Thinking Hats

This entry has been prompted by a comment (critique) on Jon Lowder's CI blog that I don't publish very often. I could try and make excuses (work, laze, inability - delete whichever is not applicable). However I won't - as I think the complaint is totally justified. In fact I tend to have spurts - and publish when I get ideas. I'd prefer to blog something that fulfilled the aims I have for this blog then just use it for a stream of consciousness - much of which would be just a way of me asserting my ego. So thank you Jon for the prompt to think!

First - a couple of comments on Jon's blog - if you've not ever read it. He has some great tips which I firmly second. For example, recent blogs mention the uses of LinkedIn in CI. I've been a LinkedIn user for some time - and have found it invaluable as a source for potential contacts. I've also signed up with other networking groups although my network is smaller on these - Xing, Ecademy, etc. Also - don't ignore Facebook and MySpace. A lot of companies have signed up for pages on these networking sites, and you never know who or what you might find that could help with a project.

Jon mentions a new LinkedIn feature - the ability to ask questions, and get answers from other users as a strength of the service. Potentially it could be - although I felt the answers given were poor. I think a better service for answering questions is the FreePint bar which has a circulation list of approaching 100,000 expert searchers who answer questions on a massive range of topics - many of which are relevant for competitive intelligence professionals. (As an example, recent posts have looked at international tax comparisons, media monitoring, Swiss, Austrian & German company shareholders and Russian export regulations).

In the example Jon highlighted, half the answers suggested HitWise. This is a great service, but I'm not sure that it is the right solution for the questioner, from the bank JP Morgan-Chase, who was looking for competitive intelligence vendors for paid search - asking Is CI effective in Search? None of the answers given took into account the questioner's origins in financial services - or asked what he meant by his question about whether CI was effective in search.

What Hitwise offers is a service giving customers knowledge on how Internet users interact with web-sites - your own and your competitors. You can use it to compare how your site is performing against competitor sites - and if this is what was wanted, then Hitwise would be a good solution. However Hitwise's strength is not really for B2B web-sites, as these will generally receive much less traffic than the consumer web-sites for which the Hitwise service is best aimed. If what was wanted were vendors who were experts at secondary Internet search then Hitwise would not be the correct solution - members of the Association of Independent Information professionals (www.aiip.org) would have been a better bet - as most are experts at searching the Internet and other databases, and many, including us at AWARE, specialise in competitive intelligence.

In fact, another interpretation of this question is completely different and takes into account both the nature of the questioner and medium where the question was posed. LinkedIn attracts a lot of recruiters and recruitment agencies, and is used by these for looking for candidates. Search is sometimes used in this context so the question could have related to this i.e. Is CI effective in Recruitment Searching? If this was what the questioner really wanted then none of the 8 responses was satisfactory.

This highlights a lesson for all competitive intelligence professionals - you need to know, for each research request:

• who is actually asking the question (i.e. you are asked a question by your boss, but this is because his or her boss has asked them a question - are the two questions the same or has something been lost in the transmission?),
• why are they asking it,
• what are they really looking to achieve with the answer.

Only then can you really answer the question. It's a question of putting on your thinking hat to get behind the, often, easy looking question.

In fact, if you really want to study a problem it's not one thinking hat that should be used but six! This idea comes from the work of Edward de Bono - and should be a key element of all competitive intelligence analytical approaches. Essentially every problem for which a decision is required should be looked at in six ways:

1. Neutral: focusing on the data available, knowledge gaps, past trends and extrapolations from historical data. Unfortunately this is where a lot of CI people stop in their analyses - and just present the neutral view. This is rarely the full answer that the decision maker needs.
2. Self-opinionated / emotionally: how will your customer react to the response you are giving him or her? Does your work answer the question they've posed - not the surface question, but the underlying driver that led to the question? You need to use intuition and your emotional instincts to look at the problem with this approach. What are the emotions involved? How will people respond to your research when they've not been through the process or followed the reasoning you took to reach the answer?
3. Judgmentally: what are the bad points or weaknesses in your work or the decision suggested? What could go wrong? Be cautious and risk-adverse. This approach lets you prepare for the worst and makes you think of alternative options and create contingency plans if things don't work as expected.
4. Positively: now look at the good points and the benefits that will result from any decision. Even if everything looks like a disaster, trying to see the positive can help find a way out of the mess. It can also help show the value in the decision - in a way that may not be immediately obvious.
5. Creatively: brainstorm a bit. Try and think beyond the problem for alternative solutions or approaches. Don't criticise any ideas - just go with the flow. This approach allows you to come up with further suggestions and ideas that could add increased value to what you are suggesting. More importantly they show that you've really considered all aspects of the problem.
6. Take an overview of the other 5 approaches: this final approach looks at all the other five and evaluates the responses, synthesizing the responses into a single coherent, balanced position. If there are too few alternatives then it may be time to go back to the creative approach. If everything looks perfect, then be really judgmental and see if you can come up with anything wrong at all - just in case there is some gremlin that was missed. If everything looks bad, go back to the positive approach and look to see if there is anything salvageable.

