The Economic World War

The Economic World War.

Terrorism, kidnapping, fraud, spies, crooks, blackmail, natural disasters, murder, stolen identities, betrayals, secrets, drugs, prostitution, extortion, piracy, politics, and special interests – the War on Business has all the elements of the most gripping drama or thriller and plays out with new chapters live every day.

These are not just threats faced by our governments, they are faced by every day people and every day businesses, from local farmers to the biggest multinational corporations.

This isn’t about defending companies by arguing against issues of corporate responsibility. If anything, this is an argument to show that corporations have even more responsibilities than they have accepted in the past 30 years.

Businesses today can no longer justify hiding behind the curtain of ignorance as to what the real dangers and threats to their success and survival are. Those threats are hanging over their bottom lines but also over the livelihoods of their employees and the tax revenues of the nation.

No longer can the justification for all things business be the answer to the question, ‘What is the value-added of this?’ The global business model of sell, sell, sell, attack, attack, attack is on the tipping point of extinction. Just like the lemmings that lead the pack over the cliffs, modern leaders of all political and business stripes are leading us all into the path of economic extinction.

Survival is more than just what ‘sells,’ and survival of the fundamental basis of being able to do business is what’s under attack. And once that foundation crumbles, so too will unravel the tangled thread of the government funding formulas that depend on tax revenues, so the implication that these are just business issues is also out of context with reality. This is a threat to our entire social fabric from businesses to private people to governments; we’re all under direct attack whether you can see it or not.

Our entire economic structure is under constant attack by multiple opponents with weapons we have never seen before, technologies we’ve never had to deal with before, and alliances that can be timed with an egg timer.

Sean Sullivan, a security adviser at F-Secure, an Internet security firm, was quoted in an article recently as saying, “Last year there were more online bank robberies than there were actual on-site bank robberies."

The Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost about $559 million to Internet thieves in 2009. And the unreported internet theft rate is estimated at over 4 times that much, and that is only the amount for private individuals, NOT corporations!

The most recent estimates I could find for the losses to the European airlines due to the volcanic activity in Iceland already far exceed $4 billion USD and are climbing daily with each new set of interruptions caused by the spewing ash clouds. That doesn’t reflect the impact on US or other carriers, just the EU airlines. Combined with the climbing costs of jet fuel, increased energy tax costs, oil speculation, arcane air traffic control systems, medieval international travel industry structures and regulations, international terrorism threats, heightened government enforced security regulations and protocols, reduced business travel and other direct, immediate challenges, the survival of every air carrier in the world, and literally millions of employees’ livelihoods is in real jeopardy. People won’t just see fares go up if the airlines collapse; they’ll see their ability to travel anywhere evaporate in a flash. Need to fly from New York to Chicago? Try a $1600 ticket in coach that you have to book 4-6 months in advance on for size. Sound outrageous? If you only have a couple of very financially weak airlines left, there won’t be enough seats to be able to go anywhere for less.

As if that were not enough, organized crime has targeted airlines as a weak link in the area of credit card fraud. It has also targeted virtually every other form of call center operation where a reasonably large amount of credit can be used and by one means or another converted into transferable liquid assets.

Online dating sites are also a hotbed for organized criminals to steal your money, your identity, or your social network resources. They lurk online pretending to be there like anyone else looking for romance only to steal everything you have, including your already fragile ability to trust a potential romantic match.

Companies trying to do ‘ethical business’ by employing African farmers to produce crafts and goods for fair trade sale here in the US and abroad are being put at increasing risk as their employees are hunted and targeted for kidnapping for ransom schemes by gangs of criminals, pirates, and thugs. No longer is it enough to pay a fair wage – now companies must also provide security forces and bodyguard services for local and traveling employees and their families.

The piracy issue along Africa’s east coast with shipping of every kind of product from oil to consumer goods and military equipment is another threat both to the supply of product in key markets but also to the lives of the employees of the shipping company, and to the livelihoods of each company involved in the products’ supply chain.

