It is the way of the world, at least in knowledge positions within today’s economy.

There is another side, of course. Some people are completely convincing without the knowledge or experience to support what they advocate. Their self-confidence radiates within a room and casts a spell. People agree with this kind of person implicitly and are willing to follow him or her. Later, it may be clear that their confidence was misplaced. Then, a sense of betrayal replaces the false confidence. Convincing, yes, but (in the long term) they are not credible.

Competitive intelligence professionals routinely deal with knowledge. There are facts about the competitive environment, advanced data collection tools, powerful analytical models and insightful interviewing approaches. Awash with information, a competitive intelligence project usually ends with some type of report or presentation. Then, the facts, interpretations and recommendations are displayed for a sometimes-skeptical senior management audience. Attitudes of “convince me” and “prove it” often challenge the competitive intelligence professional’s performance and credibility. The obvious temptation is to emphasize expertise and exclude doubts, right? After all, is not humility a sign of weakness?

Unsurprisingly, there should be a balance between honest humility and expressed expertise. This balance is not contrived. Rather, it reflects what is true for most people. That is, the more that we know, the more we realize that we do not know. Put another way, whatever we know today, it will not be enough for tomorrow. Hence, we need a way to live with ourselves while delivering valuable services to others. We need to be able to explain what we do not know with as much credibility as we covey our certainties. (See my article on “The Right Answer to the Trap Question” for one approach.)

How do we do that? Here are seven guidelines that I use to balance my expertise and my humility.

1. Know a Lot – This may seem like an odd way to start the guidelines but there is no way to dance around the simple fact that you must know a lot about your business, customers and competitive intelligence. Knowledge is essential for long-term survival and you should set specific objectives for acquiring it over time. Complacent ignorance will not work.
2. Learning Disposition –For the many things that you do not yet know, you should demonstrate a ready willingness to learn. Insecure people are embarrassed when others point out their ignorance. Instead of blushing, practice sincerely thanking people that identify gaps in your knowledge. Follow the thanks with a request for them to help you learn about what is missing and then commit to integrate the new information as soon as is possible.
3. Discover Boundaries – This might sound a little defensive and it is surely a sensitive task to execute. Simply, find out what others do not know. Gently compare their knowledge gaps with your own. Offer to help them gain important knowledge with the implicit thought that they can return the favor. In short, build a relationship that focuses on moving forward together.
4. Assess Confidence – I have heard it said that we are only certain about the past. That is not true. You need only read competing histories of some major personality or event to understand that even reputable historians cannot agree on one account. Even more, the future is unclear. Therefore, practice succinct assumption summaries for each communication. Then, give a confidence assessment for each major analysis and recommendation. These steps will relieve you from mistakenly asserting certainty and involve others in richer discussions of meaning and trustworthiness.
5. Convey Proactively – I know from watching courtroom dramas that the smart lawyer anticipates the toughest questions for his or her client and intentionally asks them first. That approach blunts the dramatic confrontation and shifts attention to the rest of the story. In competitive intelligence, why not feature first what we might fear most. That is, convey proactively the weaknesses of the analysis or recommendations. This only works when there is a concomitant plan to remedy the weaknesses.
6. Live for the Long Term – It is easier to think of a question that has no current answer than to have answers for every possible query. Thus, everyone will experience the moment when a good question is asked but no good answer is known. Take a long-term view and do not dwell on the incident. If you are adhering to the other guidelines, you either have or will build the personal credibility that makes survival possible. Understand that sustained performance usually trumps an awkward moment.
7. Accept Limitations – Finally, feeling peace in your role means that you accept that satisfying all customers is unlikely. Most people and organizations have finite resources and bandwidth. One customer’s priorities may be mysterious or unwise to other equally high-ranking people. When appropriate, appeal to common values of the organization and express interest in working with others later. Be sure to keep open communication because today’s critic may be tomorrow’s funding customer.

Humility and expertise are not opposites. Both exist in a competent competitive intelligence professional. When demonstrated appropriately, they signal an authenticity to customers that they trust and value. On the other hand, overemphasizing one to the detriment of the other actually signals weakness.

