Heads Up: How to Anticipate Business Surprises and Seize Opportunities First [Hardcover]

Kenneth G. McGee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2004

This book offers a new set of metrics for identifying, analyzing, and responding to the right information at the right time - helping companies to avoid disasters and seize opportunities. Based on exclusive research into recent business catastrophes - and drawing parallels to a range of nonbusiness disasters from 9/11 to the Challenger disaster - "Heads Up" outlines a four-step approach managers can use to identify which pieces of information merit real-time delivery, and as importantly, which do not. McGee then provides a practical methodology - real time opportunity detection - for monitoring, analyzing, and responding to that critical information in time to ward off negative surprises and jump on potential opportunities ahead of competitors.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These days it seems like a company’s problems don’t surface until the CEO is led away in handcuffs. But according to this illuminating primer on the fashionable Real-Time Enterprise management model, "surprises" like parts shortages, earnings disappointments, business downturns and, yes, indictments are always preceded by ample warning signs. McGee, a vice-president with the consultant group Gartner, Inc., insists that with the right information technology and methods, companies can monitor in real time the crucial five percent of business data that will give them insight into both trouble spots and unrealized opportunities. Writing in stolid but readable prose supplemented with a plethora of charts, he presents a reasonably coherent conceptual framework for following the causal chain of business mishaps back to their sources, spotting the often obscure red flags that allow managers to respond in time to head off catastrophe, and focusing on the key performance and economic metrics to monitor. He illustrates these ideas with lucid post-mortems of a number of disasters in and out of the corporate world, as well as instructive examinations of how companies like General Motors have used real-time tracking to improve a variety of business functions, including inventory, production scheduling and sales. McGee is rather sanguine about the predictability of the world, and he too easily dismisses the danger that a flood of real-time business information could prompt executives to concentrate even more narrowly on the here and now and indulge in an orgy of micromanagement. But managers looking for ways to improve their understanding of the businesses they run will find much valuable information here.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Author

It’s funny how seemingly unrelated experiences in one’s life ultimately reveal a common truth. When I was three years old I remember my mother frantically running around our apartment and closing windows while a TV reporter spoke about a hurricane that was approaching New York City. I remember how painful it was to learn, years later, how engineers warned NASA against launching the Challenger space shuttle. I remember that the following year a ferry capsized in the English Channel, killing nearly 200 people. The ferry’s bow doors were left open, the sea poured in, the water’s weight toppled the ferry over, all because an inexpensive safety system signaling to the captain that he should not leave the dock had not been included in the ship design.

These and other events came racing back to me after the stock market crash that began in March 2000. I wanted to understand how so much corporate value and personal wealth could be eradicated virtually overnight and seemingly without warning. I thought back to the Challenger and Zeebrugge ferry disasters, recalling that before those horrific events, there was warning. I began to wonder if the same was true of business disasters; was there warning, not only before the stock market crash, but also before other business "disasters" like lost markets, failed products, and bankruptcies? Like the hurricane warning I remember and are now so common, could managers and investors be similarly warned of approaching difficulties? By studying innumerable natural and business disasters, I discovered, first, that there is always warning. Second, I discovered that there were companies today benefiting from real-time information that allowed them to avoid surprises and seize opportunities. And when I saw patterns in how successful companies were benefiting and others were failing, a book was born.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (April 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591392993
• ISBN-13: 978-1591392996
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,683,577 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Transform Business Surprises into Opportunities, July 1, 2004

By 

Craig L. Howe "The Pointed Pundit" (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Heads Up: How to Anticipate Business Surprises and Seize Opportunities First (Hardcover)

Business "surprises" occur with an alarming frequency. It is an understatement to say they exact a considerable toll on the organization.

According to Kenneth G. McGee, even the worst catastrophes rarely happen without warning. The author is a group vice president and research fellow at Gartner, Inc., a consultancy that specializes in information technology. His book, Heads Up, is about predicting the present.

Managers need to understand what is happening now and how these current events will impact future success. This involves extracting raw empirical information, analyzing it and determining its meaning and implications.

So what is new, you ask? McGee answers managers do not need all the data to understand the present. Only enough to answer the question, "Where are we right now in meeting our corporate goals?"

To an effective executive, this current information always reveals opportunities to improve results. There is a tendency to confuse real-time information with real-time response. In the perfect situation, the following processes happen in the background between the time when an event happens and that event's impact is felt.

1. Information related to the event is monitored.
2. A change in the information is captured.
3. The information is analyzed.
4. The information is reported.
5. A response is initiated.

No manager can afford to monitor all his information sources. To determine which sources to monitor, information should be filtered using the following Identification Model:

1. List goals for the planning period.
2. Prioritize them.
3. Evaluate them.
4. List causal events.
5. Prioritize the causal events.
6. Evaluate whether the real-time information will enable the executive to respond effectively.

Each candidate generated by the Identification Model is subjected to the Justification Model:

1. Does the goal the information further the corporate vision and mission?
2. Does the goal meet current corporate priorities?
3. Is the information material to the goal?
4. What is the goal's corporate impact?

McGee's book goes beyond the usual real-time hype. It will help executives anticipate events and changes. The result: potential disasters will be transformed into opportunities.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars new thinking on real time, March 2, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Heads Up: How to Anticipate Business Surprises and Seize Opportunities First (Hardcover)

Most of what I read about real-time business falls squarely in the internet era of overblown hype and ridiculous propositions. This book, along with a few stories I've seen in The Economist, offers realistic perspectives on what real-time enterprise really is and how it can realistically help.

In short, the author says that its not about reacting faster per se, but about getting information in real time so you know when to react.

Also in the books favor are two items: 1) lots of case studies of both failure and success due to real-time information or its lack, 2) models/methodologies that one can actually see using in a business context unlike what you so often see. The models are useful to the average manager not just to the CEO or the chairman of the board.

So all in all a very useful and helpful book for understanding the value of real-time information

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars worth reading, March 2, 2004

By 

"jthompson239" (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heads Up: How to Anticipate Business Surprises and Seize Opportunities First (Hardcover)

What I was most impressed with about this book is that the author doesn't just preach the glories of real-time. He actually talks about what information shouldn't be real-time. In fact he says that only 5% of corporate information should be real time.

Just for that its worth reading.