Leading directly to the crash in 2008 Goldman Sachs was taken in a corporate identity scam for over $600 million and has since had to admit over $1 billion in additional losses from scams, loose fiscal management and gross negligence in researching the bona fides of the companies they invested in and their ability to make good on the investments.

How are all these items related? Companies are being attacked financially and those costs are always passed on to the consumer. In this case, doubly so as we have seen not only the cost of doing business rise, and therefore the supplies of consumable goods decrease, but we have also been tasked with bailing out troubled companies through our taxes and through international loans to our government that we will have to repay from our taxes and whose interest payments will also be paid from our tax dollars. That means fewer services can be funded for things the country needs because a large portion of our budget will be dedicated to paying back the debt we have incurred to prop up troubled companies. And in every case the reason why the company is being attacked is because it is vulnerable, and it is always vulnerable because it keeps making bad decisions based on bad or lacking information. The right information can be used to predict problems before they manifest themselves as billion dollar disasters.

How could someone predict the impact of a volcanic eruption in Iceland, you may ask? Easy. According to the Global Volcanism Program more than 60 volcanoes erupt each year. Most of the dormant and active volcanoes on the planet have been identified and documented, excluding those under the oceans, which is a whole other topic. Although no one would be able to forecast the eruption of any individual volcano, it really is not challenging to deduce that some volcanic activity somewhere could get out of hand at any time– we have more than enough evidence in recorded recent history to accept that as given fact. Looking at basic geography, laying out where the most active volcanoes are and where other dormant volcanoes could have the most impact, an impact management plan can be designed with features to handle most of the worst and medium case scenarios involving an eruption.

This is not something governments are solely responsible for doing – companies each have to have their own response plans ready for natural disasters of every kind – fire, flood, power outages, ice storms, earthquakes, hurricanes, twisters, sinkholes… the whole 9 yards. Without it, every company is simply a sitting duck waiting to be served up on a platter with orange sauce.

Disaster recovery plans get pooh-poohed with that awful expression, “but really…. How likely is that?” Let’s see… this year alone? 1 major, ongoing volcano eruption, 6 or more major nation-changing earthquakes, 1 climate changing oil-spill, 1 record-breaking winter, 1 record breaking spring flood… and that’s just off the top of my head. How likely is it? It’s time to get real. These ‘unlikely’ events happen every day. It’s actually far more reasonable to ask yourself when will they not happen instead.

Count the number of incident free days as opposed to the number of incident days and you just might get the shock of your life.

And that’s just the short list of natural disasters, not including the 4 major mine disasters globally we’ve witnessed just in the last two months. Take a minute and think about the additional list of human incidents including terrorism, crime, political upheaval, and so on that create incident days as well.

Add in domestic and international financial collapses and currency fluctuations and add those to your list of incident days while you’re at it.

Throw in supplier shortages, power outages, computer viruses, employee strikes, credit crunches, internet attacks, computer network failures, IRS audits and other familiar incidents and add those to your list of incident days too.

How likely is it to have an incident day, really? How exposed are you really? What do you think?

It’s not good enough to have an incident recovery plan. You have to have some measure in place to reduce the number and lessen the impact of the incidents you do encounter. You have a responsibility – to your investors, to your suppliers, to your employees, to your creditors, and to your community to do what you must do to protect your company from incidents and to maintain long-term profitability.

Not to mention the fact that you deserve the extra flexibility, peace of mind, additional time in your day and stress reduction that comes from having a proactive incident prevention plan. Just like every medical person says we should do more to prevent injuries and illnesses by being proactive about our health, so too do we need to be proactive in looking after the health of our companies.

I hear no end of excuses about why companies and individuals don’t have to look out for sources of threats. ‘What are the odds? One in a million?’ Sure. And your company handles 40+ million transactions a year, so 40 times a year your company is in jeopardy of total collapse, and apparently that number sits well with you. 40 times a year your company could be exposed to the one individual who would do the one thing that would bring your company to a screeching halt. Not to mention the millions of potential cheap opportunists who really could care less about your company, they just see an easy target to steal from. Or the organized criminal enterprises who make their living from doing that one thing you don’t think anyone would ever do to you.

