Helping Your Competition May Be the Secret to Business Success

... and the key to solving unemployment in Kenya.

I recently heard someone say they were going to crush their competition.

I stopped them. “No,” I said. “You need to help your competition.”

They stared at me like I had two heads.

How crazy does that sound, right?!

And yet, this one contradictory idea is at the heart of why some economies thrive while others leave millions of talented young people waiting by the phone. If you want to understand what’s really behind unemployment in Kenya, and more importantly, what can actually fix it, stay with me.

The Man Who Transformed an Entire Nation (And Why You’ve Probably Never Heard of Him)

After World War II, Japan was in ruins. Its factories were crippled, its reputation for manufacturing was ... to put it politely, terrible. The phrase “Made in Japan” was a punchline.

Nobody wanted it.

At that time Dr. W. Edwards Deming was an American statistician and management consultant who, ironically, couldn’t get American companies to listen to him. So he went to Japan.

What Deming taught Japanese business leaders wasn’t a magic formula or a secret technology. It was a philosophy: stop working against each other, and start collaborating to improve the whole system. Be thankful for a good competitor.

W. Edwards Deming's 14 Points for Management

He emphasized ideas such as continuous improvement (kaizen), a focus on quality, collaborative circles in which workers from different companies shared knowledge, and the radical notion that suppliers and businesses should work together rather than squeeze each other on price.

Within 30 years, Japan went from the world’s laughingstock to a global manufacturing powerhouse, with Toyota, Sony, Honda, etc., all products of a culture that chose collaboration over cutthroat competition.

What This Means for Kenya

Deming didn’t tell Japanese companies to merge. He told them to share knowledge, align incentives, and build systems that serve the whole economy, not just their quarterly report.

The same logic applies here. When Kenyan businesses collaborate, even with their “competitors”, the whole ecosystem expands. More jobs get created. More talent gets developed. The economy grows in ways no single business can. As Bluchic puts it, “Collaborating instead of competing is good for business.” bluchic.com

Final Thought

Deming changed Japan by convincing business leaders that collaboration, not competition, was the path to prosperity. He was right then. He is right now.

A single brilliant company or a single government program won’t solve unemployment in Kenya. It’ll be solved the same way Japan rebuilt itself: by building systems where people and businesses work together, share knowledge, and create opportunities, not just for themselves, but for everyone around them.

That is exactly what pamoja.ke is all about: connecting people, businesses, and ideas so that the Kenyan economy grows in ways no single business can build on its own. The question is not whether collaboration works. History already answered that.

The question is: are you in?

Here are three things you can do to be part of Kenya’s economic revolution:

• Identify two businesses and invite them to a collaboration discussion.
• Read an article about Deming and try putting one of his strategies into practice at your company.
• Contact us to share your ideas and work together.

With your participation, Kenya is about to change for the better.

Pamoja tunaweza.

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Brought to you by…

Joyce Njuguna

pamoja.ke

References

1. https://deming.org/explore/sopk/
2. https://www.bluchic.com/collaboration-over-competition/

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