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.

In the last month, I have had the privilege of hearing two prominent economists speak. At the recent SCIP national conference, we heard from the chief economist from Intel Corporation. Earlier in March, I met and listened to the chief economist from IBM. They talked about many of the same things. For instance, both covered the state of the economy. Both talked about global competitiveness issues. Surprisingly to me, both of them included humor in their talks that was very effective (who knew that economists could be so funny?). Still, the most fascinating statement from both men was simply this.

Do not trust my predictions.

This was from nationally known people that had made it their life’s work to forecast what was going to happen in the global economies. Their companies made crucial decisions based on currency fluctuations, growth rates in various countries, the movement of interest rates and many other issues that were their province to study, interpret and report. Why, will all of their knowledge and decades of experience did both feel compelled to say humbly that their predictive abilities were suspect?

The survey was unscientific. Nevertheless, the results were a bit surprising (and valuable) to me. Perhaps they might reflect your situation as well. Maybe you are facing similar challenges in 2010 to improve your strategy effectiveness. You can download the survey here and view the complete set of results here.

The respondents answered five basic questions about strategy facing their organization or work group in the year ahead. The fourteen organizations mostly represented high technology companies ranging in annual revenues from $30M to greater than $10B. However, there were also startups and nonprofits included.

Here were the questions that I asked.

1. What is your relationship to strategy decision makers in your company or work group?
2. What types of strategy do you influence or decide in your company or work group?
3. How would you assess your company’s or work group’s strategy effectiveness?
4. What critical strategy challenges does your company or work group face in 2010?
5. What types of strategy help would help you most?

From the (admittedly) small sample, several interesting responses jump out.

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.