Chapter 4: Targeting Critical Vulnerabilities

Overview

Thetis when he was born had intended to make him invulnerable by dipping him into the River Styx, but she was careless and did not see to it that the water covered the part of the foot by which she was holding him.

”The Story of Achilles ^[1]

A practitioner of maneuver warfare continually analyzes a rival with the aim of identifying those fundamental weaknesses that, if exploited, will do the most significant damage to competitors ability to resist. ^[2]

Identifying the weakness that will cause the opponent to collapse ”his Achilles heel ”can be achieved in one of three ways: through constant search by every member of the organization, through forward-looking planning, and through rigorous self-examination. Once the opponent s Achilles heel is identified, resources must be marshaled rapidly and decisively to exploit it. Critical vulnerabilities are fleeting opportunities that must be targeted before the opponent is aware he is susceptible and takes steps to remedy them; otherwise they could be missed permanently. Thus minimizing the lag time between the identification of the weakness and its exploitation maximizes the effectiveness of the resources deployed in this effort.

In this chapter we offer four historical examples of targeting critical vulnerabilities and its key components , as well as present-day lessons from the Marines. Erwin Rommel s victory over the Italians at the Battle of the Isonzo in World War I and Lowe s follow-on attack against Home Depot in retail home improvement illustrate the successful identification and exploitation of a rival s critical vulnerability in warfare and in business. Shell Oil s successful use of scenario planning , which aims to identify, prepare for, and practice in several futures instead of predicting a single future, provides a potential means of identifying competitors critical vulnerabilities before they do. And hesitation by the Union Army at the Battle of Petersburg in the American Civil War illustrates the adverse consequences of failing to marshal resources rapidly in the exploitation of a rival s critical vulnerability.

The Marines experience with identifying and exploiting critical vulnerabilities can serve as a useful guide to implementing this principle in your organization. To this end, our intent in this chapter is to use their experiences and some of the lessons learned from our historical examples to suggest ways in which you can encourage a top-down, bottom-up approach to targeting critical vulnerabilities in your organization and safeguard your own critical vulnerabilities from competitors.

^[1] Hamilton, Edith, Mythology , 278.

^[2] Warfighting , 35.