Help For Henny Penny

I was talking with the CEO of a pretty good size company recently about my book, Attacking The Crown Jewels. "It's about strategic competitive defense," I said. "Well," he said, "please don't tell my VP of Sales about it. He worries enough about competition already and doesn't need any new ideas."

I asked him to tell me more about the VP of Sales (let's call him Henny Penny). It seems that Henny is like a magnet for any information about any possible competitive product. Once in possession of a nugget of competitive information, Henny alerts anyone and everyone he can think of, pummelling them with questions, announcing his worries and fears and asking if the sky is in fact falling. Needless to say, Henny's near daily missives are largely ignored by his coworkers, but do serve to keep his sales staff in a near constant state of panic. When confronted about this, Henny told his boss it was "motivating" for his troops.

I then pointed out that the strategic competitive defense planning process spelled out in Attacking The Crown Jewels might actually help Henny and his beleaguered staff. This step-by-step process lets you assess competitive threats, select the ones to focus on and plan defenses against them in an orderly, systematic fashion. Properly used, it makes the competitive threat assessment a routine activity. Thus Henny would know when his worries would be handled and how to feed the process. He would also be a part of the process that soberly assessed threats to determine those that are truly strategic -- that are severe, robust and credible -- and demand executive attention and action.

Henny did not get to be a successful VP of sales for a major company because he was a fool. Henny just sees that the woods are full of lurking threats and needs assurance that the organization is handling them for him and his team.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

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