Would it make a difference who said it?

Of course it does. When President Obama says something people notice more than when you or I do.

It is the same way in corporations. By the very nature of their positions high level managers are entrusted with more latitude and responsibility. Hence, when they make a statement about the company, its prospects and its performance, people listen more intently.

This phenomenon ripples down the organization. For example, a senior vice president’s words are more significant than those of the director of product marketing. This effect is not a tremendous insight until a competitive intelligence professional makes good use of it. And here is how that is done.

First, you need the competitor’s organization chart.

Wait a minute, you say. I can’t get that. It’s proprietary information and I am an ethical practitioner.

What if you construct it from public information? Perhaps it wouldn’t be perfect or complete but most of the major slots would be filled. Six easy steps will get you there.

• Get a tool to help manage the information. I prefer OrgPlus from Human Concepts. This tool allows you to capture organization information in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet information can be imported into the program to generate graphical organization charts. Updates are easily managed either in the original spreadsheet or in the chart.

• Start at the top. Public corporations must identify all major corporate officers. You will also get the major divisions of the company. Additionally, I like to include the directors of the company since exploring their interrelationships is often insightful for acquisitions and mergers. (It is a separate useful task to map the director relationships.)

• Comb the records of major conferences. Many companies will send representatives to speak at major industry conferences. When they do, they will include their bio which will identify their title, division and key responsibilities.

• Check standards organizations. For most companies, there are important industry standards. An individual company may be a leader or follower in a standard but they will often send senior people to participate. Look at the committees and subcommittees for the company representatives.

• Search social networks. LinkedIn contains a treasure trove of business information. Every current employee is a clue that fills in an organization chart. Each should be added to your database.

• Google. Finally, use a search tool to look for presentations (PPT, PDF) given by company employees. Also do a general search by company and title (usually at the VP and below level).

Now you created this wonderful collection of names and titles and you have imported it into an organization charting tool, what’s next?

Simple, you apply the understanding that all utterances are not equal. The “king’s words” matter most. Put another way, the organization level and position suggest the importance of statements.

Here are some practical ways to apply this understanding.

• Examine press releases. Often, the importance of a release dictates which company official will be quoted. The most important notices will include quotes from an executive officer (up to and including the CEO). Less important releases will be signaled by the quotes from lower level employees (e.g., product managers). Though it is possible that a sly company might try to misdirect attention by downplaying a release, this is unlikely in my experience. The exercise of ranking press releases will attune you to how the competitor values its public statements.

• Track public forums. Public companies regularly present information to the financial community. This is usually the SVP, CFO, COO and CEO responsibility. There are other public forums including the conferences and standards bodies that are attended by lower level officials. If you know their place in the organization (e.g., division, level), you can surmise the interest of their organization. If you know their interest over time, you can use this information with other data that you have accumulated to improve your guesses of their strategic directions.

• Monitor comings and goings. The addition to or subtraction from an organization is always information. The arrival of a prominent outsider may signal dissatisfaction with the current organization. Or, maybe it signals a new strategic direction. Similarly, a departure may indicate that an existing strategy has lost its advocate. Admittedly there are many reasons for people changing companies. However, knowing more about their organizational context will suggest richer implications of the change.

If you create a company’s organization chart, apply the implications and track this over time, you begin to get a deeper sense of how a competitor works. After a while, you might begin to feel that you know the people (though you may never have met them). You begin to understand what drives them, to guess at the challenges they face to execute their strategies and to grasp their strengths and weaknesses.

This understanding is precious.

Now you can tell your own king how to compete more successfully.