Information Trumps Strategy Every Time

 

“Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.”

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Strategic management is an odd animal, similar to those creatures that are actually combinations of known animals that appear in classic mythology, like the griffin. This makes writing insightful generalities about strategic management very tricky, since any guidance on how to arrive at the best strategy for a given management scenario is going to (obviously) depend heavily on the scenario. That having been said, there are, actually, some valuable (if conversely axiomatic and counter-intuitive) methods for developing a winning strategy, in virtually any situation. And it has to do (wouldn’t you just know it?) with management information systems.

Management writers (like me) love using war analogies. They just seem to fit so well – instead of people’s lives and property being in the hazard, though, in business we see people’s jobs (or even careers) and corporate assets being arrayed against each other, and the manner in which the winners win offers a certain fascination. And the wartime analogy I wish to invoke to gain insight into how one arrives at a winning strategy has to do with the legendary Battle of Midway.

In mid-1942, the United States had suffered a string of defeats at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), with the only high-point being a tactical draw in the Battle of the Coral Sea, in May. By the time of that battle, U.S. Naval Intelligence had become aware that the IJN had plans to launch a massive attack against a target known only by code-breakers as “A.F.”  Suspecting that “A.F.” might be Midway Island, the USN arranged for radio operators on Midway to transmit in the open that their water distilling plant was having operations difficulties. Sure enough, a few days later the IJN passed along a message that “A.F.” was short of drinking water.

And the target wasn’t the only thing the USN knew. Long story short, by the time Chester Nimitz began to plan his strategy, he was in possession of the approximate number of ships and planes arrayed against him, their timetable – just about the IJN’s entire order of battle. Conversely, since the Japanese scouting submarines did not arrive at their stations until after the American fleet had sailed from Pearl Harbor, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo had absolutely no idea of the number of fleet units, their timetables, or (most importantly) their whereabouts leading up to June 4, 1942. In reality, the Japanese force was considerably more potent than their American counterparts. They had more ships, of superior firepower and capability. Their aircraft performed better than their American counterparts, and their crews were exceptionally trained. But, by the end of June 5, the Japanese fleet had been shattered, with a four-to-one loss ratio in aircraft carriers alone.

What was the difference in Nimitz’s and Nagumo’s strategies? I believe that the American victory at Midway was due to two distinct advantages:

·         The aforementioned information advantage. Nimitz knew almost everything about Nagumo’s order of battle before the shooting even started, while Nagumo knew almost nothing of the American fleet’s disposition until dive bombers were tearing up his flight decks, and

·         The strategic approach to the battle. Nagumo had a very rigid set of tactical goals, to be executed on a specific schedule. Nimitz essentially sent Admiral Raymond Spruance, the tactical commander, to a position to the North and East of Midway (“Point Luck”) with the American fleet, to simply respond to whatever the Japanese did. Spruance had greater latitude of action, meaning that he was far more likely to come up with a robust response to whatever happened in the battle area.

And those, I believe, are the two keys to developing a winning strategy in the business world. Ensure your organization’s management information systems produce timely, accurate, and, most of all, relevant information when forming a strategic approach. And, whatever you do, do NOT initiate a rigid set of tactics that must be executed on a given timetable. Instead, allow your managers on the project to develop a robust response to whatever happens to them as the project team executes its scope.