10 Reasons why every manager needs education
in CI
A competitive intelligence education improves
the ability of managers as well as senior executives to manage risks,
overcome competitive threats and anticipate market opportunities
to sustain or gain a competitive advantage.
Improve planning and decision-making:
Effective decision making lies at the heart of competitive intelligence.
“Ready, aim, aim!” is how Mr. T. Boone Pickens, one
of world’s greatest oil and gas speculators, describes managers
who cannot act upon important information. “There are
lots of managers that can never pull the trigger,” Mr. Pickens
stated when interviewed about the value of CI to decision-making.
Those managers who learn the principles of CI learn quickly how
to use the right information to arrive at the best, most expedient
(not necessarily the perfect) decision. Competitive intelligence
is about making reasoned, rational decisions while under pressure.
ACI places its students in real-life situations where they have
to apply all the tools and techniques to derive accurate, timely
decisions.
Enhance early warning and forecasting competitive
threats: While the CI profession does not promise to deliver
a crystal ball, it has developed numerous, time-tested approaches
and techniques to help management prepare rationally for the future.
Early warning systems aim at avoiding surprises and taking early
advantage of a competitive opportunity. Whether learning how
to identify competitive blindspots, conduct war-gaming sessions,
or apply models to anticipate predatory activity in your market,
a CI curriculum provides a variety of frameworks for early warning
management of nearly every competitive situation.
Manage and reduce risk: A competitive intelligence professional should provide his or her company with the mechanisms to reduce
or minimize industry risk. Industry risk – risk that emanates
from industry-wide forces – needs to be systematically and
proactively managed, just as the more commonly perceived financial
risks are managed. Examples of industry risk include disruptive
technologies, long-term changes in consumer preferences, performance
rise/price decline of substitute industries, an entry of “rule
changing” competitors, formation of a new alliance that changes
the company’s competitive position, etc. The ability to
navigate through industry risk can spell the difference between
corporate success and failure. This is a critical arena for CI
education and one upon which ACI places special emphasis during
its training.
Know ethical and legal limits: Succeeding
in business requires you take an active – not a passive approach
– to nearly every aspect of business, including intelligence
gathering. When a business crisis looms or someone “upstairs”
exerts pressure to deliver results, those educated in competitive
intelligence will understand the boundaries within which they
can work without stepping over the legal or ethical line. Potential
misrepresentation, conflicts of interest, internal management
disputes, overselling of findings, trade secret and intellectual
property rights, bribery and use of third parties, are among the
many issues a CI professional must learn. How to apply these
guidelines globally, examine alternate strategies to deliver critical
information, know how to work within the ethical “gray zone”
are all part of a complete CI education.
Make knowledge profitable: Do not mistake
competitive intelligence with knowledge management. Competitive
intelligence always has a direct, profit-generating purpose.
While knowledge management essentially tries to harness all the
information contained with a company, its purpose is not always
clear. A CI education extracts the lessons learned from some
of the greatest entrepreneurs and business managers in modern
times, and it does so with far more than anecdotes. Whether tactical
(such as determining a rivals’ pricing strategy), or strategic
(such as understanding long-term competitive repositioning across
the globe), competitive intelligence is a practical craft that
your management will appreciate for its bottom-line view of the
world.
Avoid information overload: Information
overload is not simply the problem of too many Web sites. It
is a real problem that the CI discipline addresses very directly
through critical analysis and intelligence process techniques
– techniques for everyone from the Board of Directors down
through the sales force. Information overload is the result
of not knowing how to handle the information you have. Robert
Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines knows how to manage
whatever information confronts him. When asked by Leonard Fuld
what he thought of the prospect of information overload, he could
only laugh: “We are the same people we were 10,000 years
ago but the fact is we’ve got a brain which is capable of
vastly more because we have better information, we have better
tools. So this whole notion of being overwhelmed is nonsense…”
A CI education will teach you how to manage the information flow
and focus your management on the most critical intelligence issues.
Avoid blindspots: A well-trained competitive
intelligence professional knows how to keep an objective view
of the market realities and therefore, avoid blinders. Companies,
especially successful ones, fall prey to pervasive and unchallenged
“formulas” and beliefs about how things work, or should
work. The result is that they ignore or deny strategic changes
that transform markets, and keep using the same old conventional
wisdom. When reality hits, it typically ushers in a severe crisis.
An educated CI professional is the last line of defense: he or
she will help the company identify sources of critical changes
in the market early enough to make a difference, create proactive
intelligence for preemptive strategic moves, as well as analyze
strategic options for quick reactions allowing the change to be
an opportunity.
Develop critical intelligence management
skills: Running an intelligence program requires specific
management skills unique to the operation of intelligence activities
inside firms. A comprehensive CI education will provide you
with the background, knowledge and skills necessary to manage
all five steps in the intelligence cycle: (1) Plan and define
your organizations intelligence objectives, including how to conduct
an Intelligence Audit®, needs assessment and development of
KITs (Key Intelligence Topics); (2) Learn where and how to apply
the secondary sources without being overloaded or snowed by the
volume of information;(3) Develop effective means to gather primary
information, including human source collection – and the
legal and ethical guidelines that go along with such collection;(4)
Apply the right analysis models to the right situation –
and stay rooted in the real world issues your company must face;
and (5) Finally, learn how to effectively deliver intelligence
to management
Prevent “leaks” and conduct counter-intelligence:
While not the primary objective in a competitive intelligence
education, the discipline will show how any company can slow down
or prevent information leaks altogether. Learning the array of
information and human source collection techniques will teach
managers the steps a company can take to protect its information
from rivals.
Gain strategic perspective: Perspective
is the hallmark of a solid competitive intelligence education.
It teaches how to manage and assess the many types of external
challenges facing a company’s leaders. The CI discipline
shows the business executive where and when to apply a company’s
valuable yet limited resources to meet a particular challenge.
It allows the executive to have an outside perspective - an external
focus -which is so crucial for management today. It
breaks down the “fire fighting” mentality and the insulation
of a disciplinary silo. It is the last bastion of global, general,
strategic perspective available in management education today.