Keep them in balance and prosper.

First, the bane …

In the Lord of the Rings story, the fellowship travels great distances and through many adventures trying to accomplish their mission. One of my favorite parts of the story is when they must travel through Moria, an underground dwarve colony and site of their great mines. Led by Durin, the dwarves settled “under the mountain” and began to build, explore and mine the riches that they found there. What they did not know (until it was too late) was the danger that dwelt in the depths. A Balrog. Durin’s Bane. The unspeakable terror that threatened them all. And it was coming for them.

A little dramatic, I suppose, but it is worth recognizing similar banes that befall the competitive intelligence community. That is, the “terrors” that hold the potential to derail all that we know to be true and worthwhile and to make our mission difficult, if not impossible. It is not hard to identify these things. It is only hard for us, collectively, to overcome them.

Here are the five banes that I think are most troublesome.

1. Missing the deep connection with senior management. I regularly run surveys of competitive intelligence professionals. (Take my latest survey here.) In most of the surveys I ask a variant of the question, “how well do you work with or get support from senior management?” This question usually gets the most negative responses (i.e., this is a big problem). Anecdotally, I hear all the time that making connections (e.g., relationships, meaningful dialogs, clear commissions) with sponsors is extraordinarily difficult for many. Is it any wonder that competitive intelligence projects often fail when these connections are missing?
2. Missing competency measures for professionals. Quick question – “Who is the best competitive intelligence professional that you know (excepting yourself, of course)?” Did a name come to mind? Here is a meta-question. How would know who is the best? We do not hand out merit badges, hold competitions or certify outcomes. So, how do you or I know who is the best, how we relate to that standard and if we are improving? The bottom line is that it is hard for us to know any of those things using objective measures. As a result, we all live in the mushy world of marketing perceptions. Why is that trouble? See my first point.
3. Missing meaningful measures of success. After the missing link with senior management, the next most problematic area for many competitive intelligence professionals is the ineffective representation of value for competitive intelligence. While the nirvana might be to be able to truthfully say something like, “as a result of our CI work, revenues and profits increased by x% and costs decreased by y%,” sadly many CI projects end with little linkage between effort and outcomes. This, of course, is a long-term prescription for extinction of the function. A short-term ROI perspective, cleanly and convincingly expressed, drives senior management. When we muddle through, or worse, avoid a CI value description, it signals to management that CI is an optional function. When cost reductions are important, they eliminate optional functions.
4. Missing shared problem-solving vehicles. Notwithstanding some of the fine CI communities that exist, there seems to be little shared problem-solving within the community. Ascribe that to busyness, diverging agendas, confidentiality requirements or disinterest – the net effect is that that many practitioners exist on virtual islands. That means that each person is left to his or her own problem-solving patterns and solutions. This is great for self-reliance development but not so good for advancing a discipline.  The cumulative impact is that we grow much slower as a community, develop fewer iconic figures recognizable outside the narrow CI population and poorly link research to practical application. (My modest attempt to help with this problem is my new website for Competitive Intelligence Case studies at www.cicases.com.)
5. Missing clear definition of CI from others. This recurring problem has significant ramifications. The problem is not so much that two CI professionals differ over the nuances in a competitive intelligence definition. No, the problem is how others outside of CI define competitive intelligence. The bottom line is that they do not do a good job and we, inside the industry, suffer because of that. The definitions range from those that are plainly wrong (“it’s corporate espionage”), subtly misleading (“it’s no different from market research”) to unhelpfully narrow (“it’s all about competitors” ). Notice how much time we spend responding to or correcting such misguided opinions and then imagine if we could spent similar energy advancing our skills or collaboration instead. The lack of an externally recognized definition saps our time and energy from more productive pursuits.

There are problems to be sure. But, what about competitive intelligence boons?

Here are three positive truths to remember.

