Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

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Autonomous cars may be statistically better at driving than people. They don’t get tired, distracted, or emotional. But they aren’t perfect—and when one makes a mistake, it gets scrutinized much more than a human driver’s mistake would. That asymmetry means autonomous cars can’t just be a little better than people to get broad adoption. They have to be a lot better. Some say 10x better.

That got me thinking about switching costs, and how much better you have to be to unseat an incumbent.

If a competitor is the go-to firm in an industry, geographic area, or just for one client, you’ve got your work cut out for you. As long as they keep doing a good job and charge reasonable fees, it will be very difficult to displace them.

There are two main ways to take a crack at their market share: become known as the experts, or undercut them on price.

Although fees are important factors for nearly everyone, the cream-of-the-crop clients place much more value on technical expertise and project management.

So if you’re the outsider, a little better isn’t going to cut it. You need to be that 10x. That means being more prepared, communicating more clearly, adopting new and superior technologies earlier, proactively preventing problems rather than just solving what arises, and being intolerant of complacency.

Familiarity and relationships are a real moat. You don’t overcome those by being marginally better. You out-compete it by being undeniably better.

Simon Sinek (leadership consultant, author) on the long game:

“. . . to succeed in the Infinite Game of business, we have to stop thinking about who wins or who’s the best and start thinking about how to build organizations that are strong enough and healthy enough to stay in the game for many generations to come.”

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Paul Halmos (mathematician) on being a pro:

“I read once that the true mark of a pro—at anything—is that he understands, loves, and is good at even the drudgery of his profession.”

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Swami Vivekananda (monk) on focus to succeed:

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life—think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of the body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. That is the way of success.”

Sometimes leaders say the wrong thing. Many times, they don’t say what they should. This article is a reminder that not communicating effectively (that includes avoiding difficult conversations) has real consequences.

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Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin