts that end in races to the finish line, Tough Mudder competitions, marathons, take Movember to a whole new level… just to name a few.

So why does this even matter?  Well for one, competitiveness is a motivating factor.  It means you have a desire to succeed and be better than the next guy.  And at Kelton, we want to win.  This isn’t a “win at any cost” type of thing.  It’s more a desire to be the best and succeed at everything we do, even if it’s just a game between friends.

I think this is an underlying reason why our clients love to work with us.  We aren’t satisfied with the status quo approach, especially if it hasn’t helped them understand their business environment any more than the next guy.  This is why we advocate the use of creative methodologies, such as War Gaming, that simulate changes in the marketplace such as market share and profitability based on actions that different brands might make.  We also love to utilize various different choice exercises that pit concepts, products and even newspaper headlines against one another to see what wins out.  In many instances, this is the only way to accurately replicate how consumers make decisions in the real world: by comparing features and benefits and then going through a process of elimination.  This is the fun stuff in our opinion.

We think different at Kelton because that’s what helps us win.  We have a genuine understanding of our client’s position; they want to win and knock their competitors down.  We are competitive because it’s in our nature and it shows in the effort we put into our work and our relationships.  We encourage it because it matters….and we enjoy the competition.