How Competitive Intelligence can learn from Soviet-era cold war exercises.
Routine policies and procedures are essential in business. Practice makes perfect, and it is safe that everyone knows what everyone else is doing. The rigidity of the secure pattern. This article has the rather unusual title of how Competitive Intelligence can learn from Soviet-era Cold War exercises.
But routine adherence to procedures can often be dangerous. It can open you up to your competitors’ understanding of you more, enabling them to predict what you will do next. And if they can do that, they have a chance of making you do things they want.
Freezing cold day south of Magdeburg
During the Cold War and the modern day, both the Warsaw Pact and Nato alliance conducted war games. In featureless training areas around Magdeburg and Dresden, mechanised armies ran around to show each other just how well prepared for an attack they were. Men with red armbands run around straight-faced and call their fellow troops wearing green armbands the enemy. The usefulness of such exercises was clear. It trained people on how to move tanks and equipment. And men about like a complicated dance routine around the battlefield. The soldiers in the tanks knew which direction to fire. The generals play out their strategy games.
Practice makes perfect and predictable
Repetition makes the process look effective. Once they got the steps right, it worked. Because people learn the patterns, they will usually always conform to them. The Soviets were masters of learning patterns. Probably due to the country’s sheer size and the then lack of education in the military, many things left patterns. Dates cyphers were changed when military exercises took place. And certain times of the day when communications were initiated. There were local differences, so these could be identified, analysed and tracked. So when something was done out of sync, the west knew something was happening. Read more: What is the best strategy to practice solving problems?
This repetition happens deliberately and often unintentionally in your businesses. Policies and procedures are necessary, but people fall into habits and do the same thing every time.
Looking at you
There is a danger of conforming to routine and forming patterns. Like those dancers on Strictly Come Dancing, moves always go from A to B to C. In an undisturbed logic. It may be safe that everyone knows what everyone else is doing. But this rigidity of a secure, comfortable pattern makes you predictable. And if your competitors are bothering to really look at you. When we say look, we don’t mean buying access to monitoring software to detect website and social media changes. That’s kids stuff. We mean, really, look at you. Analysing what you do, are going to do, and assessing your strengths and weaknesses. If they look, they will find patterns. If they see patterns, they can understand what you will do next. Or worse, test how you react to a particular situation and make your move to their dance routine. Not yours.
A basic example
What do we mean by this? A basic example is when a competitor reduces your prices. No, not a typo. You have your monitoring in place. So you know what’s happened. You respond to their price reduction by lowering your prices. To match or to be cheaper. It costs you, but you must compete against the more significant competitor. It can’t last forever as they will lose money. Will they? How certain are you that this is the case? They may have a more effective supply chain, lower raw material costs, etc. Read more: What is a War Game and How to Do One?
Anyway, you reduce your prices and then raise them again once your competitor does so. This happens a few times, but you have it all covered with monitoring software. Maybe not.
You dont know that your competitor has been watching what you do, too. And they do have a bigger war chest. And more profitable products you dont sell. They also know that things are tighter in your business, and reducing prices hurts you more than them. So along comes your peak trading period. Your competitor reduces its prices when you least want them to. They keep them low and punch above the market with new advertising. Or announce a new product or rehash an old one and put “plant-based” on the label rather than “vegitaritan”.
It’s killing you, but you have no choice. They have decyphered your patterns. The last time we looked, customers tended not to wear armbands or act in a specific way. Enterprises want to grow in a world where they have lived for so long.
How Competitive Intelligence can learn from Soviet-era Cold War exercises.
People don’t need armbands to identify themselves as the bad guys. And the bad guys, those looking to take your business, may have different rules. Also, living so long in the same world, everyone is exposed to various biases. Biases that affect decision-making. So you get to experience blindness. The article was how competitive intelligence can learn from Soviet-era Cold War exercises. Read more: How About Putting the Phone Away as it’s Time to Think?
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