The survey was unscientific. Nevertheless, the results were a bit surprising (and valuable) to me. Perhaps they might reflect your situation as well. Maybe you are facing similar challenges in 2010 to improve your strategy effectiveness. You can download the survey here and view the complete set of results here.

The respondents answered five basic questions about strategy facing their organization or work group in the year ahead. The fourteen organizations mostly represented high technology companies ranging in annual revenues from $30M to greater than $10B. However, there were also startups and nonprofits included.

Here were the questions that I asked.

1. What is your relationship to strategy decision makers in your company or work group?
2. What types of strategy do you influence or decide in your company or work group?
3. How would you assess your company’s or work group’s strategy effectiveness?
4. What critical strategy challenges does your company or work group face in 2010?
5. What types of strategy help would help you most?

From the (admittedly) small sample, several interesting responses jump out.

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Certainty is a virtue, isn’t it?

Where would we be without confident, black and white answers to important questions? There is great comfort in knowing something to be true or in taking a position that does not need to be reexamined each day. So, we test our beliefs and fix them in our minds. Without such a process, life would be too incredibly complex. It is enough to deal with the new things without having to question what we already know. Makes sense to you?

And yet, unyielding certainty can be a trap.

When my daughter was young, it was a regular event every few months for her to ask if she could have a dog. My answer was always the same, “No, Sweetie, a dog is a lot of responsibility and work.” She cheerfully and consistently accepted my short answer (which never varied) for years. Then she approached me one night while I was sitting on the couch with my son. “Daddy,” she said, “could I have a dog?” Well, the usual tape started running, “No, Sweetie, a dog is a lot of responsibility and work.” When I resumed talking with my son, I could see out of the corner of my eye that my daughter had not moved. Turning back toward her, I could also see that there were tears in her eyes. Off she ran upstairs. My son and I exchanged bewildered looks. “What was that all about?” he asked.

That night as I was putting my daughter to bed, I found her lying there still affected by my answer. I asked her if she was upset at me. Without making eye contact, she nodded her head “yes.”

Quietly, I said, “But, Sweetie, you know that I always say ‘no’ when you ask for a dog. A dog is a lot of responsibility and work.” (Perhaps if I whispered the words she would accept them better.)

Turning to look at me directly, she delivered to me an important lesson.

“Daddy, you could have said ‘maybe’.”

There is so much simplification that occurs in strategy and competitive intelligence work.

Much of that simplification is necessary because the competitive environment is simply too complex to think that analysis can start from scratch each day. So, we analyze, categorize and prioritize so that the few most critical issues are worked hardest. Over time, the people that are involved know and can repeat the common answers to both the lower priority issues and those that are getting special attention. Indeed one measure of the success of a competitive intelligence program is the general awareness of the conclusions of the competitive intelligence efforts. What’s the problem with all of this?

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Where I live it is common to have slab foundations (How to Build a Slab Foundation) for homes.

Slab foundations are solid blocks of poured concrete on top of which the structure is erected. There are several important characteristics that a slab foundation must have in order to support the house that is being built.

• It must be shaped correctly for the house. It is costly and difficult to alter the basic shape after it hardens.

• Although it looks like a solid mass of concrete, it actually conceals a great deal of infrastructure including electrical conduits, plumbing and cables (which provide strength).

• Everything attached to or embedded in the foundation must be in the right place (again, it is hard to change things fixed in concrete). For example, the plumbing for sewage should emerge where the bathrooms are planned to be.
• Finally, after doing all of the necessary things, it is important to preserve your flexibility for all of the remaining elements of the home. For instance, the placement of the second story wall for the guest bedroom is not to be tied to something in the design of the foundation.

The foundation serves its purpose even though it is not a visible feature of the home. The structure above obscures what is beneath it and many people give little thought to what they don’t see. However, you absolutely must pay attention to your CI foundation. And the quiet time after your first management presentation is a good time to establish what will support all that you do later.

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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.

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