“What exactly do you do?”

I have tried many answers to this question. Sometimes I have given them a definition of competitive intelligence. Maybe I say something like, “Well, I work on analyzing all of the factors of the competitive environment to discern patterns which help people make decisions.” Usually they just stare at me. If they are friends, they manage a wan smile and I imagine them silently wishing me luck. Potential clients are often lost after my accurate but ineffective definition.

Another tack is giving them technical information about competitive intelligence. “I help companies employ models, information searches and other techniques to leverage primary and secondary research findings for competitive advantage,” I proudly announce. (Even my friends don’t smile at this one.)

Some kind people have given me advice to shorten (even more) the description of competitive intelligence. “Just say that you help them,” one succinct friend offered. “How about saying that you ‘make success possible’?” proffered another (this seemed a little grandiose to me).

Frankly, nothing seemed to work if you define “work” as consistently making an emotional and factual connection with a prospective client. That is, nothing worked until an experienced, older consultant gave me the magic words that he had received some years before. His advice was simply to start each definition or explanation this way.

“You know what it is like when …”

For instance, when speaking to a product manager I might say,

“You know what it is like when you are championing a new product before management and they want to know what the competition is doing? I can help you assemble a complete map of the competitor products to show how your proposed product will succeed in the market.”

When speaking to a strategic marketing person I might say,

“You know what it is like when you have to convince others to implement the new strategy that you are advocating? I can help you clearly identify and explain the market forces which make the strategic decision critical to the company’s success.”

When speaking to a general manager or CEO I might say,

“You know what is like when you have market share and revenue goals that are difficult to meet? I can help you understand and explain the likely scenarios which will affect your profitability over the next 3-5 years.”

The dynamic changes when the first words out of my mouth are about them or their issues. Usually they snap to attention because they immediately seek to validate whether or not my statement applies. When I am careful, it always does apply because the challenges that people face are quite common to the function they perform.

The purpose of the next sentence is to explain the relevance of competitive intelligence to their problem. Avoiding anything that is academic or canned, I can give them an example of value which is important. This connects me to them.

Seven simple words help me get started better with people. They make competitive intelligence “click” because I have finally found an effective way to personalize the definition.

What works for you? Is there a common way that you respond to questions about competitive intelligence?

1. We already do competitive intelligence (but it is not helping us).
2. We can’t afford it (but we can accept the costs of not doing it).
3. We don’t believe it can help (because we think we are already are doing everything we need to do).
4. We tried it before (and it didn’t deliver valuable information).
5. We need certainty (and there is some risk in the answers).

I recently met with a marketing manager from a high technology company. We talked about the many challenges that his company is facing. It was clear to me as we talked that he is a very smart and accomplished manager grappling with tough questions (who isn’t?).

How to differentiate their products? How to branch into value added services? How to anticipate the technology and architecture roadmaps for their major customers? How to compete against emerging low margin competitors? How to direct and leverage their R&D effectively? All of this was against the backdrop of multiple years of losses and declining revenues for the firm.

Aside from the general macro economic pressures affecting most everyone, it was clear that the company had some very specific pressures all their own. I heard about the history of competitive intelligence at the company. It turns out that people throughout the organization had some responsibilities for monitoring competitor’s products (this is the common form of competitive intelligence).

Eventually we got around to discussing the kind of competitive intelligence that would answer (or help answer) the questions that we posed. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” I suggested, “if you could get answers with some reasonable confidence to all of those questions?”

“Yes,” he said, “but it would be impossible to get the answers.”

It was then that I was struck by the realization that many people that might benefit from a well organized or improved competitive intelligence function never get started. There are many reasons that they cite but five stand out.

