Strategy through Execution: Lessons from the U.S. Marshals

Abstract

Today’s executive faces a number of potential threats and opportunities which, in many ways, will help to determine who the corporate winners and losers will be in the coming years. Sixteen years ago, the United States government faced a number of threats following the tragic September 11th terrorist attacks. It had to make decisions how to address those threats, including how to deploy intelligence and law enforcement resources to cope with not only the new homeland terrorist threat, but also with more established criminal threats. Since that time, the activities of the U.S. Marshals Service have grown tremendously. For example, at the behest of Congress, the Marshals established their first Regional Fugitive Task Force (RFTF) in New York and New Jersey in May of 2002. The task force’s results since that time have been significant and include an average weekly arrest rate of over one hundred of the most dangerous fugitives, including murderers, rapists, and repeat violent offenders, i.e., “the worst of the worst” fugitives. Other RFTFs were subsequently created and have been equally as productive. This paper profiles several techniques the Marshals employed that corporate executives can adopt. These include the use of “no-win” scenarios in employee selection processes, economically proving out strategic concepts before undertaking widespread and expensive initiatives, employing strategic “force multipliers” to increase efficiency through the use of operational leverage, and efficiently employing targeted analytics and related techniques to prevent the “malfunction of information.”