FEBRUARY 2016 / NO. 2
TAGS: VUCA, MANAGEMENT

We live in a VUCA world

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”, economist Herbert Simon, 1971. That is why strategic intelligence is needed to get the necessary insights and foresight and make better decisions!
If you are dissatisfied with strategy-making based on information, backward-looking analysis, management controls and problem-solving after the event, but you would still like to make a positive contribution to thinking about the future, it is time for strategic intelligence.
This implies moving from the basics of data and information gathering for industry analysis to competitive intelligence towards strategic intelligence. Strategic intelligence helps determine the most important dangers for your business and minimize their impact if they materialize. Organizations have never had a greater need for a flexible, resilient and engaging approach to strategic intelligence than now. Think of our business world whereby, VUCA sets the stage for managing and leading companies on the right course of action.
  • Many thousands of companies can make better decisions in the event that they have strategic intelligence in place
  • Strategic intelligence is the way to organize the countervailing power to senior management as described in “Big Boys Big Ego’s and Strategic Intelligence” (published in October 2015)
  • In Strategic Intelligence we use unique tools such as Strategic War-Mapping, PARTS, SPACE, Grey Swan analysis, SWOTI 2.0 and others
  • VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. For leaders both in the military and in business, this approach underscores the importance of strategic decision-making, readiness planning, risk management and situational problem-solving.
In a VUCA world, top management faces challenges of new customer needs, increased competition, disruptive innovation, a rapidly-changing competitive arena, currency volatility, financial instability and worse, cybersecurity, volatility in energy markets, activist shareholders, new government regulations, bribery, corruption and much more. Strategic intelligence delivers the vision to better anticipate and react to the nature and speed of change (1), creates foresight to act decisively in uncertain situations (2), delivers system thinking to navigate the organization through complexity, chaos, confusion and worse (3). Strategic intelligence is executed by a small core team that gives top management the necessary countervailing power with the aim of preventing mismanagement a few years down the road.
“Strategic Intelligence is executed by a small team supported by a Company Radar Room”
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