1. We already do it. Usually this means that the responsibility is distributed among many people whose opinions and interpretations are not correlated or summarized. Hence, the coverage of important topics is very uneven. When these conditions exist, it is my experience that there is a recurring dissatisfaction with the effort. The antidote is to prioritize the questions from the strategy leaders and ask if the current approach is answering those questions.
2. We can’t afford it. This attitude is not a failure among business management alone. It is shared with CI professionals that cannot quantify their value to the company. The missing element is almost always the missing appreciation for the value of effective competitive intelligence. Maybe it is because CI people work on things that are “easy” but not “valuable”? (My definition of “value” for competitive intelligence is credible answers to important questions that when answered well may lead to changes in business strategy.)
3. We don’t believe it. See reason 1 above. Sometimes people think that the poor result of what they are already doing means that is all that they can expect from any competitive intelligence effort. After all, our smart people already track the competition and make strategy. How could someone else do better? If they could do it better, how would that reflect on us? Competitive intelligence (when it works well) may be viewed as “internal competition” rather than as a help to strategy leaders in a company. If it is seen as a threat rather than as support for improving competitiveness, it will not be valued by those that need it most.
4. We already tried it. Every leader and manager worth his or her salt keeps track of the competitive environment. Typically, these people have risen to the top of their organizations and are very, very smart. They have at least passing familiarity with common models used for competitive intelligence. They know about SWOT diagrams, maybe they have heard or Porter’s Five Forces and they can already read a competitor’s annual report. However, they may not be familiar with the disciple and problem solving approaches of professional competitive intelligence. Or, maybe they have been given subpar performances by those who have other specialties. Either way, the past colors their ideas of what is possible in the future.
5. We need certainty. Confidence is a precious thing. A confident company can move decisively when a less confident company either doesn’t move or moves slowly. Competitive intelligence is all about confidence. Difficult questions (i.e., “the most valuable ones to answer”) have important answers with varying degrees of certainty that ranges from 100% (we absolutely know!) to 0% (we have no idea). It is in the middle where the challenge exists since that is where most every answer falls. Would an answer that has a 70% likelihood of being true be useful? Some companies would say “no” and that is a problem. If the confidence bar is set at 99%, it almost surely guarantees that competitive intelligence efforts will fail.

In most every case, it takes an enlightened leader to ask the right questions to and demand useful answers from the competitive intelligence function. From the CI professional, it takes great attention to delivering the value (not “easy”, factual summaries) needed by strategy leaders of the business.

These are the conditions when competitive intelligence capabilities will be developed or improved and make a useful, recognized impact on the business strategy of a company.

Congratulations!

If you have gotten this far then you already spotted an important need for competitive intelligence, identified a senior leader that cares about it and managed to get the assignment to address the need. Even better than that, you worked into the discussion the topic “competitive intelligence.” Whether or not it really registered with your leader could be debated. They may have simply been glad to offload a difficult subject to a willing soul. Their expectations are low (and you should have tried to set them that way) but you have started toward a vision that will now become clearer soon.

More importantly, you have begun to set a people oriented tempo to your work.

You are recognizing (or at least hoping) that competitive intelligence will touch important areas for leaders in the company. CI analyses will show how well competitors are doing and sometimes how poorly your company is performing.

Meanwhile, leaders and peers are invested in how things are going. They set in place strategies that they think will be effective. And your work will eventually help them be more successful. However, that time is in the future. Between now and then is a minefield of egos, insecurities, turf wars, differing philosophies and more. Don’t worry too much, you can get through it. I’ll help you.

What’s next in our slow march to introduce a successful competitive intelligence program into the organization?

You tease them.

There is more than one meaning for “tease.” Sometimes I tease my children in a humorous way. I am trying to be funny and share a laugh with them. This isn’t what I would do in the office. Rather, a “tease” there is more like a small bite of an appetizer that is fine when tasted but provokes an even stronger desire for what might be coming. The small bite makes you lust for a full meal.

Why tease the leader in your response? There are two reasons.

First, you aren’t ready to serve them a “full meal” of competitive intelligence. The full meal definition will become more apparent as we continue our discussion. Suffice to say that when you only have an appetizer, then you feature the appetizer. Remember that your leader does not expect much so one especially good serving of anything will probably delight them. Don’t overpromise.

Second, even if you have everything ready (e.g., comprehensive information, immaculate presentation, credible strategic recommendations, solid quantitative and qualitative backup, etc.), it will not be accepted by an unsuspecting leader. They simply are not likely to be ready and you will actually damage your credibility if you attempt to “force feed” them. Don’t over deliver.

Here is what is in the “tease”

You goal is to begin establishing a pattern that will characterize all of the competitive intelligence things that are to come. The pattern will eventually lay the foundation for your personal competitive intelligence brand. (There are more things in the foundation but some are very important to start early.)

Here are three things to tease your leader

Do these steps well and you may just earn another bigger competitive intelligence assignment.

1. You will state the problem using their language and their measurements of success.

Why? Because you want to be known as someone that attempts to understand the larger problem from the leader’s perspective. It is possible that you won’t get this exactly right the first time. However, the attempt will be noticed and if it leads to discussion, your standing will increase in the leader’s eyes.

Assuming that you are presenting information in a slide format, a practical way to do this is make the first slide a summary of the key question and the success metric for the business.