1. Competitive intelligence has always been important and always will be. From time immemorial, whenever business competition occurred, it has been helpful to know more about competitors, the environment and the ways to win. People intuitively know this to be true and examples abound where such knowledge resulted in advantages.
2. With clearly expressed value, it is not difficult to “sell” competitive intelligence. Here we can admit that many CI professionals do not sell well. We lead with techniques, software tools and search gimmicks that seem valuable (to us) but are not valuable to senior management. However, with practice and some translation skills, we can adjust our presentation to the management (i.e., customer) perspective. That works.
3. Collaboration opportunities are increasing. This is a function of two large things. First, the tools and mechanisms available through the Internet make it easy to connect to professionals around the world. Second, there is (IMHO) an increasing sense that we need each other to represent better our specialty and to advance a common agenda of increased value. There is nothing like a recession to spur people to action.

The Balrog doomed Durin. It was his bane. Later, if you know the story, Gandalf overcame the Balrog after a great struggle. The good triumphed over the evil.

We can certainly rectify personally and collectively the banes of competitive intelligence. In part, we do this by remembering all that is right about the profession and its aims.

What do you think?

One example that we often use is armed conflict between nations. Wars are the ultimate human competition because the stakes are so high for many people. The problem with using it as analogy for business competitive intelligence is that the rules are clearly different. Ethics in business and war are not the same. Nations may justify actions during war time that an anathema to peace time life.

Another example that we can use is sports. The attractiveness of the sports analogy is that a “lifetime” is played out in plain view each season. All teams start with similar resources and the same record. Pitted against each other in a series of contests, the stronger teams emerge to contend for the title. There, superior systems collide to determine which will prevail. Nice and neat. Then it happens all over again.

Of course, business contests are not all that neat. Plus they usually occur with multiple, simultaneous competitors. The beginning and endings are not so clear cut. And, it is entirely possible that there will be more than one winner.

Okay, despite the caveats, there are good and bad lessons to be learned from American professional football.

The most successful team from the last ten years has been the New England Patriots coached by Bill Belichick. They have won three championships and regularly compete at the highest levels. Belichick’s reputation is that he meticulously and effectively prepares his team for each game. Players are aware of their roles and how to attack the opposing team. Knowing and exploiting every possible weakness of his opponents is a trademark of the Patriots.

Interestingly, it seems that this drive to know everything about competitors is what led to an apparent ethical lapse. In 2007, the Patriots (in violation of league rules) taped the sidelines of an opponent for the purpose of deciphering hand signals used to communicate with players on the field. Maybe they had been doing this in other games and for a long period of time (suspicions)? Many began to question how the spying affected the previous championships. Should they be considered tainted?

This is a cautionary tale about the ethics of competitive intelligence that does apply to business.

Where did Belichick’s drive come from? Did it arise first from proper and healthy impulses?

Actually, it did. Bill Belichick’s father, Steve, wrote one of the seminal books on football scouting methods. When scouting was done in a haphazard and spotty fashion, Steve pioneered the methodical use of scouting (i.e., competitive intelligence) to gain advantages over opponents. While scouting for the Naval Academy football team, he wrote “Football Scouting Methods” which contains a wealth of philosophy and practical methods for understanding competitors.

My favorite quote from the book describes his view of scouting.

“The objective of [football] scouting has been, and still is, to get as much useful information about a future opponent as possible. A more practical objective, however, seems to be to get as much usable information as can be utilized either (1) to help formulate game plans, or (2) better prepare various individual players to either combat the strength, or take advantage of the weakness of an individual or opposing team.”

To warm the hearts of competitive intelligence professionals, his first chapter is entitled “A Case for Specialization in Scouting.” This chapter reads like manifesto for (football) competitive intelligence. With little modification it works just as well for business competitive intelligence. Here are a few quotes from that chapter.

“Regardless of whether the accent is on scouting, the use of movies, or a combination of the two methods, it is generally agreed that advance information of an opponent is important and necessary.”

“It does seem strange that some head coaches feel that any coach, regardless of experience, can scout a football game”

“The argument for specialization get a further boost from the scouts themselves, as most scouts agree that they do get more proficient as the season progresses, regardless of whether they scout the same team for several weeks or a different team each week.”

“Basically, every football team has a pattern.”

Steve Belichick’s book was published in 1962. My “ah ha” realization is that competitive intelligence principles can be learned from non-business arenas. Bill Belichick obviously absorbed many lessons from his father. He just took them one step too far.

