Free White Paper Answers What Can Your Business Learn From the Iraq War?

April 6, 2010 - PRLog -- Left of Boom, a Free White Paper, Teaches Companies Proactive Strategies From the Iraq War

A roadside bombing in Iraq may seem like a strange place to learn business lessons, but a new white paper from labor relations strategist Phillip Wilson will change your mind. "Left of Boom" urges business owners to look carefully at how the military altered its response to insurgent bombers in Iraq and encourages them to apply those lessons to business threats.

"The initial military strategy in Iraq was ill-equipped to deal with a guerrilla insurgency," says Wilson, author of The Next 52 Weeks: One Year to Transform Your Workplace, and 10 other books, "but they learned quickly they had to think more like crime scene investigators if they hoped to prevent these deadly sneak-attacks." The strategy change paid off. Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks against the US military are on the decline and becoming less and less effective.

"The key strategy change in Iraq was that the military started focusing 'left of boom' or before the attack even occurs," Wilson explained. If you put an insurgent attack on a timeline, the detonation of an IED is the "boom" event. Everything that leads up to that event is left of the boom and everything that happens after is right of boom. The military's initial focus was right of boom (more agile equipment, heavier armor, counter-attacks, etc.) Yet attacks grew more frequent and more deadly. Something had to change.

Then the military began focusing left of the boom. They carefully investigated each attack across the entire country, learning more and more about patterns of movement, the bomb-making network, likely hideouts for insurgents and more. The more they focused on these proactive and preventive tactics, the less effective the insurgents became.

Wilson, who practiced labor and employment law before becoming President of Labor Relations Institute, says "there are lots of 'boom' events in a business, like employment lawsuits or union organizing campaigns." He urges businesses to learn from how the military changed focus in Iraq.

Some of the lessons businesses can learn from the white paper include:

   * Why most of “proactive” measures aren’t proactive at all and how to tell the difference between real and “fake” preventive measures;
   * The 5 key tactics military strategists used when they realized they were losing against insurgent IED attacks – and how you can apply them in your business today;
   * 6 different “left of boom” activities you can use now that will give your company big leverage in its positive employee relations strategy;
   * Plus 4 “right of boom” strategies you should be ready to use in case you are targeted by union organizers.

To download and review the white paper at no cost, simply go to http://LRIonline.com/leftofboom and click on the download button. You can also sign up for LRI's free online newsletter at http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup and review other techniques that can be part of your company's "left of boom" strategy at http://lrionline.com/store/publications/52-weeks-year-tra...

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About Labor Relations Institute: LRI is the nation's leading union free and positive employee relations consulting firm. With over 10,000 successful client engagements, we provide comprehensive employee communication products and services our clients use to monitor their risk of unionization, build positive employee relations, train supervisors, and if necessary, run a winning campaign.