The Ego Trap: How Overinflated Egos Can Derail Business Success
“Ego is the invisible line item on every company’s profit and loss statement.” — David Marcum and Steven Smith in Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability), Fireside, 2007.
Ego is a word of positive and negative. While it is most likely to be used negatively it has a silver lining to itself — a positive meaning. The ego is a concept of having a healthy and strong sense of self-esteem and confidence. An inflated ego, however, relates to the sickness of having an immoderate amount of something. Blown-up self-confidence or arrogance affects the workplace and business. If leaders exhibit this trait, they eventually take down the entire organization like an infection. Leaders should avoid the ego trap and foster a positive work environment, drive innovation, and obtain a sustainable and successful business.
In this article, we are going to see how power has a funny way of self-perception if we don’t keep it in check.
The Downfall of Blackberry Limited -
Blackberry was once the Apple of today. With its own thriving smartphone market, it was hard to look for anything beyond Blackberry. However, in September 2016, Blackberry announced the end of its iconic product. There was a time when Blackberry’s messaging service ‘BBM’ was the Whatsapp of today. After so much success why did the smartphone company go down the drain of failure? Here are 3 reasons why Blackberry faced failure during its prime time -
- Failure to adapt:
Although Blackberry’s messaging technology was innovative and revolutionary in the world of instant messaging, its stubbornness to adapt to new designs drove it to a disaster. While Apple was experimenting with its touchscreen concept, Blackberry stood with its own idea of providing wide keyboards and a roller-ball-like mouse in the middle. This idea was fantastic in its own era — particularly the reason why Blackberry was so successful. However, with time Blackberry needed to evolve and innovate. In light of Apple bringing out the touchscreen, Blackberry had little to no respect for its competitors. It failed to revolutionize with its designs leading to decreased sales and less consumer market. Consumers were ready to adapt to Apple and Samsung due to their cutting-edge technology while Blackberry lost the limelight and the only way for them was down.
- Underestimating the competition:
The ego is the enemy of good businesses. Blackberry was a company with an established set of assets and advantages. They believed they had more room for error than they actually had and therefore never paid attention to evolution. The reluctance to change and innovate in light of thriving competitors brought significant losses to Blackberry. Apple and Android were constantly experimenting with new technologies like convenience and accessibility that opened them to a wider view of the audience. People were obviously more excited to try out new designs and operating systems in contrast to Blackberry’s never changing face.
- Slow response to app ecosystem:
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were the co-CEOs of Blackberry Limited. Blackberry initially had a limited and old eco-system (operating system) that offered fewer apps than what was available on the Iphone’s app store or the Android Play Store. Balsillie and Lazarisdis were slow to recognize not only their growing competitors but also the importance of a user-friendly and accessible application. They underestimated the demand for third-party applications and also did not prioritize the expansion of their own app offering like the BBM. Today, Whatsapp has a global market of around $19.3 billion and offers similar features to the instant messaging application BBM. This lack of focus and concentration on the app ecosystem further eroded Blackberry’s market value as users began to flee towards options that had a broader range of applications.
The cost of ego -
Big egos invade every conversation from board-room meetings, to client communications and teamwork, it leaves no room for others to speak and often leads to bad decision-making. Moreover, ego-driven leaders mostly view team members and coworkers as incorrect in contrast to what they are saying. They don’t like people speaking against them even if it proves to be fruitful for the business. These situations mostly lead to bad teamwork, biases, and the collapse of a good working environment. Blackberry’s magnified and embellished view of themselves brought them down from success to exorbitant failure only because they were unable to evolve and innovate like their competitors. Several ways uncontrollable egos can hurt businesses are:
- Egoistic leaders can be manipulated easily -
If you’re someone who craves attention, flattery, and praise, it is easy for you to fall prey to manipulative people. People can find patterns and exploit your craving for attention to get what they want which sometimes might indulge in evil intentions against others.
- Falling victim to biases -
Cutting down options and only narrowing ‘acceptable and good ideas’ from the ‘right people’ can get you in a lot of trouble. Cherry-picking facts, and ideas to your liking and beliefs will make you think and act in a constricted way.
- Hearing, but not listening -
Not listening to your coworkers can restrict you from growing and finding opportunities. To thrive in a successful business one must possess an open mindset. Leaders should especially encourage all workers to drop in their ideas and point-of-views so that they can choose the best option from a pool of alternatives.
- Micromanagement -
Micromanagement restricts employees from having their freedom. It leads to reduced productivity, less employee retention, and eventually hurts the self-esteem and mental health of employees. Micromanagement will most likely increase the employee turnover rate.
- Underestimation of challenges -
Underestimating your competitors and challenges because of an overdose of self-confidence can leave you in a state similar to that of Blackberry Limited — failure. Businesses should keep a check on their competitors and prepare themselves in the face of evolution and innovation.
Ego check
Here are several ways you can identify if you have an inflated ego:
- Smarter people joining the team -
Your response to smarter people joining the team can dictate a lot about you. If you feel good about intelligent people joining in, that means you are not threatened by them rather you accept the fact that good leaders don’t know everything.
- Loyalty divider -
If you are someone who divides the team into people who are loyal to you and people who aren’t loyal to you that means you think in ‘us’ VS ‘them’ terms. Good leaders respect the fact that everyone has the right to disagree and don’t take things personally.
- Purpose of meetings -
The purpose of your meetings should be to find new opportunities and brainstorm ideas together to innovate and evolve. Effective leaders are always open to new ideas. You don’t want to be a leader who conducts meetings to compel others to agree with them.
Conclusion
Good leaders and businesses remain humble even when they’re ruling the world. While self-confidence, assertiveness, and ego can be attractive and positive for businesses, too much of it can also hinder their path to success. It is always beneficial for businesses to have employee assistance programs to help their network remain humble and foster a good working environment. Businesses can truly thrive when their workforce along with their customer service is excellent.