2. You will demonstrate superior collaborative skills.

How? You will do this by showing that you talked to other key people about the topic. Sounds simple and some people assume that this goes on all the time. The all too common problem is that it doesn’t. You will be different. You will canvas people on all sides of the topic, inside and outside the company. Their feedback (even their dissent) will be included and credited in your presentation. You will be the honest broker of information.

A simple approach is to include a list of contributors on the title slide. Also, at key points in your presentation, you can point out who provided key inputs. Aside from showing how you collaborate, you want to indirectly stroke those that helped. You’ll need them later.

3. You will show evidence of interpretation.

Many people will focus on the “what” question. That is, what is happening? The answer is presented exhaustively as a set of facts. That good as far as it goes but a senior leader has way too much “what“ information and precious little “so what” interpretations. Again, you will be different. You will try to give the meaning to the information that you have uncovered.

Expect that there will be discussions and disagreements with your meanings (this is actually a very successful outcome). Your bona fides have not been established yet. Nonetheless, simply trying will make you stand out.

There is so much more to do. That’s why the three steps that I have outlined are only a tease.

You might decide on three different steps for your tease. Whatever you decide, the important concept is to preview what is to come, to introduce new things in ways that are easily accepted and engage your leader in such a way that they will ask for more.

It is worthwhile to sketch all of the other things that will guide you over the next few months. That’s a more complete foundation than the simple tease. That’s the menu for the full meal. Ah, I can almost smell it now.

Next topic is “Frame the Foundation”.

Here are the 15 steps that we are walking through. Do you see something that is missing?

The Human Side of Competitive Intelligence

1. Find The Pain
2. Get The Job
3. Tease The Vision
4. Frame The Foundation
5. Setting Some Standards
6. Introduce The Brand
7. Accumulate The Tools
8. Back To The Vision
9. Secure The Budget
10. Build The Presence
11. Expand the Brand
12. Go For the Value
13. Recruit A Staff
14. Go On The Offense
15. Evangelize The Mission

That is, because of your interests, skills and initiatives, you convince someone to assign to you what you wanted all along.

Competitive intelligence positions are often like that. As I described in my “Find the Pain” entry, it starts with recognizing that something is missing in the organization and seeing that the missing element is causing real pain to someone in leadership. Though their response to the pain may not be the immediate formation of a competitive intelligence function, there is an opportunity for someone with insight to gain such a role.

What does it take to get the job? There are two important points to remember.

First, ask for the job by name.

That means that using “competitive”, “competitor” or “intelligence” in your discussions is important. At this stage it only signals the domain of your effort. It does not mean that the leader has to authorize a budget, commit significant personal time or invest their prestige in the effort. It does alert those that are observant that you might be about a larger, more valuable task.

Using the examples from my previous post, here is what you might say to your leader to get their support to move to the next stage.

• They have been asked by their manager to present an overview of the competitive environment and realize that they only have the barest understanding summarized.

“I’d like to pull together a summary of competitive information for you. I could post a presentation for your review shortly about our top three competitors. Would that be interesting to you?”

• Their business results are being directly and obviously affected by a competitor move that blindsided the organization.

“I am researching how competitor X goes to market without us knowing something about their intentions. As I uncover intelligence about what they did, would you like to see the highlights?”

• Multiple competitors are repeatedly introducing better products and services and the manager does not know how they can do it.

“I have some speculation about how our competitors are operating that allows them to beat us to market. I think that some competitive intelligence might be useful to plan our countermoves. Would you like to see the conclusions from this study?”

• A key customer is contemplating a switch to a rival and tells them that their offerings (which they assumed were the best) are not competitive.

“I plan to speak with our sales team to get to the bottom of what our customers are telling us. I think that I can succinctly summarize the key differences between their products and ours. Maybe using this intelligence we focus of what improvements matter most.”

• The manager’s goal to increase sales and profits has stalled and no one can explain why this is true.

“There seem to changes happening in the competitive environment affecting our performance. Perhaps studying the market forces and presenting them to you would help us refine our strategies. Is this interesting?”

In every case, we are asking for a competitive intelligence role but in a way that is easy for a senior leader to accept. It is also fair to note that we need to be concerned about others in the organization. However, if you are just starting and are modest about your ambitions, they are more likely to be cooperative than obstructive.

Implicit in asking for the job is setting expectations about the expected benefit.

So, the second major point is to promise improvement, not solutions.

It is unlikely that you will create or uncover something that will fully and immediately address whatever competitive gaps exist. Even if you did have that valuable knowledge, it is quite likely that you are not well prepared to sell it to senior leaders. Starting a new competitive intelligence program requires you to think through how people accept new information that may contradict their established views, how to collect information from many information silos and owners that exist in the organization and how to present conclusions when you might not yet have the personal credibility with the thought leaders.

