The Attacker’s Advantage: Turning Uncertainty into Breakthrough Opportunities

Non-philosophic rigor in definition plagues key terms with obscurity. What is uncertainty? How is uncertainty different from the unknown (cf. “uncertainty” on pg. ix & “unknowns” on pg. x)? These “trivialities” expire, however, at breadth. Uncertainty arises from a non-scientific economy; capitalism, for instance, is not by any measure a predicative science like physics. The future of the market is thus a chaotic raging torrent of forces.

Among the chaos, Charan identifies instantaneous up-scaling competitors, the algorithmic revolution, international pools of contenders, the global financial system, as these forces. One model arises to surmount them: a mentality crafted to implement strategies “to attack” uncertainty.

Perceptual acuity (i.e., forecasting catalysts to change radically a company or industry), mindset for opportunity in uncertainty, commitment to the successful in the emerging pathways, power to disintegrate roadblocks, keen knowledge to balance between short or long term, emphasis upon agility in alignment of personnel, priorities, performance (i.e., JPS) are the key battle points of his war plan.

The book is a simple, straightforward, direct advice; no fanfare or obviating digression thresh the reader. Charan develops his advice rhetorically but business leaders have no science (i.e., the www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-02/tesla-stockholders-can-t-take-a-joke”>materiality of Tesla’s Model W). Theirs is the Attacker’s Advantage or, in some cases like Tesla’s Model W, their disadvantage.