“Please, please, please” come the pleas from senior management!

“Please do me and yourselves a favor about competitive intelligence” they say. “Listen and respond to what I tell you and we will both be better off.”

And this is what they say …

First, I do not need more information from you since I have more than I need already.

I am literally swimming in information from all of my managers, the stack of publications that I read and the many discussions that I regularly have with customers and investors. It is good that you can find and summarize data. Share that information with others. What I need is something that helps me interpret the information that I have. I need models, comparisons, correlations, trends and opinions which help me organize and respond to information that I largely already have.

Second, I am not impressed with fancy presentations because they waste my time.

Why do you think that I would care about fancy PowerPoint presentations that sequentially rollout information to me? This is slow, inefficient and a waste of my time. Don’t do it! Frame data simply and clearly. Allow me to see the whole and control the sequence. And, most of all, make sure that your presentation is the basis for a successful discussion that I control rather than a testament to your artistic ability.

Third, I do not need help with easy questions since it is the hard questions which affect my strategies.

Your job is to help me with the difficult questions that have unobvious answers. Answers to easy questions that can be derived from public information distract you and me. Instead, I need you to develop answers to the really tough questions that affect the strategic decisions that I have to make. Then tell me the risk involved with the answers that you have provided. I will take it from there.

Senior management desperately needs effective competitive intelligence. CI professionals can easily damage their reputations and hinder their effectiveness when they ignore the common pleas from senior management. Be smarter than that!