As a parent, I sometimes return home to find the house in disarray. Things are out of place, some rooms are a mess and the guilty parties are nowhere to be found. Clearly, something has been happening. Eventually I round up the two suspects and ask them the fundamental question.

“How did things get the way they are?”

Usually they exchange glances that contain a wealth of information about possible answers to that question. They seem to calculate the pluses and minuses of each possible answer. Denial (a favorite response) ignores the obvious evidence and lack of alternative causes. Blame means admitting involvement though, of course, the intent is to deflect responsibility to the other party. Excuses attempt to substitute an inferior explanation for the correct one. Silence is stonewalling and an implicit appeal to mercy. Occasionally (just enough to restore my faith and hope), there is an admission of responsibility. Why is that so hard, I am left to wonder?

It is not so different in business.

We enjoy results that might be good (but not good enough) or we suffer through obviously unacceptable outcomes. Then the same question comes to us -“How did things get the way they are?” Confronting that question correctly often determines what comes next. If, on one hand, we attempt all of the responsibility evasions mastered by children in homes around the world, we risk worsening results. On the other hand, when we responsibly answer the question, we lay the foundation for a second important question.

Before I get to the second question, it is useful to remember three fundamental abilities required for management as described by Jerry Weinberg in his Quality Software Management, Volume 1. These abilities allow a manager to meaningfully decipher and respond to difficult situations including “messes” encountered at work.

At the end of an invigorating but overwhelming day of discussing competitive intelligence, I often hear people ask for simplicity.

As I wrote about in “The Three Basic Competitive Intelligence Questions”, the simple formulation of “What? So What? Now What?” regularly resonates. People tell me that they finally understand competitive intelligence after internalizing those three questions. While that is encouraging, the questions are a framework with only the hints of specific actions.

“Just tell us what to do,” they say. “You’ve convinced us that competitive intelligence is important and that there is a lot to know about doing it right. Give us a three step approach that we can wrap our arms around and remember. We want something tangible to do!” they demand.

“Okay, okay, I’ll give you some steps,” I say. (Unsurprisingly, these steps correlate to the three questions in the framework.)

Here are three tangible steps that most anyone can take to get moving. If these issues are well covered, then there is a good start at competitive intelligence. Furthermore, after one pass through these steps, a company will understand competitive intelligence far better than most any simple formulation.

There are official definitions and there are practical ones. We need both in competitive intelligence.

The official definition helps remind us of the foundational principles for the domain. The foundational principles distinguish competitive intelligence from similar but different areas (e.g., market research) while pointing practitioners and customers toward the great value possible from competitive intelligence.

Meanwhile, the practical definitions help connect the possibilities to near and dear value needed by key customers. The practical definitions are less formal but very powerful when they illustrate effectively what competitive intelligence can do. (Read more about this at “Competitive Intelligence: What Seems to Click.“)

This short video covers both types of definitions.

The notion of simplifying competitive intelligence does not originate with me. However, I do see the need for simplification regularly as I speak to companies and organizations that have little experience with the topic. My thorough treatments of competitive intelligence, as often as not, leave the audiences overwhelmed and sometimes confused. All of that confusion could be overcome with time, no doubt. Still, there is a lingering sense that maybe I have not left them with actionable information. That is, have I given them a simple framework to quickly assess what they have been doing so that they can decide what to differently or additionally?

This video is my humble attempt at remedying the problem. Indeed, at a recent company presentation, these three questions “stuck” more than the process information, analytical techniques or strategy implications of competitive intelligence.