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The
leaders of every business, regardless of its size or area of focus, face
the never-ending challenge of reshaping its capabilities to meet the demands
of the environment in which it must compete. Understanding the firm’s
business environment and interpreting its signals have become more
crucial and more difficult than ever before.
Strategic
thinkers consider the “environmental scan” a key starting
point for the critical decisions that define the success of the business.
This is the process of studying the business environment to understand
its major dimensions of impact and opportunity for the firm. Conclusions
drawn from this study become the driving principles for achieving and
maintaining the necessary strategic focus. If the business environment
is the battlefield, then the environmental scan is the firm’s “radar
screen” for detecting the threats and opportunities it offers.
In
today’s business environment, every manager needs a clear understanding
of these basic truths, trends, and events that are shaping the choices
he or she will have to make, whatever his or her level of responsibility.
Many leaders also feel that the employees need and deserve to know
what’s happening to the world around the organization to which they
are devoting their energies and talents.
Many
executive teams and divisional leaders within organizations carry out
a formal periodic review and re-examination of the operating environment.
Many firms make this an annual process, as a part of a regular
executive strategy retreat. Many more should. A careful and thoughtful
environmental scan lends a degree of discipline to the process of deciding
where to focus the resources of the organization. It also builds a level
of consensus that helps the executive team work together, and helps them
communicate a sense of common purpose to the rest of the organization.
Corporate
Radar is a practical book that can be
valuable reading for any manager, at any level, in any type of organization.
It guides the reader through a fairly comprehensive thinking process and
shows how to distill the results into a compelling story. It is well supplied
with stories and case examples of firms that have succeeded or failed
to understand their environments.
It
highlights specific instances of environmental events or trends that have
changed the fortunes of various firms. It also explores a range of provocative
ideas relating to the global events and trends business leaders need to
be thinking about. The Third Wave concept, pioneered by futurist
Alvin Toffler, offers a useful perspective for these ideas. Areas such
as information technology and the restructuring of society
also offer compelling considerations about future impacts and opportunities.
The
“backbone” structure of the book is the Karl Albrecht model
of the business environment, which is a simple wheel diagram depicting
eight sub-environments, or dimensions of impact and opportunity: Customer,
Competitor, Economic, Technological, Social, Political, Legal, and Geophysical.
The
Customer Environment>, for example, is the dimension of basic truths,
trends, and events that are shaping customer attitudes, values, wants,
needs, and buying habits for your particular line of business. The “customer
radar” is the thinking process that leads to a clear understanding
of the customers you want to do business with.
Similarly,
the Technological Environment is the dimension that shapes your
choices in such areas as the design of products and services, the infrastructure
of your business, strategic relationships with business partners and customers,
and the delivery of your customer value package.
The
Geophysical Environment deals with the practical geographic, ecological,
and structural aspects of the business, such as the availability of natural
resources, ecological considerations of your product or service, proximity
to a highly qualified workforce, and many other factors which are often
neglected in strategic planning.
The
model also applies well to non-corporate enterprises, such as government
organizations, educational institutions, associations, and others that
need a strategic approach to their survival and success.
The
objective of the treatment is to allow any manager, whether he or she
is the chief executive or an operational leader, to talk intelligently
about the business environment of his or her particular enterprise. The
eight-dimensional model, plus the various stories and global themes, will
support ongoing discussions and creative thinking about the future of
the business.
Table
of Contents:
Chapter
1. Extinction is Forever
The
Treacherous Business Environment
Managing the Blind Side
Would You Invest in Your Company?
Tuning up Your Corporate Radar
Boundaries and Ground Rules for this Discussion
The Americentric View of Business
Chapter
2. The Environmental Scan: Your Corporate Radar
Environmental
Intelligence: the Key to Your Survival
Your Eight Strategic Radar Screens
Connecting the Dots
Chapter
3. The New Realities of Business
The
Business Environment Pre-1980s: Managing Growth
The Business Environment Post-1980s: Hypercompetition
Price Wars and Collective Suicide
Points of Inflection
Long Waves, Short Waves, and Choppy Seas
Chapter
4. Surfing the Third Wave
A
New Species of Human
A New Wave
The Global-Tribal Paradox
The Bell Curve
What’s Driving the Third Wave?
Impacts of the Third Wave
Using What We Know
Chapter
5. How to be Your Own Futurist — Without Getting Lost in The
Ozone
The
Future: Gee Whiz or Gee Won’t?
Thinking Strategically and Futuristically
Liars Figure: Beware of Bogus Data
The S-Curve: Avoiding Premature Extrapolation
Drivers, Dominos, and Wildcards
Chapter
6. Your Customer Radar
Markets
or Customers?
The “Molecular Customer”
Demographics: the Great Engine of Marketing
Whatever Happened to Customer Service?
The Myth of Customer Loyalty
Understanding Customer Value: the Need Context
Chapter
7. Your Competitor Radar
Who
is Your Competition?
The Enemy of Your Enemy Might or Might Not Be Your Friend
Which Companies Will Dominate? Ask Your Broker
Consolidation: the David & Goliath Scenario
Is There a Merger in Your Future?
Branding: the Endless Battle for Mindshare
The Struggle for Differentiation
Chapter
8. Your Economic Radar
The
Big Shift: Intangible Economies
Economics as a Behavioral Science
Domino Economics: the Knee Bone’s Connected to...
Death-Row Economics: Industries Slated for Destruction
Economic “Weather” Factors: How they Affect
Your Business
How Currency Exchange Rates Affect Your Business
The Euro: the Great Equalizer?
Chapter
9. Your Technological Radar
Spotting
Winners: Corporate Binoculars or Blindfolds?
Technology is Selective in its Effect
The Age of Cheap Information
Y2K: The Biggest Wildcard of Them All?
Dehumanizing the Customer Interface: the Digital Moat
Internet Mythology: What the Internet Will and Won’t Do
CyberPolitics: the Battle for Control of the Desktop
Chapter
10. Your Social Radar
Cultural
and Social Factors that Shape Customer Intention
The American Culture: Prototype for the New World Order?
Social Values: Rising, Declining, Conflicting
Cultural Imperialism and Protectionism
Chapter
11. Your Political Radar
There’s
More to Politics than Politics
The Age of Agendas and Dilemmas
Anti-Corporate Politics
Chapter
12. Your Legal Radar
Trade:
Laws and Lawlessness
Liabilities, Lawsuits, and Legal Nightmares
Regulations: Defining the Playing Field
Contracts: How Not to Victimize Yourself
Chapter
13. Your Geophysical Radar
Infrastructure
And You
Natural and Unnatural Disasters
Geopolitics: The Power of Place
Geo-Economics: World Supply and Demand
Chapter
14. What Good is a Radar If You Can’t Read The Screen?
Bifocal
Vision
Assembling the Radar Data: the Basic Annual Strategic
Estimate
Interpreting the Big Picture: the Annual Strategic
Retreat
Refining the Business Strategy
Amacom, 2000
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