There are a lot of words that can be used to describe the events in Boston last week. They include amazing, senseless and barbaric, and in regards to the perpetrators, stupid and incomprehensible.
What I mean by amazing is how the whole thing transpired over just four and one-half days from catastrophic event to capture.
- Criminals are not smart. The infamous Professor James Moriarity is truly a fictional character.
- Anybody can do things. These two young murderers figured out how to make a bomb. That’s tactical, it’s doing something. But they had no strategy. They ignored the fact there are cameras everywhere and barely disguised themselves. They stayed in town, had evidence in their house, on their computers and as part of their social media.
- Technology can be amazing and these guys underestimated technology. Poor quality video plus advanced facial recognition software had them identified in a couple of days. The police used technology to make their job easier and that allowed them to get the tips they got from the public to end the ordeal.
The lessons here are that this event, like in business, shows that anybody can “do things,” but it’s the strategy that tells you what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And part of that “doing” is using technology to increase productivity, not to overuse it and definitely not to ignore it, because it’s different. You don’t have to be as insightful as Sherlock Holmes but you have to pay attention to the big picture, not just the day-to-day, a lot more than the two idiots in Boston.
“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” Winston Churchill