Terror Inc

Al Qaeda, IRA, ETA, LTTE, LeT, FARC, ELN, HAMAS, are just a couple. The list is long and penetrating. What can we, our businesses and our political leaders learn from these terror groups in terms of their leadership, business continuity, collaboration, their purpose, principles and values, their execution and singular focus.

It is an interesting to think of how these terror groups communicate, collaborate with various regional factions, identify and unite on a common cause, how they maintain the motivation not withstanding the constant blows from governments and other global law enforcement organizations. I began to wonder about the same with respect to businesses, public interest organizations, NGOs and even groups like G8 and the UN that conflict with each other and often lack unity.

To me these terror groups are no different from a corporation of the new world. They have goals and objectives, they need to raise funds, they need to recruit, they obviously need to motivate, they need to make judicious funding decisions when making choices and above all regroup and recover from failure. To me that sounds like a regular business!

So what makes these terror groups so effective? Is it strong leadership? Is it ‘Leader speak’? Is it good marketing? Is the religious fanaticism? What is it? Can’t be leadership by itself, because there are regional factions that operate under separate leaders. Also the destruction or capture of the leader will only give rise to a successor with greater vigor. Can’t believe it is oration by itself, although a very powerful tool, its influence is often short lived. Religion seems to be the strongest argument, but if that was the sole driver new world corporations would have had justified establishment of business units by ‘religion’ to drive volume growth and profit in those segments.

The last element that seems the strongest link “marketing”, a constant brainwash may just do the job!

So in our fight we terror, may be its time we focused on the root cause “Marketing’, to deal with than just the symptom ‘The leader’?