“Evolution of tactics did not keep pace with increased weapons lethality developed and produced by 19th century technology. Why were the 19th century and early 20th century commanders unable to evolve better tactics to avoid over a half century of debilitating casualties?” [1]
Despite huge technological advances over the last thirty years, businesses have yet to implement strategies that will fully harness the power of IT to achieve and maintain competitive advantage and superior strategic positioning. Businesses will continue to suffer huge economic casualties with annual spending exceeding $2 trillion dollars worldwide.[1] Overpowered servers, applications, and computers filled with useless, irrelevant, productivity-sapping emails and downloads will continue to populate work desks. Not only do these computers have far more computing power than the average users will need much less use, but also, they are loaded with applications that pose a serious security risk via open ports to the internet – backdoors for hackers to exploit and infiltrate not only computers but entire networks!
Where having cutting-edge IT once conferred competitive advantage and strategic security, particularly in “first-to-market” instances, IT now has become an
energy vampire draining businesses of profits, productivity and people, all the while impeding processes and progress.
IT is not an explosive that is going to blow the competition out of the water.
IT is a double edged sword equally capable of cutting down competition and the business wielding it.
Defying conventional wisdom, IT isn’t “the primary factor in the productivity surge … Intensifying competition led to productivity-boosting innovations.”
[2] Given this premise, how do businesses pull ahead and stay ahead in a fiercely competitive –digital- market
? Getting inside the competitors’ OODA Loops (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) via SA (Situation Awareness) and disrupting and exploiting competitors’ OODA Loops to create confusion and disorder. Getting inside the competitor’s OODA loop entails removing oneself from the comfort of his/her contexts and experiences and stepping into those of the competitors (i.e., having SA – situation awareness). There are a fortunate few to whom this is an innate and intrinsic ability (seemingly automatic); however, with practice this will become second nature to most. Getting inside the competitor’s OODA loop demands a very high degree of sensory processing, objectivity and attention to details in a fluid and fast paced environment. In order to get into the competitor’s OODA loop, situation awareness is absolutely critical, essential.
Digressing, before you can get into someone else’s OODA Loop, you have to understand your own OODA Loop, your own ability to have SA (situation awareness).
What is SA? Situation awareness “refers to the degree of accuracy by which one's perception of his current environment mirrors reality.”[3] It is important to understand there is a distinct difference between having SA and being intuitive, as well as having foresight and being “psychic”. SA is based on thinking, on rationale and objective judgments whereas intuition is based on feelings, on something that is neither evident nor deducible.[4] Similarly so, foresight is simply SA playing itself out in one’s mind and coming to plausible conclusions whereas psychic predictions are an outward manifestation of intuition. There are many “lucky bastards” out there who run businesses by gut feelings (intuition) and do quite well, but there are far more who run businesses into the ground this way. Not to mention that since intuition is not reproducible, transition, whether natural (through retirement) or catastrophic (through death, scandal, etc.) is very difficult if not impossible. Note that having SA and foresight require and are dependent on external information and are abilities possessed whereas intuition and psychic predictions do not require and are not dependent on external information and are personal characteristics, traits. SA is predominantly objective. Intuition is predominantly subjective. The singularly most difficult task of SA is to tease apart the objective from the subjective, to operate in an objective mode in a subjective world. It is vital not to mistake intuition for critical non-verbal cues or to allow personal biases, stereotypes, categorizations, labels and experiences to distort the reality of the situation. Having said this, the next most difficult task is being able to take in the whole situation unfettered.
All too often, the focus is placed on the end product/service, when, in reality, the key competitive advantage lies in the process of making/delivering the products/services, the people involved in the processes, and the practices that govern the processes. It is far easier to focus and act on a single item (product) or time (service); but, the information gleaned from this is insignificant compared to that gleaned from observing and orienting oneself to the competitors’ strategies.
Other times, businesses and managers are so entrenched in, bogged down by internal situations and issues that they are unwilling and/or incapable of stepping out of their own perspectives to see situations, particularly external, in other perspectives and contexts and resolve issues in innovative ways. So often people are told “to think outside the box” yet are still stymied because, truth be told, they need “to throw the box away”. Over time the box has come to symbolize the situation or issue at hand; however, in this context, it is the biases, stereotypes and subjectivity (to name a few) that confine the thinking and innovative processes.
To step into a competitor’s OODA loop is not necessarily to “become” the competitor but to be the proverbial “fly on the wall”. To observe not just the present, but the past and how it ties into the present and future (if at all) and the future and how it is anchored to the past and present (if at all). Ultimately, the goal is to have a panoramic view of the situation and, additionally, all possible scenarios evolving from the situation, to orient oneself to and anticipate the competitor’s way of thinking and behavioural responses (actions).
Many businesses (and people) operate (decide and act) in a given (and frequently fairly static and predictable) egocentric context. Meaning they look to their direct competitors, sometimes hopelessly shortsighted, incapable of teasing apart the objective and subjective parts of situations, incapable of taking and understanding other perspectives in order to anticipate and strike first. In all too many businesses, managers are too busy trying to understand how to build a “stereo system” (IT) when, in fact, they should be trying to figure out how to use it. Expanding this analogy, many businesses and managers will try to compete head-to-head in a fierce battle of one-up-manship, of making a better “stereo system” which long-term is a no-win strategy for all involved, except for the consumer (sometimes) because, in essence, they are re-inventing the same thing over and over instead of offering innovative products/services.