You have to move slowly and methodically to become credible, to gain allies and to build relationships.

There is an axiom that consultants are advised to follow. The axiom says to never promise to solve a client’s problem. Instead, promise to improve things by 10%. Not only is this reasonable in many organizations that view change skeptically, it makes the change process more tenable for the people that are affected and required to support the change.

Make no mistake about it. If you hope to introduce effective competitive intelligence into an organization where it has not previously existed, you are going to affect how business is conducted, how strategies are evaluated and how people view the future. This is overwhelming for most to comprehend. Move fast and you will guarantee the quick and cheered demise of your fledgling effort. Move with wisdom and you can create something durable and incredibly valuable to your leader and organization.

Circling back to asking for the job, note how you are simply asking for a task assignment rather than a full time job. Once you have the initial task assignment with the right expectations, it is time to give your leader a taste of what is to come.

Let’s talk about how to “Tease The Vision” next.

The Human Side of Competitive Intelligence

1. Find The Pain
2. Get The Job
3. Tease The Vision
4. Frame The Foundation
5. Setting Some Standards
6. Introduce The Brand
7. Accumulate The Tools
8. Back To The Vision
9. Secure The Budget
10. Build The Presence
11. Expand the Brand
12. Go For the Value
13. Recruit A Staff
14. Go On The Offense
15. Evangelize The Mission

The vast majority of information is not written down.

It is communicated verbally or nonverbally between individuals. We are conditioned as social animals to use this method most frequently. The advantage is that it is often quick. The disadvantage is the intended message can easily get lost somewhere between the speaker’s words and the listener’s interpretation.

Meanwhile, many businesses are great fans of PowerPoint. Someone somewhere carefully (or sloppily) crafts a message that is presented. Much of the time there is one active presenter and multiple passive listeners. This can work but sadly it often doesn’t because the listeners are not engaged when they accept that the presenter is responsible for the communication.

There is a better way.

Why not draw pictures together?

Pictures are powerful ways to represent information. Much better than phrases on a PowerPoint slide, pictures can show relationships, sequences and other interactions. And when they are created by multiple people together, they can embody the collective wisdom of the group. If this is done appropriately, the resulting picture includes both the understandings and agreements among the people. How powerful is that!

The Grove Consultants International is a company that teaches graphical facilitation. The concepts are simple to grasp. Significantly, they all are aimed at graphically documenting what is most important. This works for topics like strategy, visions, value propositions, industry overviews and other similar things. The facilitation skills include the use of templates, creatively drawing to represent concepts and coordinating the discussions.

Here is an example where a Grove template was used to create an industry overview.

Pictures sometimes are a means to an end such as a specific decision. I have found that Sam Kaner’s book “Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making” is an excellent resource to help a leader understand how to reach a decision. Kaner’s techniques work well with the graphical facilitation techniques used by Grove.

Another excellent example of the powerful impact of drawing a picture together can come from a project retrospective. Norm Kerth’s book “Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews” is a valuable resource to describe how “looking back to move forward” is critical. His website at http://www.retrospectives.com/ explains the prime directive for retrospectives and more.

One of the exercises in a retrospective is the project timeline. A long piece of butcher block paper is tacked to a wall. Then, all members of the team the document the project by adding their recollections to the timeline. The ups and downs, deliveries, significant meetings, personal events, etc., are all added to the group picture. When everyone is finished, the whole team examines the completed picture to answer four questions.

• What did we do well, that if we don’t discuss we might forget?
• What did we learn?
• What should we do differently next time?
• What still puzzles us?

The actual format of the retrospective timeline is less important than the fact that the team creates it together. Here is an example from http://www.thekua.com/rant/category/retrospective-exercises/.

The impact of this exercise can be profound. Team members can literally see the entire project and what others considered important. They can understand more about what frustrated them, the problems that they faced together and overcame and the things that led to disappointments. Later, when they have digested the personal messages, they can use the picture to extract lessons and explain to others what went on and why. (Esther Derby is a great resource for teaching others how to conduct retrospectives. Esther and Diana Larsen have written “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” to show how to architect, design and run retrospectives.)

Maybe the pictures we create together aren’t as pretty as the PowerPoint masterpieces. Maybe they cannot be fit into the company template. And maybe they don’t have transitions, animations, embedded videos and other special effects which would impress Hollywood producers.

But what they do have is the powerful message created, owned and understood by a team.

Later, if you feel like it, you can always make a version for PowerPoint (with the approved company template). <g>

It doesn’t start that way, of course. Some days before a senior manager comes to you with an assignment. He has questions from the management team about the competitive landscape and you are just the competitive intelligence professional to get answers for them.

