Application in Business

You can employ all of these practices in your organization to target rivals critical vulnerabilities. Do not sit idly in the ivory tower that is your office. Visit the disparate parts of your organization and solicit the insights of your people on a regular basis. All too often what you learn is valuable , time-critical, and surprising. With practice your team will learn to share information without constant probing and prodding.

Reconnaissance, intelligence, and war games have their counterparts in the business environment: market study , environmental scan , and scenario planning . A market study can be anything from a discussion with a frontline employee or salesperson to learn from his or her firsthand observations to a brief survey intended to understand recent events and trends. An environmental scan interprets data gathered from deliberate research efforts and product reengineering to answer questions such as What features do their products have that ours do not? and identify existing opportunities. Finally, as we saw earlier in the chapter, business leaders can employ scenario planning to identify, prepare for, and practice in several futures and identify critical vulnerabilities before they appear.

Use your sales force as your reconnaissance unit to act as your eyes and ears and monitor your customers as well as your competitors . Meet with them as often as possible to keep your finger on the pulse of evolving customer preferences. Rely on your operations planning arm as your intelligence unit to synthesize information and build longer- term plans to exploit rivals critical vulnerabilities. Conduct scenario analysis ”war games ”at all levels of management to prepare your organization for success in an unpredictable future. Focus your organization s energy outward on rivals critical vulnerabilities through constant reminders and quiz your people to emphasize the importance of these reminders. When you identify a critical vulnerability, act as quickly as possible to exploit it, and if you hit a wall, go around that wall. Finally, periodically step outside of your own organization and examine every aspect of your business from the perspective of your competitors to prevent your own critical vulnerabilities from being targeted .