Yip, one in a million odds. Funny how often that million comes up to bite you in the butt.

And you still aren’t motivated to do anything about it?

Or how about the ex-employee that launched the virus that took out your network for 3 days last year and the months of headaches it caused trying to clean up the mess afterwards.

Enough.

Enough, I say. I’ve had enough. Enough of the excuses. Enough of the put downs from people who ultimately end up unemployed because the company they worked for didn’t see one more disaster, one more incident coming.

Enough excuses from the people who are paid to know better. Enough passing the buck. When you personally get into a financial jam, you can blame the economy, you can blame your job loss, you can blame anyone you want, but the responsibility for fixing the situation always stays the same regardless of who is to blame. The buck always stops with you.

The same is true with companies, and with governments.

It’s not the unions’ faults our governments spent too much. The governments had to agree to the union contracts in the first place. The governments had to grow big enough to be at risk of financial collapse during a disastrous down market.

It’s not company’s fault that the pirates stole their ship – the pirates did it. The fact that the company sailed an unprotected ship in pirate infested waters had absolutely nothing to do with it, I’m sure.

It’s not the airlines’ fault that the volcano in Iceland erupted and air travel has been interrupted time and again since then. And having routes that allowed for no alternative options built in with the governments, airports, and industry partners in question, having no back up crews and aircraft to reaccommodate to in a crisis as part of the financial plan and no means to use them to solve the backlog due to air traffic congestion has absolutely nothing to do with it either. Nope, no company or government responsibility there. No need for governments and industry to work together urgently to come up with a real working plan to solve the problem that could affect travelers and global economies for the next 2 years.

Enough. This isn’t rocket science but managing a company is a lot more than adding a three letter title to the end of your name and having an opinion. Managing a company involves a prime responsibility to that company, to its’ owners, to its’ employees, to its’ customers, and to its’ community. That responsibility is more than a vague mission/vision statement or company dream – it’s an every-minute-of-every-day-with-no-days-off-and-always-on-call fact.

Fact – there are Bad Guys out there.

Fact – natural disasters happen.

Fact – suppliers can fail.

Fact – employees can make mistakes.

Fact – governments can change the rules.

Fact – wars happen.

Fact – other countries’ governments actively try to conduct economic sabotage; that’s attacking companies they see as vulnerable, companies like yours!

Fact – equipment fails.

Fact – competition competes.

Fact – technology changes.

Fact – interest rates change.

Fact – money supply changes.

Fact – currency exchange rates change.

Fact – stocks go up and down.

Fact – you’re responsible for being proactive in defending and leading your company through all these situations. Your job is to ‘deal with it.’

And here’s one more fact – if you don’t have a competent Competitive Intelligence resource then you don’t have enough facts to do your job.

And last but not least… the number of companies with any Competitive Intelligence resources at their disposal? Precious few, perhaps less than 100 in the whole country, and fewer than 400 in the whole world.

Company after company spends fortunes getting the latest and greatest Business Intelligence applications, assuming that this is in fact a comprehensive Competitive Intelligence resource.

Business Intelligence, involving tracking trends for customers and supply chain info is great and helpful, but it’s still only 10% of the story that makes up Competitive Intelligence.

Business intelligence tells you nothing about Organized Crime’s roll in your industry. BI doesn’t proactively predict a management plan for natural disasters like volcanic eruptions. BI only goes so far.

Competitive Intelligence goes so much further, and without it you can’t have enough information to make your decisions, to guide your company in the current business environment.

Putting it very bluntly, relying on Business Intelligence to run your business without any Competitive Intelligence to put it in context and add validation is like building a mile long bridge using only a paving machine and no engineer. You might get a nice finish to your top coat of asphalt, but if there’s no actual properly engineered bridge under it, then it’s not terribly safe to drive across, is it? How safe are your decisions? Do they have CI behind them or just BI?

