Executives do not need mountains of detailed competitor information, but they do need particular insights on the competitive arena. Strategic intelligence, alas, can be an overly vague concept. One reason why companies have not rushed to create strategic intelligence capability is that it is hard to define in advance what it is that the strategic intelligence analyst should look for. “Environmental scanning”, a concept advanced in the 1960s by several academics, was too broad a charter, and never took hold. “Competitive analysis” was too “technical” and “MBAish”. Executives left it to the large consulting firms to do for untold large fees. Yet both directed scanning and competitive (not competitor!) analysis can be a good foundation of strategic intelligence. Companies should not give up on developing this capability in-house. They just need to make it practical.
Practical strategic intelligence is not a “process” or a “function”. Its location in the organization is immaterial. Practical strategic intelligence is first and foremost a perspective.
This might be an uncomfortable notion to executives who typically look for the budget line, human resource requirements, reporting relationships and other decision-ready solutions to problems. Instead of creating departments, and worrying about where in the organization to locate them, executives should think of strategic intelligence as a cultural attribute in their organizations, and ask themselves: do we have it on our floor? Whether it is one senior person in an executive meeting or three junior managers in a marketing meeting, capability is created by sanctioning, developing and instituting a mentality of “intelligence as perspective”. Companies already focus significant efforts on driving a mentality of execution, which is the dominant modus operandi in companies. This paper calls on companies that pride themselves on “acting” and “moving” to add just a bit of “reality-testing”. Reality-testing is organizations' best defense against wishful thinking and chest pumping.
“Intelligence as perspective” looks for uncovering early signs of risks and opportunities stemming from the continuous shift of the balance of power in any industry. Risks and opportunities are defined in relation to the company's strategy in that industry. The distinction of long term or short term, large commitments or small in defining “strategic” issues is a misleading distinction that often leads companies to ignore the focus of strategic intelligence: how do we make our strategy more unique (the definition of strategic opportunities), and what signs are out there that our unique strategic positioning is threatened (the definition of strategic risks)?
Strategic intelligence as defined above is very different than operational intelligence, which deals with issues of operational excellence and benchmarking to stay ahead or at least at par with best practices in a given industry. Companies need both. The unique and total focus of strategic intelligence on business strategy also separates it from corporate strategy – AKA portfolio management across industries – which requires a different focus (though not a different skill set). CEOs can tap the tools of strategic intelligence to support decisions of entry into different or adjacent industries, but should not replace the total focus of strategic intelligence on a given industry and a given business strategy.
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