(Deep-probe the future)2
The second question was: Who were your competitors? And here again, they revealed their second limitation. They focused on the one company that has as much towers as they had. And that limitation was bound to be a costly one.
Remember (from Deep Probe 1) this company was a value chain in a very lucrative industry. They were beginning to think of themselves as a major core of that industry. And that hubris was blinding them to the reality of their existence. And that blindness was revealed in how they defined their competition.
So we probed deeper. We asked them what could happen to make the TELCOS not need them anymore. They didn’t see any.
We then told them that their real competitor was not a player in their market at that moment. He /she was currently thinking of a way to connect customers such that he bypasses the entire tower infrastructure that this business model was built upon. It was then they remembered Google balloons . . .but they couldn’t see Starlink coming. . .
Your real competition is sometimes not in the field with you. He is outside it and being outside it allows him a kind of perspective that’s different and novel – he is not blinded by a successful product that needs sustaining innovation. He is driven by a possibility that alienates you!
Deep probe 2 requires that you look at a future without the need for your product or system. Take one scenarios and run it all the way to end. Confront ahead of time the brutal reality of the demise of your prized product, process, service, or system. Then ask yourself: how do we make sure that doesn’t happen?
In the case of this company, their only immediate response was to look to their purpose and figure out what else they could do with their towers.
The other solution would have been with their R&D team but the problem was that they didn’t have a functional one – remember they leased space on their towers to TELCOS. How much R&D does that require? 
They were disadvantaged in the sense that they were not in the position to BUY, BE, or BEAT the real competition and the guy was coming at them fast. (By the end of 2022 – just about 4 years after our engagement with this team – the first one had arrived. And he was beaming network connection from satellites in outer space)
Deep probe the future so you know how to reposition your business for what’s coming.
