#TheFundamentalKeys
Modern Businesses, especially established
brands, get so caught up in the pressure of being competitive that they want to
be agile and quick to respond to any situation in the public domain. So, they quite
often end up not thinking beyond the usual brand communication, image
management, etc. Or, they are so enamored by the feel of their own successes and
the dominance of their brand that they tend to overlook simulating some basic
‘what-if scenarios’.
Consequently, even if there is some
kind of Plan B for worst-case situations, there is a predisposition to hastily roll
out the alternative plan to handle the situation in the misdirected sense of confidence
of having a plan.
A case in point is the recent Apple v
FBI imbroglio. Most readers might know about it, however, to encapsulate, FBI
wanted Apple’s help to hack an iPhone belonging to a person of their interest.
Apple declined, citing data security and customer privacy.
Granted that security and data privacy
are paramount to a customer and that they are mandatory, if not
differentiating, features in today’s connected world. But, if the executives at
Apple had only thought through the scenario they could have turned this into a
big win for them without losing any credibility, rather than being seen
as stonewalling with customary justifications. It seems counter-intuitive, but
how?
Let’s say that Apple agreed to help
the FBI as a special case by providing know-how and resources to crack
the phone to access the critical data. If the exercise didn’t succeed, Apple
would have come out if this smelling of roses. It is like “hey, we helped the
government, but the security on the phone is so good that even we couldn’t crack
it”. Result – the government is thankful for the cooperation and iPhone users
feel secure.
On the other hand, if they did manage
to hack into the phone, Apple would still have come out if this smelling of
roses. It is like “the data on the phone is so secure that it took experts with
specific privileges, under special circumstances to crack it”. ”. Result – the
government is happy for the help and iPhone users feel secure in the comfort
that their phone cannot be randomly hacked.
Instead what has happened is that the
federal agency has managed to access the phone data without Apple’s help. And
Apple wants to know how they did it and could they share if a new
vulnerability was found in iOS by the FBI and its partner! Arguably, it has left users wondering about
the security of their phone.
Now, this situation perhaps could have
been avoided easily with some brainstorming and weighing the consequences of
impending actions to build a strategy that can be advantageous to you in any
event. Somewhat like negotiation 101 where the objective is to ensure that all
parties walk off the table with a feeling of having won.
To summarize, the customer is king and
you have to stick to your commitments. And you cannot be second-guessing your
decisions. But, it is always important to think through consequences of
critical actions before making decisions so as to ensure that you
come out winning every single time.
Kall Ramanathan
@KallRamanathan
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author are personal. Companies,
agencies, persons or brands mentioned are solely for illustrative purposes and
to provide perspective, and therefore bear no association with each other or
the narrative in any way. Trademarks and names rest with the respective owners.
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ValueStrat Consulting @ValueStrat helps
businesses understand where they are currently and what they need to do to get
where they want to go. For this, we provide essential strategic plans and
approaches, called "Keys", to enable businesses to open up competencies
and clear inefficiencies.
ValueStrat gets to the DNA of business - Desire, Need and
Ability - to help you ask some critical
questions such as discussed above. Check out http://www.valuestrat.in for more
