Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company

by Paul J.H. Schoemaker, George S. Day, Paul J. H. Schoemaker

Book Overview

From emerging technologies to changes in consumer tastes, tremendous opportunities and threats often begin as weak signals from the periphery How good is your organisation at sensing, interpreting, and acting on these signals? George S. Day and Paul J. H. Schoemaker call this capability peripheral vision--and their research shows that less than 20 percent of firms have developed it in sufficient capacity to remain competitive. In this book, they reveal...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1422101541
• ISBN13: 9781422101544
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Is your company myopic?

I've had the honor of taking a class taught by George Day and after he brought up the topic of peripheral vision in class, I have been fascinated by the topic. When Peripheral Vision was published, I jumped at the opportunity to read his new book. As someone who has worked with technology companies all my life, I've always had the feeling that down Route 101 in Silicon Valley, there is another startup that is waiting to release a stealth product that may render my company's business irrelevant. In Peripheral Vision, Day and Schoemaker have provided an excellent framework to help managers raise organizational awareness about the importance of exploring at the edge and how to implement a strategy to monitor weak signals. The best part is, the framework is applicable to all types of businesses, not just technology firms. Each chapter contains multiple real world cases that illustrate how firms across many industries have successfully (and unsuccessfully) kept a vigilant eye on the periphery. I highly recommend anyone who is working in a fast paced business environment to read this book.

Definitely worth exploring but first be aware of your perceptual sensitivity to the world!

Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company By George Day & Paul Schoemaker `Peripheral Vision' has quite a catchy title. For all intents & purposes, it is a very fascinating book, filled with superb insights. From my perspective, `Peripheral Vision' rides on a much larger issue that has strategic ramifications for businesses as well as for individuals in today's chaotic world. Mercer Management Consulting calls it `Strategic Anticipation' & they define it as `the ability to get it, to spot an emergent opportunity & chart a path there before the competition does.' In fact, one of their VPs, Adrian Slywotzky, has even written a book about it in the late 90's. It's called `Profit Patterns' which provides a powerful discipline to see order beneath the chaos, based on the company's ground-breaking research into over 200 companies in 40 industries. They have identified some thirty patterns. I call it anticipatory prowess. The two authors of `Peripheral Vision' come with excellent credentials. George Day wrote `Market Driven Organisation' & `Market Driven Strategy'. Paul Schoemaker wrote `Profting from Uncertainty' & `Winning Decisions.' The four books have been my personal favourites. I must compliment the two authors for coming up with a seven stage systemic process model in `Peripheral Vision.' It provides practical tools & strategies for building a vigilant organization that is readily attuned to external environmental changes. The `Strategic Eye Exam', which has been well thought of, is a real gem. The same model & tools can also apply to the individual. `Peripheral Vision' draws its intellectual cues from the concept of `splatter vision' which has been mentioned earlier & for the first time in a business book by Wayne Burkan in 'Wide Angle Vision', during the mid-90s. According to him, the concept involves scanning the entire landscape & looking at the big picture, to consider the signals coming in from every direction, rather than focusing on the individual signals coming from one direction or another. I understand that it has its origins from an ancient technique practiced by North American natives as part of their survival repertoire. They call it the 'eye of the tracker', which allows them to take in all of a tracking scene, like a wide angle lens, without focusing immediately on anything in particular. Today, it is practiced by US Secret Service & FBI agents as well as army snipers, police detectives, fighter pilots, truck drivers, animal hunters, bird watchers & other nature observers. In the martial world, it is known as `soft eyes', often exemplified by the late Bruce Lee as he fended off fighting opponents with his stealthy anticipatory 'Jeet Kun Do' moves. As a matter of fact, in the 'Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy', Japan's legendary combat strategist, Miyamoto Mushashi, taught how to 'relax & unfocus' the eyes in order to secure a sure v

