Submitted by: Submitted by norfleetmj
Views: 438
Words: 5873
Pages: 24
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 10/12/2010 03:54 PM
Intelligence tools for scenario planning
It is late at night. The darkened room is full of small tables. Small groups of people huddle around them, some peering at high-resolution photos while others read and collate messages from a high-speed printer. Two or three powerful-looking individuals pace the floor, frequently stopping to watch a situation board update overhead. Suddenly, the door flies open. A heavy-set man stops before one of the pacing individuals, chest heaving. He salutes, and hands over a message. “We have confirmation,” he says. The tall, silver-haired commander moves quickly. “Go to code red,” he says, as the message board updates, showing new information. “Activate plan Alpha. We’re changing our source for curly-leafed lettuce.”
Except for those last seven words, this scene might have come from a host of Hollywood movies. In that world, leaders eye the future with a calm and steady gaze. Top-level strategists integrate rich intelligence about target capabilities and intent in a daring action plan. Information developed through bold acts of espionage fills remaining gaps in knowledge. Commanders choose a course, and then monitor unfolding events to see which of several scenarios might develop. Using fresh intelligence, they select one of several previously developed contingency plans (each scenario has several), and aggressively execute the plan – either winning the day, or yielding an opportunity for an intelligence analyst-cum-hero to save the day with a combination of savvy, cunning, gut feel, and sheer luck. Then the entire organisation – or heroic portions of it – lines up in support. However, in the real world, strategy development is constrained by past and existing corporate cultures. When scenarios are developed, they often rely on a sense of what is ‘believed’ about the external world. They rarely use much intelligence that might be recognisable as such by experts from the arenas of national security or defence. Even more rarely are...