It took you years of hard work to reach the corner office.

You worked through multiple assignments to deliver results and overcome challenges. At each career step, your responsibilities increased and so did the expectations. More and more people looked to you to set the strategies and determine the directions to follow.

Now, after all that time, the entire company is yours to lead. You have arrived.

Others look at you and think that you have the most latitude because of your high position. If they only knew the truth. So many things constrain and concern you. The employees look to you for leadership and countless decisions about priorities, promotions and their own job security. Customers constantly want more and on better terms than before. Investors want the share price to increase and their investments to pay off. Analysts want above average growth and a story about ongoing differentiation. Meanwhile, your many competitors only want you to fail and are doing their best to make that happen.

Somehow, you have to orchestrate this complex combination of constituencies and competitors.

There is not one answer to this balancing act. You naturally will integrate inputs from your team and the environment to settle on what seems best. One source of inputs is competitive intelligence. Competitive Intelligence can help you to organize your external perspectives and align your team to compete better. Here are five ways.

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Everyone else is working on the current products and the near-term tasks. Meanwhile, you are responsible for what comes next. Your focus is the next wave of products and the technologies that they require. You are monitoring key standards bodies, investments made by competitors and shifting loyalties of the key customers. There is pressure to make sure that the company is preparing correctly for this future. Your job depends on making the right calls and convincing busy people that you are right.

The bulk of the organization focuses on tactics. There is urgency in their actions. Near-term competition and priorities consume most of management’s attention. The last thing that most want is to be distracted with thinking about the future, especially when it might negatively affect what they are doing today. Your job, however, is to convince these busy people to change because of what is coming. They need to be convinced to balance what is pressing today with what is necessary to prepare for the future.

Few have the right combination of skill, motivation and shear persistence to do this job well. Here is what you must accomplish and how Competitive Intelligence helps with those challenges.

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You are a busy person and taking time to read this is a significant investment for you.

You know what it is like to create and run a business successfully in a market environment that is highly competitive and requires that everyone on your teams understands and contributes to the mission that you have defined. Executing the current business is difficult enough without the ever present and pressing complications of competition. Yet, competition is real and what others do makes a difference to your success or failure. Competitive intelligence can help you navigate through the complexities of the competitive environment better.

Alignment leading to tangible results in market share, revenue and profits is what you are after. Your goal is strategies that mobilize the organization and point the right way forward. There are five common imperatives that you have and several ways that competitive intelligence can help you.

• Protect the current business. Operational issues are important because today’s business funds tomorrow’s investments. Current products must be sold. Current customers must be serviced. How are you doing compared to your major competitors? Would benchmarking show more that you have more advantages or disadvantages?
  Compare selling and business development strategies with competitors, benchmark your operations and analyze customer decision-making criteria.
• Mobilize the organization. No important competitor is passive. Dedicated people at those companies are working to shape the future in their favor rather than yours. Their strategies are being implemented and you need to know what they are and what they mean to your strategies. One person cannot possibly do this alone. However, a well trained and focused team can do it and win. What would it mean to you to have your organization highly tuned to the competitive environment?
  Provide periodic competitive news and alerts, implement information sharing tools and train teams to identify important competitive intelligence issues.

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Alice heard Bob before she saw him. Talking rapidly on the phone and carrying a set of PowerPoint slides, Bob came bursting around the corner toward his office where Alice had been waiting patiently. With the barest nod of his head, he passed Alice and continued his phone conversation as he sat down at his desk. Something appeared to be up.

Alice was miffed. Bob was 15 minutes late to a meeting that he had asked for earlier in the day. Ostensibly they were going to discuss his upcoming meeting with his boss where Bob had to explain how to recover from various competitive attacks. Now that he had shown up, he was distracted by what appeared to be an emergency.

Alice had to admit that he seemed different from earlier that day. The tentativeness was gone and the energy that most associated with Bob was evident. She could understand why he was successful with his product line for so long. He was decisive, passionate and hard working. She waited from him to finish his call.

Bob finally hung up the phone and looked at her. “Come in, Alice,” he said.

“Sounds like you had an emergency today, Bob,” ventured Alice.

“You might say that,” replied Bob. “Do you know about the conference coming up in a couple of weeks? Well, we had some plans to make a splash there by announcing a new product. Guess who just preempted up.”

“I suppose it would be one of our competitors,” Alice answered.

“Yes, and not just any competitor. It’s those guys over at Advanced Products. They seem to delight in sticking it to us. This isn’t the first time that they have pulled a stunt like this. Seems like they are determined to keep the press focus off of us,” Bob said with a hint of anger.