The follower may have even read more about both paths and yet he questions or fears choosing one over the other. The leader takes stock of what he knows, maybe even asks the follower about what he knows about the two paths. He then makes the decision to choose which path to take and plunges head long by taking the first step. That’s the Essence of Leadership.

Where does Competitive Intelligence fit into all this? It fits into all of it.

The Dilemma

In the case of our simple story above, the dilemma is the fork in the road. Which one should they take if neither knows which path leads to?

In real world situations, these dilemmas can be anything from:

• How can we deliver our products quicker?
• What is my competitor up to?
• Should we purchase this company?
• Why are my products being returned?
• What do people say about my company and my products?

Gather Intelligence & Recommend

In the story, the leader takes what he knows about the 2 paths. He can opt to ask the follower what he knows. While he may have the Essence of a Leader, how he acts at this stage answers if he is a good leader or not.

In the real world, you might say that this is so obvious. The leader will always ask what he doesn’t know. That’s common sense. My answer is to repeat that this is a real world situation. Most people who start up are one-man bands or have at most 2-3 people including him. These 2 or 3 people do multiple roles for the start up company due to a limited budget. So this pressures them into not asking for people’s help simply because they don’t have the budget or the time for it.

Competitive Intelligence teaches that you should have knowledge of your company before knowing about your competitors. You will be surprised. Most actually proceed to knowing about their competitors first. In a low budget enterprise, knowing what you have should be first priority so you don’t expend resources getting answers from outside when you can get the answers freely from the inside.

For one-man bands, identify your reach. What are the expertise of your friends. What communities do they belong to? That is your reach. Sometimes you would hear people say,

• “I could have helped you out on that if you had let me know”.
• “Sorry, I forgot you were into these things. I had a lot on my mind.”

Or

• “Why didn’t you tell me? I know this guy we could ask. He knows these things in his sleep.”
• “Oh man. That would have saved me a lot of time. I could have done more of something else.”

For two to three person start ups, the same conversation pieces above applies. Just substitute the both talkers with the members of the start up company. This actually hurts more as you are talking about your partners. But this still happens. This is because when you are already stressed about meeting a big deadline, these things understandably escape your mind. So having it in writing or stored in a computer file along their contact info would be a quick and easy investment of time at the beginning. When the company grows big enough, a more sophisticated Competitive Intelligence system could be implemented.

Recommend and Decide

When the information has all been gathered from himself and the follower. The leader analyzes and decides on which path to take and walks on.

In the real world, specially now with the Internet, Leaders or Managers often get stacks of reports. Information overload actually has the opposite effect to making a decision. It paralyzes.

Competitive intelligence doesn’t just collect information. It also calls for analysis and a recommendation. In the story above, since the follower has read more about the two paths, he should come out and recommend which path to take then give the reasons. If he just gives all the information to the leader, he will paralyze his leader or cause him to make the wrong decision. This is because the leader will not have the luxury of absorbing all the information at a comfortable pace. The follower had the luxury of absorbing the information so he must make the recommendation and justify then filter out all the rest. The leader listens, weighs the justification against what he knows and then decides which side to take.

Benchmarking is a continuous process of measuring yourself against the best in order to improve. Author, Larry Kahaner best describes Benchmarking in 5 steps:

• Step 1: Identify what needs improvement in your company.
• Step 2: Identify best-in-class companies.
• Step 3: Measure your Company’s performance.
• Step 4: Measure the performance of other companies.
• Step 5: Use the information you learn to improve yourself.

Step 1: Identify what needs improvement in your company.

If you base it from a book, you would go out and get a picture of how things work within the company. Then get the thoughts of all the people involved on ways to maybe improve the operation.

From experience however, Competitive Intelligence should take into account that humbleness is an uncommon characteristic on most managers. Thoughts of, “I taught him everything he knows.” are human nature. While it is true that a manager trained or continuous to train the people under him, the manager and the trainee are two very different people so the insights they can arrive at are going to be different. While most insights maybe covered by the manager on account of his experience. It never hurts to get the insights of everyone under the manager as well.

The insights you collect from this step can either be complaints or suggestions for improvement.

This early, a way to improve operations may already be available from the company’s own personnel. A faster way of doing things maybe lurking in the minds of some of the trainees. This is application of Competitive Intelligence procedures within the company. After evaluating the suggestions for self-improvement, the complaints are analyzed to identify what needs improving in your company.

Here’s a tip from experience: If you find that you can get neither suggestions or complaints, you maybe facing a stagnant system or an unhappy, uncaring or unsupportive workforce. If it is the latter, then you have already identified a problem. If it is the stagnant system, then this is a red flag in Competitive Intelligence. Being stagnant is a symptom of decline or complacency.

Step 2: Identify best-in-class companies.

You now apply Competitive Intelligence to find out what the best-in-class companies are. A good Competitive Intelligence practitioner doesn’t just box himself with the company’s competition. He looks at it from all angles. An example works best: Motorola wanted to improve how fast they can get to delivery from the time a customer makes an order. Who do they turn to? A Pizza company: Domino’s.

Step 3: Measure your Company’s performance.

Here, Competitive Intelligence quantifies company-specific metrics so that you can measure yourself up against similar metrics of the best-in-class companies you identified in Step 2.

Step 4: Measure the performance of other companies.

From experience, the greatest danger in this step is that it becomes a pleasure trip to those in the company who are asked to join or help out in this step. A great deal of preparation must be made for this step to ensure that the information you collect will be focused. The mindset must be etched in stone that this trip was made with the purpose to work and not to go on a holiday.

Step 5: Use the information you learn to improve yourself.

The point to emphasize at this step is that Benchmarking is not being a copy-cat of the other company’s way of doing things. Think Star Trek Borg. Assimilate and make it your own by combining it with systems that you feel are still better than the other company’s.

Conclusion:

What happens now? Competitive Benchmarking is a continuous process. The next step is to establish these 5 steps into an ongoing program within your company. Keep using Competitive Intelligence on the best-in-class companies until all of the systems in your business become best-in-class themselves.