Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness

Chapter 4. Developing a Strategy

If you are employed by the U.S. Secret Service detail that protects the president of the United States, your job is pretty clear. You do whatever it takes, including taking a bullet, to see that the president remains safe. But what do you do when you are not actually guarding the president? We were fascinated to learn that agents spend a lot of their time worrying about how the president might be attacked, what they would do, and how to prevent it. (We envision a room where agents sit around reading Robert Ludlum and Vince Flynn novels.) Thinking about the when, where, and how questions is an important part of the job.

Every once in a while, the agents come up with a radical, clever attack scenario and create a ...