Answering problems and coming to decisions using de Bono's 6 Thinking Hats technique will result in better solutions and safer, more resilient and robust decisions - avoiding potential disasters, while being able to feel more confident about the actions you commit to.

Abolish Negative Thinking

When trying to obtain information it's easy be negative about finding it - and to come up with reasons why it can't be found. The problem is that human beings naturally tend to think negatively. This is destructive to creativity and the ability to get round problems, and find solutions that are achievable and effective.

As an exercise try and think up reasons why a piece of intelligence won't be found. I'll bet your list looks something like this:

• We tried looking for this once before and got nowhere.
• It'll take to long to obtain.
• We don't have enough people.
• It'll cost too much.
• We don't have the software systems.
• It's not ethical to obtain this sort of information.
• It'll be protected.
• We won't be able to find out the relevant people to interview.
• Nothing will be online.
• Anything useful we will already know so it's not worth looking.
• We won't be able to verify it.

How many of the above did you come up with? What other reasons did you consider?

Now try repeating the exercise - but this time think of reasons why the same information could be found. Most people find this much more difficult, and the list will be much shorter.

Good competitive intelligence - in fact good research in any field - requires an ability to overcome these negative thoughts and to discover reasons why something is possible. Sometimes the solution can be obtained by an indirect approach - lateral thinking. Often however the perceived blocks don't actually exist and the information is in fact freely available. It's a case of the old adage "if you don't try you won't succeed".

So, if there is one thing to do today that will improve your ability to obtain the competitive intelligence you need tomorrow it's to abolish negative thinking and to always look for the positive. In fact looking for the positive will have other benefits - as instead of seeing things as obstacles all of a sudden they'll become opportunities.

It's April - so it must be Spring, SCIP and AIIP

April is a peak time for information professionals. There are two major industry events - and AWARE managing partner - Arthur Weiss - can be seen at both.

The first is the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) annual conference - taking place this year in sunny Minneapolis. The second is the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professional's conference - a week later, in New York.

Both are major events on the calendar - and major networking opportunities. Networking is a crucial skill for info-pros - and it pays off. A few years ago I helped out a colleague and she has now put me in touch with WS Radio who just interviewed me on my role as a CI professional. You can listen to the broadcast now: Radio Interview with WSRadio.

What better proof of the power of networking than being heard on a network :-) I hope that you enjoy listening to the show as much as I enjoyed participating in it.

Dissing the competition through dirty tricks!

An article in the New Zealand Herald - Cloak & Dagger Tactics Hit the Office gives an interesting perspective on how dirty tricks, espionage and other unethical practices can hurt companies. Unfortunately there is nothing new in the idea that competitors and others can deliberately aim to hurt rival organizations using unethical and illegal approaches.

Competitive intelligence (CI) is primarily about finding information on your competitive environment - competitors, customers, suppliers as well as general business trends that could impact you. (AWARE's brief guide to competitive intelligence tells you more about this).

One common technique is to identify the key intelligence topics (KITs) that you need to focus on to give you that competitive edge. These KITs will are aimed at helping you understand competitor strategies and the reasons competitors are doing what they are doing - as one example.

One topic that all organizations should look at is what others are saying about you.

• What do your customers think about your products and services?
• What do suppliers think about your negotiating skills - are you a push-over?
• How do competitors view your position in the marketplace - and what do they see as your vulnerabilities?

You need to do this globally. Don't just focus on your key local competitors, but consider those from further afield. New threats could be coming from anywhere: Brazil, India, China.... In fact, CI is a truly global discipline, and it is essential to know thy competitors - wherever they are located.