I get it that they need specific information about competitors. I also know that clients or managers want to increase their confidence in their decision making. And, commonly they want to feel that they won’t be blindsided. Most of all they want help to make wise choices about the future that will reflect well on their leadership.

So what role should I play? Information source? Critic? Counselor? Oracle? Or, maybe, friend?

I can hear you through the computer right now (disagreement and skepticism transmit well). Yes, you think that the first 3 or 4 possibilities often fit. But, definitely not the “friend” role. That is entirely too soft a description that no client or senior manager would provide in a job description. They want bottom line results and value those that directly (directly!) contribute. Tangible, measurable and preferably quick results would be their highest goal.

Yet, I wonder about that. Not understating the need for results and concrete benefits, I think that we sometimes miss the human element of leadership and what it needs most.

Many times leaders are trying desperately to keep ahead of the game. There are rivalries within the company which are threatening their position. The people that work with them are constantly angling for attention and favor. Competitors, of course, would be gleeful if they failed. The Board is constantly evaluating their performance and it is easy to understand that most won’t advance. It’s a jungle and thriving within that jungle is tough. One needs help but where will it come from?

There is not one answer to that question.

The traditional organizational answer is that help will come from people that align their performance with the leader’s agenda because they are incentivized to do so. Since their pay and bonus are determined by the leader, their compliance and support is assumed. This motivation is powerful and not to be ignored.

However, competitive intelligence is an especially interesting role when supplied by an outsider or consultant. The reward system is different but so are the opportunities. Freed from the periodic review cycle and not presenting an alternative agenda, the CI consultant’s access to a leader gives them a unique chance to contribute to the success of the leader. Gone are their fears of being replaced, outmaneuvered or criticized by someone in the organization. Instead the focus can strictly be on getting help.

This is where being a “friend” can make a huge difference.

Now, just to be clear, I don’t think being a “friend” in this context means planning family vacations together. It doesn’t mean that you can avoid delivering tangible value effectively.   And I don’t think that you announce to the leader that you intend to be their friend!

It’s the friend behavior that is important.

The best friends that I have in my personal life have demonstrated that they are trustworthy even when there is a short term cost. They have not neglected to encourage me or to point out where I am going astray. Their recommendations are grounded in understanding what I value and they consider the long term impact of anything that they say or do. Mostly, they sincerely get pleasure out of seeing me succeed. My success takes nothing from them. On the contrary, together we navigate through life that has innumerable ups and downs. They stick with me when others don’t.

There is a parallel in business.

There is a yearning (usually unspoken) among leaders to have friends. Friends that want them to be successful and can be counted on in tough times. Straight talkers that understand the difficulties of the job and the immense challenges. Colleagues that help them solve problems that are vexing and deal with issues that seem intractable. Consultants, I dare say, that honor the leader’s agenda and yet challenge it productively to improve it. In short, they want a business “friend.”

My realization over the years is that relationships, emotional and intellectual, fuel great achievement.

So what are four hints for a competitive intelligence professional to be a “friend” to a client or leader.

1. Learn to listen for the emotional content. This means that you should attempt to get not only a description of the deliverables that are required but also the feelings that prompt the need. Observe how the leader talks and reacts. Is it defensive, aggressive, confident or questioning? Every signal gives clues to unstated needs. Meeting those needs in addition to answering the explicit CI questions will make you special in the eyes of the leader.
2. Observe the environment. It is very useful to observe the leader’s peers and reports. Their postures, words and interactions will speak volumes about the problems that the leader has to deal with every day. The leader will be constantly thinking through how to use the results that you deliver with that group. If you can be helpful with this, your services will be highly valued.
3. Speak the truth. Of course, you say. But the fact is that the leader is often not told the truth (or the whole truth). Maybe it’s because of the environment which discourages boldness. Maybe it’s because the people are too attuned to their own promotions rather than the leader’s. Sometimes people simple are “out of practice.” You can provide unvarnished observations if you muster the personal courage to do so. This will make you standout.
4. Give more than you are paid for. This may seem like economic foolishness. After all, you may have been engaged for a specific purpose at a specific cost to the company. Why give more when they aren’t explicitly paying for more? Simple, it shows that you are atypically interested in the leader and their success. This is what “friends” do and why friends are called back for more projects.