Frequently, businesses rely heavily on the end-users, consumers, clients and information derived from and on them for solutions (decide and act) as well as look to see what their competitors are doing, what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong. There is one last piece that many businesses overlook. They often don’t take a good look at themselves.
What?!?
The unique value proposition of a business is how its organizational structure, management style, team structure and individual investment and empowerment are balanced and bound within the unique corporate culture to deliver services and/or products in a proactive, efficient, timely and cost effective manner to not only attain and maintain competitive advantage but also to achieve and maintain superior strategic position over the long-term.
What?!?
It would not be far-fetched to say a business’ Achilles heel is its organization and ability to respond and act as a group and as individuals. Hence, here is where having SA to infiltrate, disrupt and exploit a competitor’s OODA Loop pays off. The goal for businesses is to exercise situation awareness to understand and anticipate competitors’ strategies, to out-maneuver, outflank, out-pace, and outgun their competitors, to speed up their innovation cycles through SA and fine-tuning their OODA Loop. The goal is not to build a better car than they now have, but to build a better car than the one they haven’t even thought of yet but will, or better yet, inventing a product and/or service they would have never thought of before – a modern day dogfight. A business cannot successfully speed up its innovation cycle much less maintain the momentum unless it has high-performance individuals in high-performance teams within an efficient and effective organizational structure bound by a common corporate culture.
Once businesses have the “whole” picture, then can they formulate an effective and innovative strategy that will yield successful results (profits) both up front and over time. Without SA it is impossible for a business to identify its own OODA Loop or those of its competitors, much less utilize this information in any productive and profitable manner.
Having SA is not solely an ability exercised by an individual but may be exercised at a corporate level. The same principles that apply to individuals can be transferred to a corporate level but only if there is cohesive and high-performance leadership and teams.
It doesn’t take brute strength (e.g., fiscal advantage, resource advantage, etc.) to counter attack competitors’ bids for superiority and market share. Often individuals and businesses fail because they cannot get out of their own way. They are often limited not by others but by themselves, their lack of insight and imagination, their fear of change (innovation), their dependency on others whose best interest are not theirs (the individuals and businesses). They run like rats on a wheel, running … running … running … but never getting anywhere. As the old saying goes, “Work smarter, not harder.”
There are – and will always be - consulting firms (and people within a business) out there ready to rape and pillage businesses that are mired in a muck of misaligned and entangled strategies offering salvation at the cost of businesses’ bottom lines and reputations. Just as globalization and outsourcing have proven to be huge levelers in the digital marketplace giving smaller businesses the strength to compete effectively against larger competitors, exploiting the competitors’ OODA Loops through SA may very well be all the savvy executive needs to trounce his competitors, time and time again! So back to the beginning quote:
“Evolution of tactics did not keep pace with increased weapons lethality developed and produced by 19th century technology. Why were the 19th century and early 20th century commanders unable to evolve better tactics to avoid over a half century of debilitating casualties?” [1]
What is the significance of this in relation to OODA, SA and IT? Drawing parallels to what Boyd was referencing (i.e., the American Civil War through WWI), the contemporary digital marketplace and associated strategies are vast minefields of very advanced IT applications that many businesses suffer heavy casualties on. Many businesses treat IT as either a passive weapon (to streamline processes and improve the bottom line) or, worse yet, afford it the rank of general hoping it will lead them to victory (which in reality is abdication of management responsibilities and functions). Although advanced IT applications may be and, in many cases are, an integral part of the corporate strategic arsenal, they are utterly useless in the wrong hands. Moreover, the cost of procuring, maintaining and using advanced IT applications in the name of competition may prove to be more than many businesses can afford and, ultimately conferring competitive advantage and superior strategic position to competitors. A perverse but possible outcome.
Effective business strategy, winning business strategy, is not a function of who has the most firepower but who has the most intelligence, who has the most SA, who can get into the competitors’ OODA Loops and cause the most disruption, chaos and disorder, and who can speed up and maintain their innovation cycles –each ability, each activity a key component of successful business strategy.
Selected Reading:The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security (Paperback)
by Grant T. Hammond
Comments: Of particular interest and relevance are the chapters dealing with Boyd’s theories on strategy (chapter 8 to the end).
The Google Story (Hardcover)
by David Vise, Mark Malseed
Comments: This is an account (and a somewhat repetitive one) which focuses mainly on the Google “culture”. Although very lean on any strategies employed it does illustrate the effect of “culture” and personal dynamics on success. A quick and fairly painless read.
Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business (Hardcover)
by Chet Richards, Chester W. Richards
Spinney, Franklin C. “Evolutionary Epistemology: A Personal Interpretation of John Boyd’s Destruction and Creation,” 31 July 1997, 20 December 2005 <http://www.belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/spinney
/ev_epis/evolutionary_1.htm>.
Tighe, Thomas, Hill, Raymond and McIntyre, Greg. “A Decision for Strategic Effects: A conceptual approach to effects based targeting,” 11 October 2000, 20 December 2005 <http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/Hill.html>.
“A Guide to Implementing the Theory of Constraints (TOC)” 19 December 2005.
Selected References:
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