Luckily, you know what do. You start by clarifying their vague questions.  What specifically is important? You practice some rephrasing and finally present a set of three important questions to answer. Is this the right set, you ask. Yes, it is your senior manager responds and off you go to get answers. Your report is due at the next senior management staff meeting.

This is the fun part. Now that you have the questions, you begin to think through how to get answers. Let’s see, since one of the questions is about power and how it is expressed within our industry, I’ll start them with Porter’s 5 Forces. Then, I’ll follow with a detailed product comparison for the market segment we care about. Then, for the last question, I’ll finish with a financial comparison of competitors.

So, off you go. You begin accumulating information, talking to people and documenting the answers. You synthesize, summarize and test your conclusions. Your boss, acutely aware of your assignment and how it might reflect on her, monitors all that you do. She coaches you on what to say and how to say it. Your presentation slides begin to emerge. They are a work of art and represent an intellectual tour de force. Surely this will be a great triumph for you.

The presentation day arrives. You will have 30 minutes of an all day staff meeting to present. Due to other items taking longer than expected, you finally enter the room two hours after the scheduled time. You notice that the managers assembled look tired and distracted. Half of them are talking on the phone. Most of the others are doing email. Only a couple of them are even looking at you. You start.

The first question seems to fly by. A head or two pops up from their computers when they figure out that you are starting with the answers rather than the data. That is a good approach their eyes seem to say. There isn’t much debate as you move on to the second question. Again you present the answer as your boss fidgets nervously. There are a few more requests for clarification which you handle confidently. All of your preparation, skill and personal magnetism are paying off. Indeed, this performance may well result in the big bonus that you had been hoping for (and that your boss had been resisting giving to you).

Everyone seems to be listening now that you are to the final question.  You are on cruise control at this point so when the trap is sprung, it shocks your entire being.

One of the managers in the back (that has successfully cleared his email queue) raises his hand. What are the implications of the competitor’s new product on our technology strategy and the plans that we have to acquire the XYZ Company?

Wow, that is a great (note: all senior manager questions are “great”) question. It is not only a great question, at the time it is ask it seems incredibly reasonable that a competent CI professional would have a ready answer. The problem is that in all of your preparation you spent no time thinking about it.

While time is standing still, you review your options. I can’t admit that I don’t know, you think. If I do that, they will question all of my other answers. They will realize that I have been incompetent. Okay, I’ll give them an answer. They probably won’t know if I am right or wrong. Hold it, these are smart people. They will know. You look to your boss. Her look is glazed. She doesn’t know the answer either. Besides this is saving her a lot of money in your next review cycle. You have to think clearly. What do you do?

First, realize that the trap question is not about your competence, it is about your integrity.

Senior managers have built in sensors for bluffing. After all, much of what they do might be considered a bluff. (Yes, we can meet those sales targets with half the staff!) They accept that other senior managers will bluff them. But they do not want to be bluffed by you. It will kill your credibility once and for all if you try.

Second, focus on the value of future competence.

Remember that you have already answered some important questions for them. Compare the confidence that you have in those answers to any that you might provide off the cuff. Always think in terms of value the way that senior management thinks about value. They think about “big numbers” and how they and their organizations are measured. Most of all, they want to understand their risk. The best answers unqualified by risk are dangerous to them. You can answer the manager’s question but today’s answer has too much risk (or uncertainty). Tomorrow’s answer will be far more certain.

Third, realize that the on-going relationship ultimately defines your success.

A competitive intelligence function will not likely endure if its people are not trusted by senior management. An untrusted staff will find that the questions are no longer asked, the meeting invitations are no longer received and even the valid, useful conclusions are ignored. Senior managers are constantly sorting through their organizations for the people that they can trust. Most people do not pass the muster but the CI person must do so (or find other work).

So what are some good answers? Try one of these.

• “That’s a great question. It was not considered thoroughly in this analysis. My answer today has too much uncertainty. May I eliminate some of that uncertainty and report back to you next week?”

• “That’s a great question. I have identified several similar issues that require more study. May I address your question and the other issues at the next staff meeting?”

• “That’s a great question. I can only speculate about the answer today. I would love to discuss this with you outside of the meeting when you have time.”

• “That’s a great question. The way I would approach answering it would be to talk with Joe in sales, complete a four corners analysis and then work through the conclusions with the CTO. Would you like for me to do this?”

Remember that you must be competent. However, integrity trumps competence. Avoid the traps that suggest otherwise.