Sometimes what you'll discover may be uncomfortable. In 1993, Virgin Atlantic discovered that BA had gained access to confidential files and was using these to poach customers from the airline. This led to a protracted court case - BA lost.

More recently, the Canadian insurer, Fairfax, was the target of a campaign of malicious disinformation from a group of Wall Street Hedge Fund managers. The company is now suing them for $6 billion - claiming that their aim was to manipulate the market by creating uncertainty about the company and its future. These include a variety of dirty tricks - false emails and letters, espionage attempts and more.

The lesson from these two cases (and there are many more) is that it is important to watch out for what others are doing to you. Don't assume that your competitors always play fair - some don't.

You need to keep a look out for unethical practices:

• the phone call from the "student" asking for help with a school project;
• the visit from an "industry analyst" claiming to be writing a stock report

and so on.

Always check that they are who they say they are before confiding anything. If suspicious refuse to give any information away.

Even more important, beware of scams that may try and lull you into a false sense of security: the "official" who claims to be a government tax inspector, who then gives a phone number that you can use to check him up. Except that the people answering the phone are in on the scam! (For any official organizations it should be easy to verify that the phone number is real).

Or the organization using a fake, but official sounding name (e.g. in the UK, many companies are conned into paying more than needed by companies calling themselves things like "Data Protection Office Ltd" which sounds sufficiently similar to the real Data Protection Registrar.)

The old adage Buyer Beware (Caveat Emptor) holds. A key intelligence topic that all companies should include in their armory is the one that focuses on what competitors are doing aimed directly at you - what they are saying, what they thinking, and what they are doing, especially if they have a propensity to play dirty!

Looking Forward - but don't ignore what is behind you!

I left school many years ago, but I still remember some of the lessons taught by Jeremy Rosen, who was, at that time, my headmaster. I'm still in contact with him - and both of us now have gray hair! In a recent newsletter he writes:

There’s a Russian proverb that goes, ‘He who looks to the past is in danger of losing an eye. But he who ignores the past is in danger of losing two eyes.’

Jeremy Rosen states that he doesn’t know if this is really a Russian proverb - he heard it from Lord Bullock, the historian, biographer of Hitler and Stalin, who was speaking at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem many years ago. However the origin is less important in this case than what is being said.

Too often, people make decisions based on insufficient information - they ignore the past, creating excuses saying that the past is a closed book - and base their decisions on the perceived problems of the present, tearing up all that has gone before in an effort to create a desirable future. Others take the opposite view - and dwell in the past, refusing to realize that it is the future that shapes our fortunes, not what has gone before.

In marketing and business the same rules apply. Some are "Risk seekers" - always anticipating a bright future, irrespective of warnings, and ignoring the past. Others are "Risk adverse" scared about what the future may bring - and essentially living in the past. In reality, businesses need to balance both approaches. They need to build for the future, and should grasp emerging opportunities with both hands. However this should be based on knowledge of the risks involved, and this can only come from prior experience and knowledge. Even brand new innovations are built on past knowledge.

There are organizations that seem to focus on past (or should that be passed) glories. They stress how they did this or that - and how they became the market leader through their past actions. However if they fail to see how the present has changed then they will inevitably lose this leadership position. There are numerous companies that have fallen because of this. One of the best examples is J Sainsbury - the UK supermarket giant, currently in the midst of a bidding battle. Sainsburys used to be the largest UK supermarket, but it lost direction, and with it share - it is now no longer the market leader. Sainsbury saw itself as the market leader, but failed to recognize the innovations and different approach of competitors such as Tesco and Asda (owned by Walmart). Essentially, Sainsbury was looking at the past and reveling in it, but in reality was ignoring the past and the lessons it held on success. Sainsbury had grown by being innovative - it was the first UK supermarket, building a major presence by giving customers what they wanted. However by not keeping both eyes open on what was happening in its market, it lost its market position.

A key business skill is being able to anticipate the future (using techniques such as scenario planning). This depends on using drivers and trends from the past to anticipate what could happen in the future. We need to look to the past and learn from it. However our aim should be to build a better future. This cannot come by ignoring what has gone before. Instead we should aim to understand why something happened, so that we can learn from it and not repeat the same mistakes. As George Santayana said in 1905: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

There is a widely known Zen story that shows this in another way:

"When the spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice."