Good strategy assessment begins with good strategic intelligence gathering (through various means). The amateurs espoused the belief that one can search for tangible and relevant information through the web with a few key words is good enough. They do not realized that the placement of various data on the web can be fixed.
With so much data, most decision makers (esp. the news media) are usually confused.
Regardless of one's position within the terrain, the successful strategists are usually focused on understanding the certainty of the grand terrain and their positions within it.
The key to good strategic assessment is to match the numeric fundamentals of the terrain to the performance metrics of the targeted competitors.
The successful strategists are usually able to recognize those match ups and conclude what is the tangible truth. Depending on the situation, they would then utilize it to enhanced their level of strategic power.
Here is one view's of strategic assessment from the movie Syriana:
Bob Barnes: Intelligence work isn't training seminars and gold stars for attendance.
Fred Franks: What do you think intelligence work is Bob?
Bob Barnes: I think it's two people in a room and one of them's asking a favor that is a capital crime in every country on earth, a hanging crime.
Fred Franks: No Bob, it's assessing the information gathered from that favor and then balancing it against all the other information gathered from all the other favors.
The Compass View
Good strategic assessment begins with superior strategic intelligence gathering (from the field). It usually take a great deal of time and effort. That there are not many companies who are willing to do that. The chief decision makers preferred to build a situation based on their presumption. Then they would create a plan for it. If failure occurs, their corporate assets and their human efforts are wasted. Other people would be blamed for their poor decisions.
In planning, never a useless move.
In strategy, no step is in vain. - Chen Hao
In the real world, the successful strategists regularly weighted the relevancy of each intelligence item and the credibility of its source. Then, they balanced it to the principal points within the Big Tangible Picture. These steps enable them to make a relevant strategic decision.
Successful strategists who believed in the importance of assessing and positioning, followed this Compass rule:
"The time needed to influence your target is inversely proportional to the time that you have spent assessing and positioning."
Side note: There is an exception to that rule. We will touch on it in a future post.
So, how do you assess your Big Tangible Picture?
