Making a Difference with Competitive Intelligence?

In far too many instances even the most competent Competitive Intelligence (CI) managers and analysts become frustrated by the marginal impact they seem to have on the strategic thinking and actions of CEOs and other senior managers. The struggle to strengthen corporate leaders’ perspectives on the value of CI is often met with resistance in various forms: sometimes intelligence is ignored altogether; sometimes ‘the message’ doesn’t correspond to what decision-makers want to hear; and on occasion executives are already convinced that there isn’t anything of consequence that a young analyst can tell them that they don’t already know. But why, CI practitioners often ask, do decision-makers fail to appreciate the current intelligence assessments, medium- to longer-term estimates, and warning analyses we so painstakingly produce? “We know our stuff is good!”

In most cases, the underlying problem stems from at least three factors:

1. The ‘world views’, personal agendas, and responsibilities of executives and CI practitioners are very different. Although we’re all ‘on the same side’–and thus share a common stake in the performance and success of the firm–behaviourally business leaders and analysts share little else in common. For example, how many senior executives can claim an academic, military, or national security background that may have equipped them to better appreciate what CI actually is, why it matters, and how it can help them, collectively as well as individually, with their decision challenges? Business leaders are expected to ‘lead the charge’. Analysts are focused on finding landmines.
   
   

2. The realities of long outdated business models and practices, as well as archaic organisational structures and systems (bureaucracy, company ‘politics’, departmental and functional silos, etc.) impede the effectiveness of CI in the decision-making process. As Professor Gary Hamel, a business scholar, puts it, “most of the essential tools and techniques of modern management were invented by individuals born in the 19th century.” Competitive Intelligence largely concerns itself with future possibilities and probabilities; thus it’s a tough call when intelligence analysts are forced to work within a business context likely to be firmly anchored in the past.

3. Many CI practitioners are guilty of basic flaws in the internal ‘marketing’ of CI. In many instances CI is regarded by executives as a cost, rather than a ‘force multiplier’, whereas its potential value-added to business decision-making is, similar to a new work of art, seldom, or poorly, quantified. Competitive Intelligence is not positioned in a way which executives understand; it is not sufficiently differentiated from the more traditional management information flows and sources (including all-important human sources) they are familiar with. Last, CI is badly “sold”; its raison d’être is not sufficiently compelling. How much time, for example, do CI managers spend in profiling their internal ‘consumers’, or in educating these same consumers about CI? Taking fifteen minutes or so to explain, and reinforce, the value of CI in an executive committee or board meeting will usually have a positive impact on how CEOs and their colleagues perceive the discipline. Nothing beats face-to-face dialogue. Branding, too, can make critical, organisation-wide difference to CI’s positioning.
   
   

Ask yourself: if the CI we are delivering is not causing our executives to think and behave differently whose fault is that?