By nature I am a private person that doesn’t make friends easily. Still, I know that having friends and being a friend are enormously enabling in my life. People that pass the “friends” test are granted access to many things that were previously guarded.

I can be many things to leaders that hire me for competitive intelligence but thinking and acting like a friend is the greatest value I can provide to them. It resonates with what they don’t often state but consistently need.

Okay, what do you see or hear that makes you agree (or not) with what I said?

From “Everything You Know is Wrong” by The Firesign Theatre (1974) – Comedy Group

Twenty five years ago I worked on a top secret military project for my company. It had been going on for some time when I started and, as far as I know, it is still going on. It was a fascinating application of technology that I would have loved to talk about with my family and friends. I was proud of what we were trying to do, my small role in the project and, of course, the ultimate application. Unsurprisingly, I am bound by employment agreement and federal law to not discuss what I did or the product that we were building.

Competitive intelligence is similarly difficult to talk about.

Just imagine that you have completed a CI project for your company or for a client. Because of your superior methods, uncommon insight and excellent timing, you uncover something that results in a significant competitive advantage for the company. Who are you going to tell? What are you allowed to say? And, what is the impact on your future work of these answers?

Therein lies the problem. It is hard to talk about CI successes.

Yes, you can discuss the success with your management sponsor. Maybe you can share your successes with colleagues at the same company. Perhaps you can abstract some lessons for more general audiences. Nevertheless, a detailed discussion of what you did is commonly antithetical to your role.

That is, a company or client is unlikely to want others to know explicitly how or when they gained a competitive advantage.

Why? Because the competitors may adjust their own strategies in response, the duration of the advantage may be lessened, the original analysis techniques may be copied or the exposure will give competitors insight into the company’s own strategic thought processes. Even when these reasons are not articulated, they are powerfully felt disincentives to talking in detail about competitive intelligence successes.

While being quiet makes sense for a company, it impedes the development of CI professionals.

Just think about the example of a great artist. Suppose that their paintings are magnificent expressing emotion and imagination that is compelling and distinctive. The artist’s technique is a textbook example of all that is good in painting. The national museum has an exhibition ongoing for the artist. However, because of competition with other museums that are trying to draw the same crowds, the national museum allows no pictures of the paintings, no discussion of the artist’s techniques and no advertising about the exhibit. If the artist is solely dependent on the good graces of the national museum, then their public career may well be stunted. At the end of the day, would that really benefit the national museum?

Competitive intelligence professionals need exposure to prosper and develop.

Here are five things that are needed to advance the general art of competitive intelligence.

1. We need our myths. These are the established (usually older) stories that tell dramatic success stories. In military intelligence, there are many such stories from major conflicts. From WWII, there were the code breakers in England, the capture of the Ultra device in Poland from the Germans and the ambush of Yamamoto in the south Pacific.
2. We need professional associations. There, likeminded people can gather to exchange encouragement, advice and credentials. Obviously the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) exists for this purpose. This is not enough. We need to be linked to professional associations frequented by our customers (i.e., American Management Association, Association for Strategic Planning). We shouldn’t miss that our generic (not just our captive management) customers can help us understand the critical competitive issues of our industry and appreciate the skills needed to decipher this picture.
3. We need a marketing campaign. CI people are often analytic, introspective people as well they need to be. Faced by a mountain of facts and a hazy view of the future, those personality traits equip CI professionals to make sense of it all for others. The only problem is that CI people seem to like to talk to other CI people the most. But the success of Competitive Intelligence is dependent on customer understanding. We need to know what our customers value and expect. Then, from this knowledge, we need to think like marketers rather than analysts. Marketing people are adept at telling stories that hook their audiences because the stories make emotional, value oriented connections.
4. We need iconic figures. Lee Iacocca became the symbol for a resurgent Chrysler in the 1980’s (where are you now, Lee?). Michael Jordan was the featured representative of excellence for basketball in the 1990’s. There are many such people that come to embody an industry or a profession. Though others don’t reach the level of these icons, the very fact that they exist is a shorthand definition of success and a voice to speak about the profession to others.
5. We need to relax. Part of the problem is the ferocious clamoring for attention that permeates everyone’s personal and business lives. Sell, sell, sell is the common advice for individuals and companies. If you are creating a new market segment or brand, this makes especially good sense. The fact is that (lowercase) competitive intelligence is not new and it is not going away as long as there is competition. People seem to have an innate comparison facility that is honed to observe others. It is this impulse that competitive intelligence take to a more methodical and actionable level for companies. Simply, competitive intelligence will always be relevant and the adaptable professional will succeed whatever their title.