And will they stand up to the tests that natural disasters, national enemies, natural competitors, organized crime, economic predators, and others will throw at them day after day? Or are they just a band-aid to get you through the day with the hope that tomorrow you won’t have to deal with them any more?

When your country comes under the overwhelming plethora of attacks that I listed above, generally the country is at war with somebody. When the whole world is engaged in these kinds of all-out fights, that war turns global and we call that a World War. As we have discovered throughout history, the strongest alliances are the most likely victors in these kinds of conflicts, but inevitably the whole world loses because of the conflict. It then usually spurs tremendous industrial growth and innovation in its’ wake.

Here then we have all the root elements of a global war but between businesses. It’s also a war between businesses and criminals, businesses and other countries, and between businesses and Mother Nature. In truth, this is the first Economic World War.

Whether you want to be in it or not, you don’t get to have a say any more than the civilians impacted by the prior military conflicts of past World Wars had a say in the impacts to their families and lives. Everyone everywhere IS affected. Whether you’re in a Communist country outside of the Capitalist markets of the West or whether you’re a head of industry in the largest free-market in the world, it doesn’t matter. You are both impacted by this. Your governments, commodity supplies, prices, employment, retirement, health care treatment options, tax levels and family structure are all affected by the Economic World War, so putting your head in the sand, your fingers in your ears, and a sock in your mouth really isn’t doing you any good at all.
Your company is at war, and just like any war, you can give up now and let the enemy do whatever it likes, you can hide behind a bigger company or government and see if they can protect you, or you can stand up and fight.

You now know that you have many, many opposing forces to deal with, many of which you cannot detect at the moment. You need better resources, you need better information. You need better intelligence.

You need to know who your enemies are and you need to know which of your allies could sell you down the river tomorrow in the name of their own survival.

You need Competitive Intelligence, and you need it now.

Families even need their own version of it in order to plan their careers, finances and lives, so it isn’t just a corporate monolith issue here at play. Those same economic forces that are duke-ing it out in the global marketplace are the same ones that will tell you you don’t have a job tomorrow, so you’d better believe you have a vested interest in this stuff too.

CI is a big deal but its’ only as valuable as you’re prepared to make it by using it.

Buying important data and then not reading it, not using it to make better choices, not implementing those resulting choices… it won’t matter how much you spend on CI. If that’s the way you handle it, no amount of CI can help.

This is an Economic World War. You’re not a spectator any more, and this isn’t a spectator sport. This is a fight for your financial life and for your personal and economic freedoms. You can have all the legally enshrined freedoms you want, but if you have to give them up to someone stronger in order to survive, then what freedoms do you really have?

Think this through.

It will make all the difference in your investments, your employment, even with the amount of time you get to spend with your family. It isn’t just big picture here; you, of You Personally Inc., have a say in how this war unfolds. This is your time to act. Now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not after the next market meltdown. Now.

The time to stand and be counted isn’t when they start handing out the medals and ribbons and honours of distinctive service. The time to stand and be counted is when those honours are earned.

Now is your time to earn a better future, to stand up and fulfill your responsibility to your company, your colleagues and employees, your suppliers, customers and community. And most importantly, now is the time to stand up and fulfill your responsibility to yourself.

Build your company’s resources, tools and defenses by building your company’s Competitive Intelligence resource access. Use that intelligence to make better decisions. Hire the services of those who can meet your company’s real needs, not just what the latest trend data says would be a good idea.

Survive.

Plan for better days by planning for the bad ones too.

Educate yourself on all the data you’ve been missing by not getting enough of the right data in the first place.

Train your employees and colleagues to always look for opportunities to gain that data and use it proactively to prevent your firm’s vulnerabilities from being exploited.

Fight the fight that needs fighting. Win the Economic World War.