Be a spider

A spider creates a nearly invisible web to trap prey, and it senses the presence of the prey by the vibrations created by the struggling creatures that blunder into the trap. We like to mimic the spider by creating an information web, an affiliation of managers and staff that are constantly on the lookout for new developments. When new information is detected, the team assesses that information to determine if changes need to be made to existing strategies and plans.

Our web has four main sections, with various team members focused on each. Note that these four sections are represented by the four categories of information that we described earlier. This is information that you should be collecting and analyzing on a regular basis, not just once a year:

1. The strengths and deficiencies of your company.

2. Industry forces—the favorable and unfavorable trends in your industry.

3. Your competitive environment.

4. Your opportunities.

We’ve summarized this in a diagram that serves as a graphical checklist. It reminds you in a single glance of the information you must collect and assess and of the process of turning that information into strategies that will attain your goals. We call it the Spider Diagram because it has some resemblance to a spider and because it is constructed of a web—a web of information.