Have you ever heard of the DEW Line?

If you haven’t, don’t feel too bad.  It was operational between 1957 and the late 1980’s, then deactivated between 1988 and 1993.  DEW stands for Distance Early Warning.

During the Cold War the enemy of the west was communism, and the big, bad bully of communism was the Soviet Union.  In an attempt to create a mechanism to alert North America to any Soviet air or land attack, Canada and the US worked together to create the DEW Line.

The DEW Line was a series of radar installations spread across Canada in three regions:  The Arctic Line stretching from Alaska to Greenland, the Mid-Canada line south of that, and the Pinetree Line running along the Canada/US border.  The DEW Line marked the edge of an electronic grid run by a computer system located in Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado – the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defence Command.  (NORAD)

Canada and the US, and pretty well all of the rest of the western world, saw the Soviet Union as a major threat to safety and security.  Understanding the nature of this threat and any subsequent attack, Canada and the US made a very significant investment in the creation and operation of the DEW Line.

The DEW Line was an incredibly grand Cold War initiative.  Beginning in December 1954, in some of the most hostile and isolated conditions on the planet, over 25,000 people with a wide variety of skills were transported to the Arctic, housed, fed, and supplied with everything they needed to construct the buildings, roads, tanks, towers, antennas, airfields, and hangars necessary to fulfill this grand vision.

This was no small undertaking. And, it was all for one simple purpose: early warning of a Soviet attack.

Canada and the US understood there was a threat to our safety and security and wanted to be able to take all the action necessary to mitigate that threat.

Are you aware of the threats that you currently face in your business and in your leadership?

Have you ever done a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) of your business and your leadership? Do you have a clear understanding of not only the threats you face, but from where they could come?

If you do not, it would be prudent for you to begin to identify those threats.

Many leaders are so busy in their businesses they don’t take the time to look around to assess areas of concern they need to be aware of. Except of course, when the ‘explosions’ begin and they realize they are under the attack of a weak dollar, a new competitor, a technological breakthrough changing the rules of the game, poor sales results, a cash flow crunch – any number of threats that can bring a company down.

Good leaders set up DEW Lines inside and outside their business. They monitor multiple types of metrics inside the business to ensure the business is tracking well. Sales, cash flow, employee engagement, net profit, cost of sales, customer satisfaction, and many others, are all representative of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) good leaders monitor regularly.

And, they monitor what is going on outside their business within their industry in regard to innovation, technology, customer trends, and the competitive, political and economic landscape. Many outside factors significantly influence the performance of organizations directly and indirectly.

To stay connected with all of these factors is impossible for any leader unless he or she relies on others with unique expertise to be their DEW Line. Sure, there are some basic measurement metrics every leader needs to stay on top of every month: sales, net profit, cash flow, cash on hand, AR and AP. However, that alone is not enough.

Good leadership involves determining what metrics need to be monitored to ensure the company is tracking in the right direction and is not vulnerable to unforeseen threats. Then, determining who is responsible for measuring those metrics and providing feedback to you. Those people become your DEW Line.

So, who’s your DEW Line? Who notifies you of potential vulnerabilities?  The threats are real – don’t get caught by surprise.