Fog that is beautiful but conceals everything | Photo By: Robshenk/Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 | Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AntietamFog.JPG
Have you heard of “Fog of War”? Do you know what it is? Do you relate to it as an organizational leader?
We, the people of the business world are not in war. We’re in peace. We don’t fight amongst each other. We’re all happy doing business with each other. Or, are we??
We have a limited amount of resources to produce things from and a limited number of customers to sell to. We compete for these on a daily basis. When one company is growing market share, there’s another that is surely losing. We’re all in for survival here. And that means war (although of a different form). However, it is not a bloody war, it’s a war of business. What’s at stake is not lives, but livelihoods. The winners and losers are not countries, but companies. But, it surely is a damn war. And as with any war, there always is the FOG OF WAR. You can only reduce it, but you can never eliminate it.
The question is not whether it is there or not, but if you can notice it or not, and how bad is it. And how can you reduce it.
Do you notice the fog that keeps moving in and out of your organization, making essential visibility an issue? If you’re not sure about the answer to that question, you need ask a few basic questions to bring some more clarity about your visibility.
Do you know which projects are in which stages of progress and how are they tracking?
For those projects that do have problems, do you know which areas is it affecting and what are the root-causes?
What about your products and services – do you know how many are operational and what are the usage trends?
Do you know where do the products and services lie in terms of their lifecycle and for those trending towards their ends, if there are any replacement plans?
How much can you see into your teams – do you know what compositions work the best (figuratively)?
Do you know how to optimize team-member onboarding, departure and shuffle processes?
Inceptone 
