Application in Business

Reconnaissance pull is a natural bottom-up approach to seeking out and capitalizing on new opportunities. Harnessing the ingenuity and talent of those closest to the action, it arms the field commander or business manager, who is constantly faced with difficult decisions amid uncertainty, complexity, and constant change, with better and more timely information, thereby facilitating the evaluation of alternatives and enhancing tempo. It has the potential to deliver breakthrough results for you, just as it has for HP and the Marines.

First and foremost, develop and designate a wide range of reconnaissance functions in your organization. As we began to discuss in Chapter 4, these functions are often present in your sales or marketing force, but they may also reside with engineers , traders, researchers, analysts, product managers, or call center personnel ” anyone who is removed from headquarters and close to the market. Give your people the latitude and support they need to develop reconnaissance capabilities, find opportunities, and bring new ideas to the attention of senior management. Complement this bottom-up nature of reconnaissance pull with top-down strategic guidance that orients your people to key market characteristics and guides efforts; with proper guidance, new ideas may not be so far- fetched . This top-down function should also serve to review and filter the information from the front line and commit resources as appropriate to the most deserving, strategically viable opportunities.

Employ distributed information systems that complement the decentralized nature of reconnaissance pull and are usable by all facets of your organization. This practice will enable the sharing of information between the front line and headquarters while avoiding the common pitfall of disconnected organizational entities. Invest time in training system users in the technology and provide them the bigger picture so that they may leverage the full potential of the system.

Like the Marines, ensure that a direct and unfettered conduit between senior leadership and your reconnaissance force exists. If you haven t already done so, consider designating a talented junior manager as your ground intelligence officer. At first this position could be a secondary or ancillary duty; then, as its scope widens, it could evolve into a stepping-stone position through which other up-and-comers could rotate.

Also, create incentives for workers who find new opportunities or develop new ideas ”Marines recognize initiative in the form of accelerated promotion and medals, while HP monetarily rewards any employee who develops a technology that leads to a new patent.

Finally, start breeding flexibility in your organization. This prescription is easier said than done ” especially without drill instructors. But as a leader you are in the position to devise more flexible and fluid plans and create simulated situations in training that require rapid reaction on the part of your people to changing events.