A CEO faces a decision about whether to make an investment in a new product line that requires significant capital. Does he need any competitive intelligence?

A General Manager must decide the complete range of activities to implement to enter a new market segment. Does she need competitive intelligence?

The Marketing vice president struggles to clarify the winning proposition for the key brand of the company. Does his organization need competitive intelligence?

It is easy to answer “yes” to these scenarios. Each decision-maker faces choices that affect their organizations and, ultimately, influence their chances for success. However, the choices are rarely simple. For example, favoring one approach means that another must be deemphasized leading to disruptions in the organizational roles and responsibilities. Changes often imply new investments, processes and skills. These things cost precious money, time and energy that must be deducted from a finite “bank” within the company. Moreover, other stakeholders assert their importance along vectors independent of competition. For instance, owners, regulatory agencies, communities and others regularly inject their priorities into the mix considered by senior managers.

Since competitive intelligence is only one of the voices in the mix, how can it be effective (and not be unwisely drowned out)?

Here are three ideas to consider.

1. Identify with the decision maker. This means that all of the competitive analysis activity should be focused on the values, terminology, models and methods used by the person making the ultimate strategy decision. Commonly that implies that the analysis be multi-variant (i.e., considers the many dimensions important for making the decision versus simple analysis), the presentation be “big number” focused (i.e., large impact versus details) and the overall process be tailored to what the decision maker is prepared to support (i.e., centered on effectiveness versus elegant but unused analysis).
2. Master strategy models. While it is true that many decisions are made independent of formal models, knowing those models sensitizes the competitive intelligence professional to critical strategy issues. For instance, understanding Clayton Christiansen’s resources, process and values characterization of an organization’s capabilities gives both a framework and a readymade set of examples to explain the range of possible responses from a competitor. Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard is an excellent way to visualize and represent the critical dimensions of successful strategy implementation. The list goes on.
3. Embrace the politics. Many people will disagree with this point. For them, the primary role of competitive intelligence is probably analysis and presentation. That is, figure out what is happening and clearly express that to someone. My view is that these steps alone are insufficient to enable meaningful change or decisions. However, that is exactly what is needed in most strategy discussions. The politics are important because the decision-maker does not exist in a vacuum. His or her decisions are complex precisely because they must balance so many factors including internal winners and losers. Of course, the competitive intelligence person does not make those decisions yet considering that the issues are present in the decision-maker’s mind can increase the effectiveness and richness of the information supplied to him or her.

The CEO, General Manager and Marketing Vice President need help to make good decisions on difficult strategy topics. Competitive intelligence can be quite helpful to them when framed appropriately. A first step is for the Competitive Intelligence person to make some fundamental decisions about how to approach and support the decision-makers.

Do you agree? What other key ideas are important in your experience?