dispatches from the new world of work

The (Low) Price of Revealing "Secrets"

"Secret plans" are a hot topic given the godawful mess at HP. Yup, go to any length to preserve those secrets!! I've been less than a champion of the generic practice of strategic planning for decades. For a long while it was my signature stance. Perhaps my top Bizbook (along with Execution) in the last 20 years is unequivocally Canadian Guru Henry Mintzberg's The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. I just re-read part of it, and came across the following quote (so apropos in the wake of the "HP thing"). Russell Ackoff was arguably strategy guru #1 in the pre-Michael Porter days:

"Recently I asked three corporate executives what decisions they had made in the last year that would not have been made were it not for their corporate plans. All had difficulty identifying one such decision. Since all of the plans are marked 'secret' or 'confidential,' I asked them how their competitors might benefit from possession of their plans. Each answered with embarrassment that their competitors would not benefit."—Russell Ackoff

Once again, you'll find this as a Special Presentation attached. (And you'll also find a related Special Presentation on Patricia Dunn and Enron-Skilling juror Freddy Delgado.)

Tom Peters posted this on 10/06/06.

Comments

In some cases, exposing your secrets is a competitive ADVANTAGE.

Take Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics whose theories were covered in part in the Michael Lewis' "Moneyball".

Paul De Podesta, Beane's underling, convinced Beane the way to go was to keep strategy evolving on a 1-year cycle. Beane realized documenting their then-theory in a book that would come out in year +1 and be digested and then imitated in year +2 would have half their want-to-compete followers two iterations behind (the other half of teams that wanted to imitate them figured it out from observation...baseball is non pareil at analysis->action).

So by sharing their secrets, the A's got a bunch of followers to compete with each other pursuing resources they weren't pursuing themselves, deflecting competitors' attention and resources away from the resources the A's were then (in year +2) pursuing, thus keeping the probable cost for those resources down.

Have you thought about applying this tactic in your own endeavour?

Posted by jeff angus at October 7, 2006 12:30 PM

Excellent quote, Tom. I've been a regular reader of Ackoff blog at
http://ackoffcenter.blogs.com/ and very much appreciate his insights.

Posted by Manny at October 7, 2006 2:57 PM

"I've been less than a champion of the generic practice of strategic planning for decades." Tom Peters

Tom,

We have developed a tool called the "One Page Strategy Sheet" that was designed to complement "OODA Loop" style strategic planning.

It was designed around research on the thinking processes of Chess Grand Masters.

I am certain that it would cause you to readjust your thinking about strategic planning.

Is there a way I could send you a copy of our guide to creating and using it? (The guide itself is short and simple and contains all the information you need to create your own One Page Strategy Sheet, including two samples)

Curt Sahakian
The Corporate Partnering Institute
Curt.Sahakian@CorporatePartnering.com
312-316-9370

Posted by Curt Sahakian at October 9, 2006 9:12 AM

Ha! How true--and timely!

This just came up for me in a different context; last Friday, I had a conversation with a co-volunteer in a nonprofit I do some work for--we were discussing the state of affairs at a rival organization that we compete with for resources, press, and participants. He remarked that for five years, we've gotten ahold of their "confidential" rosters of participants and their agenda, we've been aware of every event long before it happened, and know the name of virtually every high-ranked volunteer on their side...yet we've never done a damn thing with any of it.

It didn't occur to me then, but we've also been a little paranoid about our plans and procedures ending up in their hands. Time to move on to important worries!

Posted by Max Leibman at October 10, 2006 12:08 AM