Seeing and Doing Directions for the Adaptive Enterprise

For a number of years, business books have been extolling the virtues of responding sooner and more appropriately to what stakeholders (employees, customers, users, distributors, partners, suppliers, investors, lenders and the community) require or would benefit from. Such books are filled with great anecdotes about organizations that don't pay attention . . . and far fewer anecdotes about organizations that succeed. Despite the exhortation to pay attention, most organizations miss more than they notice. In Peripheral Vision, Professor George S. Day and former professor, Paul J. H. Schoemaker, do a fine job of explaining why it's hard to separate out the meaningful information from the noise . . . and to take timely action. I found their metaphor of vision to be an inspired one. They found parallels in the ways that our minds use vision for all of the myopia that occurs in tracking the external environment. Much strategic thought suggests that best results come from concentrating results. That's true. But concentrate on what? If you focus too narrowly, you may miss something important (as occurs when people view a film of students passing a basketball to count the passes . . . and usually miss an actor walking through the scene wearing a gorilla suit). The explanation the authors provide is that while the doing part of the organization is very focused on key points of leverage, there's also a need to keep the peripheral vision open to new or unexplained influences that may be threats or opportunities. This part will seem familiar to those who have listed opportunities and threats on many chart packs as part of strategic planning exercises. What's different in this book is that the authors spell out a process for engaging peripheral vision and acting on it in a timely way. This is not a process that's been honed into a best practice, but rather is a hypothesis to guide those who want to improve. But the hypothesis is filled with plenty of valuable tools like scenario testing, role playing, organizing a flow of impressions, low-cost experiments and establishing a process that is maintained through top-management attention. Here are the six lessons (paraphrased into my terms) that the authors feel are most important: 1. The point is to be alert rather than to be a better forecaster. 2. Pay more attention to what questions are asked than to the data you generate. 3. Move out into unexplored territory to become familiar with what you don't know. 4. Test your interpretations in several ways. 5. Try things out before you make big commitments. You'll often be wrong in your initial interpretation (as many people were in jumping on the short-lived, low-carb count trend rather than producing foods that diabetics could eat -- a long-term opportunity) 6. Leaders should direct the activity in an active way. Otherwise, the vision becomes blurred and misdirected. The book has some nice resources in it like the Strategic Eye Exa

Organizational Ophthalmology

Most people have "selective vision" in that they tend to see what they expect to see, what they hope to see, etc. In this book, George S. Day and Paul J.H. Schoemaker examine the common causes and frequent consequences of what they call a "vigilance gap": the inability of both individuals and organizations to recognize and then act upon "weak signals from the periphery" before it is too late. Day and Schoemaker recommend a series of seven steps to bridge this gap. In fact, the objective is not to "bridge" it but, rather, to minimize it. How? Knowing where to look, how to look, what the data mean, how to explore more closely, what to do with insights and how to do it, how to develop/establish and then sustain vigilance, and finally, how to set an appropriate agenda, mobilize resources, and then effectively apply them. Obviously, these are not head-snapping insights nor do Day and Schoemaker make any such claim for them. The great value of this book is derived from how rigorously and how eloquently they explain each of the seven "steps." They offer dozens of specific, real-world examples. In this context, I am reminded of one of Peter Drucker's insights in an article he wrote for Harvard Business Review which appeared in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." And even if sufficient knowledge has been obtained and those who possess it know what to do and how to do it, that by no means guarantees that effective action will be taken. This is one of the key points which Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton make in The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action. Of special interest to me is the "Strategic Eye Exam" provided by Day and Schoemaker in Appendix A. It will help respondents to gain an understanding of what peripheral vision is, and, of how to measure the gap between their organization's need for peripheral vision and its current ability to recognize weak signals from its environment. (This self-audit - all by itself - is worth far more than the price of the book.) I presume to suggest that those who are about to read Peripheral Vision first take "Strategic Eye Exam" electronically at www.thinkdsi.com so that they can obtain benchmarking data about their scores both compared and contrasted with scores of more than 150 other companies. As I suggested earlier, there are few (if any) head-snapping revelations in Day and Schoemaker's book. However, I presume to suggest that those who take the "Strategic Eye Exam" and then read the book with appropriate focus and rigor will derive substantial benefits from having done so. Stated another way, what they learn about themselves and their organizations will include several head-snapping revelations. In this sense, "Strategic Eye Exam" functions both as a mirror and as a window. To Day and Shoemaker, I conclude this brief commentary with "Bravo!" Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to c

Outstanding! Good balance of practical advice grounded and solid theory.

I believe this is an excellent book for organizational leaders, strategists, and change agents. Makes direct and pointed the challenge of identifying those opportunities and threats to one's business while there is still time to capitalize on them and/or avoid them. Also, makes clear why this is so hard to do for oneself. The book is entertaining, with great examples and practical lessons. It's a must read for anyone seeking to lead a large business in today's highly dynamic and uncertain environment. Highly recommended!