TOP DRAWER BOOK REVIEW
by
HL Carpenter

 

Heads Up
by Kenneth G. McGee
244 pages; hardcover; $29.95
Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2004

What’s life without surprises? Boring? Or profitable?

Heads Up author Kenneth McGee, a researcher and analyst at Gartner, Inc., believes businesses will find operating in a surprise-free environment less stressful and more profitable. But is a predictable future possible?

Yes, says Mr. McGee. His thesis: few, if any ‘surprises’ occur without warning.

Unfortunately, opportunities to avoid the warning signs that give managers the ‘heads up’ are frequently missed. The good news, according to Mr. McGee, is this: management can identify these opportunities by being grounded in the present. That is, analyzing current information is an opportunity-detection technique.

The concept is similar to a preventive medical exam. Monitoring your health even when you feel fine lets you catch any changes or symptoms early on. The sooner you learn of threats to your health, the longer you have to plan your course of action. In other words, the longer you have to act, instead of reacting.

Of course, a key part of achieving success is figuring out what to monitor. Your annual physical doesn’t include every medical test known to modern science. Instead, you and your doctor limit the exam based on your risk factors.

Managers – who may already be suffering from information overload – need similar parameters to prevent surprises. Heads Up provides models – called Identification and Justification – which help choose relevant information to monitor.

Taking action in advance of surprises seems like a common-sense piece of advice that could be easily implemented in our technologically advanced business environment. Interestingly though, Mr. McGee believes it will take ten to twenty years for the shift to real-time management of opportunity-detection to occur.

Heads Up presents a thought-provoking concept for managing your business. The idea is simple: try lifting your nose from the grindstone to explore what’s actually happening around you.

The results may be a welcome surprise.

 

Review originally published June 2004.