After a quick “meet at my office” text message to Janet and Sam, Alice started walking back to her office.

Along the way, she thought about the meeting she had just finished with Bob. It fit the pattern that Alice had observed with so many clients for competitive intelligence.

First, they were wary about her group before tentatively showing some cautious curiosity. Then, like Bob, they seemed determined to make it clear that they were already doing everything possible to understand and beat the competition. Eventually, every manager asserted that no competitive intelligence group could do better! Finally, confronted by unanswered questions and undesirable results that they knew so well, a few asked for help.

Alice empathized with them. She saw the pressure that they endured and the earnest efforts to succeed. She knew that feeling “stuck” or unsure about how to proceed was an uncomfortable and vulnerable feeling. Over time, Alice had learned to listen calmly to the emotion. The “CI attacks” and challenges were not about her or her team. In fact, she learned to reframe them into a personal request for help. She knew that asking for help takes courage.

Janet and Sam were waiting for Alice in her office.

One hundred and twenty years ago the scene in the American West would have been familiar. The scorching air would have been thick and dusty. The only street through the town of rickety boarded buildings would be crowded with cowboys and their horses. The one refuge from the oppressive conditions was the local saloon. And that was where you found all manner of folks. The tired cowhands, the frontier entertainers and the bad guys would be there. Everyone knew that the bad guys always came to the saloon looking for trouble. It was not a place for the unprepared or naïve because they were easily recognized and exploited. Winning for the bad guys was dominating the saloon.

Still, there weren’t many options for places to go. It was a given that sooner or later the good guys went there too.

So you might imagine going there with a friend. Ah, your friend. The paragon of truth and justice. A cowboy that was strong and good. He represented all that right about the world and that is exactly what made him a target. Others (the bad guys) could not prosper when he was there and they knew it.

As a friend, how would you prepare him for the saloon so that he could walk out alive?

There are 5 things that you might do.

“Please, please, please” come the pleas from senior management!

“Please do me and yourselves a favor about competitive intelligence” they say. “Listen and respond to what I tell you and we will both be better off.”

And this is what they say …

First, I do not need more information from you since I have more than I need already.

I am literally swimming in information from all of my managers, the stack of publications that I read and the many discussions that I regularly have with customers and investors. It is good that you can find and summarize data. Share that information with others. What I need is something that helps me interpret the information that I have. I need models, comparisons, correlations, trends and opinions which help me organize and respond to information that I largely already have.

Second, I am not impressed with fancy presentations because they waste my time.

Why do you think that I would care about fancy PowerPoint presentations that sequentially rollout information to me? This is slow, inefficient and a waste of my time. Don’t do it! Frame data simply and clearly. Allow me to see the whole and control the sequence. And, most of all, make sure that your presentation is the basis for a successful discussion that I control rather than a testament to your artistic ability.

Third, I do not need help with easy questions since it is the hard questions which affect my strategies.

Your job is to help me with the difficult questions that have unobvious answers. Answers to easy questions that can be derived from public information distract you and me. Instead, I need you to develop answers to the really tough questions that affect the strategic decisions that I have to make. Then tell me the risk involved with the answers that you have provided. I will take it from there.

Senior management desperately needs effective competitive intelligence. CI professionals can easily damage their reputations and hinder their effectiveness when they ignore the common pleas from senior management. Be smarter than that!

In meeting with leaders from multiple companies, there is a common thread that I observe about the need for and lack of competitive intelligence in their businesses. Given the dearth of competitive intelligence insight, why don’t companies spend more time and money getting better at this function? There are five common reasons that I hear from companies.

1. We already do competitive intelligence (but it is not helping us).
2. We can’t afford it (but we can accept the costs of not doing it).
3. We don’t believe it can help (because we think we are already are doing everything we need to do).
4. We tried it before (and it didn’t deliver valuable information).
5. We need certainty (and there is some risk in the answers).