I recently surveyed Competitive Intelligence professionals and received 23 responses. Admittedly, the survey is not scientific and the sample size is small. Furthermore, it was publicized in forums frequented by certain types of people. Namely, people that use social media such as LinkedIn (SCIP Group), CI NING and Twitter were targeted. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that these folks might be more active than the broad population of CI professionals in sharing and thinking about Competitive Intelligence. One other attribute of the survey is that it was intentionally short (only five questions). Hence, there is not much demographic or industry information included.

You can see all of the results on my website at http://www.jthawes.com/surveyci.html.

Okay, caveats aside, the interesting result to me is that the self-rating (all companies combined) of CI effectiveness is above average in every category. The categories included the following.

1. Identifying Needs
2. Gaining Sponsors
3. Conducting Analysis
4. Interpreting Information
5. Presenting Conclusions
6. Effecting Change

The distribution (based on averaging the ratings per company across the six categories) suggests that most of these companies are being well served by their competitive intelligence professionals. Of course, it would be better also to survey the CI customers to determine their perceptions. Indeed, I did some of this in my 2010 Strategy Survey last month. The results from fourteen organizations is described at http://www.jthawes.com/surveystrategy.html. In that survey, one measure of competitive intelligence (“Reacting to Competitors”) received the lowest rating from strategy leaders.

Consider that for each of these six effectiveness areas, there were five possible responses (1=poor, 2=below average,3=average, 4=above average,5=excellent). Multiplying the six areas times the number of respondents means that there were 138 ratings. Observe that that the histogram shows a pronounced skew to the right (i.e., higher effectiveness).

The survey results prompt more questions than they answer. For instance, how would most of our customers evaluate our competitive intelligence services? If collectively we are so effective, why are there (seemingly) widespread questions about the need for and delivery of competitive intelligence? How are in-house CI teams doing compared to CI consultants? What is the actual impact that CI professionals want to make in an organization? And, how do competitive intelligence professionals think about improving their skills?

Maybe you would draw different conclusions than I did. What do you think that the survey results reflect?

ANNOUCING NEW WEBSITE AND OPPORTUNITIES!!

We have several recurring issues in the competitive intelligence community.

One common problem is that it is difficult to discuss factual competitive intelligence projects due to the reluctance of companies to share detailed information. Of course, CI projects often represent sensitive work that reflects a company’s priorities and/or concerns. There are good (legal and ethical) reasons not to share many kinds of information.

However, as a result, the competitive intelligence community has a paucity of rich, relevant stories that stimulate effective problem-solving discussions. Furthermore, side-by-side comparisons of problem solving approaches are often missing in competitive intelligence community discussion. Without those comparisons, the typical solution discussion reflects one approach from one person.

We can do better.

Why not have a place where practitioners can share realistic (but not confidential) competitive intelligence cases? Starting from those richly detailed cases, we could have experts address the issues of the case and suggest problem-solving approaches. The broader community could also respond to both the case study and the experts’ comments.

That is why the Competitive Intelligence Case Studies website was created.

Competition is a constant.

My son competes in basketball. His team has many challenges. Perhaps the biggest challenge is that they are a new team (formed this year) competing against established teams that have played together for multiple seasons. Moreover, the other teams have “serious” coaches that teach sophisticated offenses and defenses. Those teams execute plays with coordination, skill and timing that give them decided advantages against less prepared teams.

Here is an interesting point. My son’s team has talented athletes. In fact, they have enough talent to win any game (even against the best teams in the league). Talent alone, however, is not enough. They need to have better offensive and defensive plays. They need to make better adjustments during the game to react to what the other team is doing. They need to learn more from their opponents to make their team better.

Is business any different?

In my long corporate life, I faced this time of year with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

The anticipation came because raises and bonuses were doled out in January and February. The dread was that I had to meet with my manager or supervisor to get my annual performance review. (It was never clear if these meetings were more painful to them or to me.)

Having been on both sides of the review, I know that many of the meetings were neither helpful nor satisfying.

Why? There is the usual fallacy that feedback given once a year (versus frequently) is effective. (Have you ever noticed that the once-a-year variety is often focused on what happened in the last month?) Another common failing occurs when the review meeting is a one-way communication. That is, the manager “announces” to a passive employee the corporate numerical judgment of the employee’s performance. What about those numbers? You know, the manager gives you a score in each performance area. They tell you that your organization skills are a four. Meanwhile, your innovation rating is 3.75. What do you do with such scores? We could go on and on about the weaknesses of these systems. My blood pressure is being to rise just recalling those days. Repeat, must be calm …

Still, the ideas behind the annual feedback cycle are laudable.

One principle is that the employee deserves honest feedback about their performance. It is even better to have an ongoing feedback dialog throughout the year. Secondly, it is equally important that the organization declare what is important. Many times, the definition of performance categories and scales for the performance signal what is important. Ideally, the categories are highly tailored to specific jobs. That way, the feedback is far more targeted and (potentially) useful. When done well, the review transmits useful information in both directions.

What would a good review for a competitive intelligence person look like?

This is the review that I would give if I was the strategy manager (customer of competitive intelligence) and the one I would like to get if I was the competitive intelligence manager. It contains a difficult set of questions. They are difficult because they are intended to focus on value and impact versus activities and tools. There are 10 fundamental performance areas abd 50 questions to discuss.