We started this journey a couple of months ago. The goal has been to describe how to develop and deploy a new competitive intelligence function for your company. You might recall how the early articles tiptoed around the issues and people sensitivities to the new function. Later, I was more specific about tasks such as budgets, branding and assertively expanding the function. Boldness became the order of the day.

We talked about how many people will not understand what you are trying to accomplish. Some that do understand what you are attempting will be nervous and suspicious about your aims. Are you trying to supplant their role? Is your goal to implicitly criticize their performance? Why should they help you with their special knowledge? And, what is it about competitive intelligence that will help them?

All along the way we have discussed practical tips for the development and deployment. More than that, I have tried to illuminate people issues that are important with the thesis that these issues are the most intractable if not dealt with properly. All of the other issues of analysis techniques, infrastructure design, acquisition of tools and budget are simpler (though not trivial) issues if the people ones are aligned well.

And now we come to the final step.

The final step is to spread the word about competitive intelligence.

By its nature as a service, Competitive Intelligence is a requested activity. That is, a senior management sponsor asks a question about the competitive environment and the CI professional responds. Many experienced people will tell you to stick closely to your senior management sponsor. And that would be right. Nevertheless, there will come a time when you (as the CI professional) will have the professional confidence and organizational credibility to lead.

This is the time to go on the offense with competitive intelligence.

“Going on the offense” simply means that you will begin to proactively formulate activities, plans and recommendations that are congruent with everything that you have already done. Assuming that you have laid the foundation properly, you should have a sense of the opportunities and boundaries within the organization. More than that, you have established relationships that allow you to speculate about the effectiveness of company strategy. Multiple leaders will have noticed your contributions and it will not surprise them that you can do more.

There are three important ways to proceed.

From “Everything You Know is Wrong” by The Firesign Theatre (1974) – Comedy Group

Twenty five years ago I worked on a top secret military project for my company. It had been going on for some time when I started and, as far as I know, it is still going on. It was a fascinating application of technology that I would have loved to talk about with my family and friends. I was proud of what we were trying to do, my small role in the project and, of course, the ultimate application. Unsurprisingly, I am bound by employment agreement and federal law to not discuss what I did or the product that we were building.

Competitive intelligence is similarly difficult to talk about.

Just imagine that you have completed a CI project for your company or for a client. Because of your superior methods, uncommon insight and excellent timing, you uncover something that results in a significant competitive advantage for the company. Who are you going to tell? What are you allowed to say? And, what is the impact on your future work of these answers?

Therein lies the problem. It is hard to talk about CI successes.

One of my favorite assignments has been to visit my alma mater and recruit graduating students. It’s been fun to sit across from them as they start their careers and give them a sense of what is possible in the corporate world. They are eager, bright and full of potential. Who knows what they will accomplish as they follow their passions and develop their skills?

I fondly remember my own college interviews. My interests came down to two very good choices of solid companies. Both did the kind of work that interested me. Both were in good geographic locations. Either might have worked out well. I chose the Texas company and never looked back. All these years later, I can state that I was well rewarded for my career there. I learned, contributed and gave back to the company many things.

The inducement to work for one company or another comes down to the factors that are important to you. As I mentioned, I cared about the focus of the company, my specific assignment, where I would live and, of course, the pay. More or less standard concerns, I would guess. That’s the way I was recruited and it was the way that I recruited others that were starting out in corporate life.

What about recruiting for the competitive intelligence function that you are building? Why do you need other people? What inducements make a difference to the people you want to recruit? And how is the best way to approach your candidates?

In the formation process of the competitive intelligence function, it will be essential to recruit help from within the company.

Here are three reasons why that is true.

1. There is too much to do for one person. A prior step of The Human Side of Competitive Intelligence series dealt with expanding the scope. If that step was successful, you are now into areas beyond what you started doing. Engaging with other senior managers (besides your sponsor) will introduce a wide range of topics. Your choice will be either to accept the new assignments (which means that you will need more resources) or reject them because the people to help are not currently identified. I suggest that you accept and put a staffing plan together. More about this later in this article.
2. The needed knowledge (e.g., financial, marketing, technology, business development) is unlikely to reside in one person’s head. The exciting challenge of competitive intelligence is the diversity of subjects involved. The valuable competitive intelligence work comes from people that can integrate the disparate information into patterns and stories. Given a choice, this is where you want to focus. The implication is that you will work with a range of experts that have narrower focused than yours. Your task is to identify and begin nurturing these contributors. Make is easy and rewarding for them to supply you with information.
3. Less intuitively, it is important to cede ownership of some of the work to cement the support for competitive intelligence. Even if you could do everything, you wouldn’t want to do so. The reason is that you are after meaningful change in the organization’s strategies to make the business more successful. Most businesses involve many people that must understand and support change. And there are not people more interested in these topics than the people that feel ownership. Your job, after recruiting for scale and specialties, is to recruit owners. One way you do this is to give them some say in the direction of the analysis and the interpretation of the results.

How do you recruit someone to help with competitive intelligence?