The summary is that (lowercase) competitive intelligence will always be important. It will be done better when (uppercase) Competitive Intelligence is developed and promoted the right ways.

Do you agree with these thoughts? What else needs to happen?

(Don’t you love it when someone reduces all of the complexities of life to simple categories? And yet, clearly some things fundamentally divide people into camps.)

Standards, or more precisely stated, the expectations that we have for ourselves are one of these dividing lines. Here is the illustration that I like to use. What do you see below?

There is a bar suspended between two posts, of course. Now, if I told you that you had to move between the two posts but not disturb the horizontal bar, you have two choices. You can go under it or you can go over it. Choosing not only where the bar is set but also how you pass through says something about you. And that is what separates all of us into one of two camps.

First of all, think of the bar as representing the set of expectations that we have for ourselves and our work.

Everyone has expectations which soon become evident to those that we spend time with regularly. The expectations (and our ability to deliver on them) largely defines our personal and professional brand. Where you set the bar for competitive intelligence is exceedingly important. Why? Because you will find that you are touching on important subjects involving important people that might drive important changes in the organization. By definition, this requires high expectations of you.

There are 3 areas where you need to decide on high expectations.

1. Integrity – Decide right away that you will have the highest integrity in all of your dealings. Easy to say that this your goal but know that your integrity will be challenged. Directly and indirectly you will be tested to see if you are fair, honest, trustworthy and so on. Fail one of these tests because you are not prepared and there will be little forgiveness. Here is an example of giving The Right Answer to the Trap Question (which happens to be an integrity test).

2. Value – Some people love to do analysis. They are enamored with the techniques, tools and the intellectual stimulus of grinding through data. Others love the presentation of information. Nothing pleases them more than assembling 50 beautiful slides full of animations and transitions. Talking to people and exchanging views is another seductive activity that some CI practitioners enjoy. While all of these things are worthwhile and important, they are all not meaningful when they do not deliver value.

My definition of “value” for competitive intelligence is credible answers to important questions that when answered well may lead to changes in business strategy.

To create an enduring competitive intelligence function, you must deliver value. Satisfaction with anything less means that you will be looking for another job soon.

3. Work Quality – No one (that I know) sets out to do poor work. Nevertheless, poor or mediocre work often is performed by people throughout the corporate world. Sometimes this is enabled by lack of review of the work or by skillful self-insulation of the effects of the work. The evidence of poor work for a CI person may be in shoddy research, haphazard analysis, ineffective presentations or neglected personal relationships. You do not have the option of performing poorly and it is best to understand that from the beginning. The quality of all that you do must be top-notch because it is expected when moving in strategy circles. Your standard must be that of senior leaders that are held accountable by stockholders, senior management and employees.

Setting the bar is step one.

Step two is deciding whether you go over it (meet or exceed expectations) or whether you go under (do the least possible to get by). This is the difference between the high jump and the limbo.

You must sign up to set the bar high and then choose to go over it. This is the only standard that will work over time. It is the only way to effectively influence meaningful change in the business strategy of your company. (Save the limbo for the pool party to celebrate your success.)

Setting some standards is about you and what you choose to aspire to as you develop the competitive intelligence function. The three critical areas are integrity, value and work quality. Once you have done this, you are ready to begin introducing yourself and what you hope to accomplish to the rest of the organization. This will be your competitive intelligence brand.

Next topic is “Introduce The Brand”.

Here are the 15 steps that we are walking through. Which ones do you think are especially important?

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

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.