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The Lessons of GPS for Competitive Intelligence

Recently, a pair of retired relatives showed up at our house, having driven 2,000 plus miles on what constitutes a substantial road trip for anyone. (Never mind that they were on what turned out to be the first leg of three such jaunts while escaping the winter in their home state!) Looking hale and hearty for two seniors who had just spent four days in the car, we inquired into how the trip went. They both laughed, and told us about the new Global Positioning System device they had bought for Christmas at Wal-Mart, with an eye toward this trip. Turned out the thing worked like a charm…it was easy to set up and use; took them doorstep to doorstep, showed them where motels and restaurants were at the end of their days, even helped them get back on track if they mistakenly took a wrong turn. They absolutely loved it, and promptly made good use of it to navigate themselves effortlessly around our teeming metropolis.

While I loved the story, I also was struck by the lessons for the way companies organize themselves for competitive intelligence, as well as for professionals in the field of CI. What do I mean? Well, let's look further at the impact of GPS devices on travel.

"Hey, Granddad, what were maps for, anyway"?

Before GPS, people got around with things called "maps," and many an American has at least a story or two to tell about sitting in the back seat watching their parents argue over maps and directions. Indeed, entire premises of books, movies, and songs have been developed around "getting lost," and they almost always begin with bad directions or a misread map. (Such stories will gradually fade into the mists as current and future generations become completely dependent on high tech directions…sort of like kids today who cannot tell time from a watch face that has numbers.)

To put all this into "intelligence speak," maps usually contained the correct data, but needed to be read and interpreted effectively in order to provide the decision maker—in most cases, the driver—with the insight necessary to execute the appropriate strategy. And, unless the driver had sufficiently studied and committed a route to memory before getting behind the wheel, he or she needed a second pair of eyes to read the map in order to be able to take advantage of the intelligence and insight it offered. In other words, effectively leveraging a map meant the need for a "specialist" who would navigate the route for the driver. Enter the navigator, the prototypical role for the intelligence professional.

Well, as our retired relatives showed so easily, all this has been blown out of the water by GPS. Now, for the first time, you don't need a map reading specialist to get where you need to go most effectively. Technology has taken over that role, and it has done so in a manner that is both trustworthy and easy to use…two particular challenges that anyone providing decision support need to master. Think of the marriages that will be saved by this device!

The Impact on the World of Intelligence

Well, most of this is not new to the world of national intelligence, where the equivalent of GPS in the form of technology and even the actual use of global positioning has long had a substantial impact on the way intelligence is collected, interpreted, and utilized. This is perhaps most apparent on the battlefield, where technology's impact over the last two decades has been revolutionary, delivering pinpointed intelligence directly to troops in combat and to their command and control simultaneously. It has allowed, one could even argue, forced, "ground-pounders" to become active players in the use of intelligence instead of relying on support from intelligence specialists in the rear or in the air. Just read the accounts of CIA operations officers and US Special Forces operating in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.

But, what's the impact on corporate intelligence practices? While corporate CI efforts have traditionally not been able to be as specialized as those deployed by national agencies or the military, they have been based on the governmental organizational model. This meant that corporate intelligence responsibilities were largely in the hands of some kind of "G-2" person or group which managed the collection, analysis, production, delivery, and often the information management system behind it for the company. Similar to the national level, corporate CI professionals provided intelligence support to one or more key corporate decision makers (their customers) whose jobs involved using it to help execute corporate strategy. In some companies, CI professionals were able to enlist the participation of the organization's "eyes and ears" in the sales force, customer support and service, and elsewhere to help gather intelligence; in others, they do this themselves. At the heart of this was the contention that corporate CI belonged in the hands of professionals, just like at the national level. In many companies, most employees haven't had anything to do with the CI; indeed, they usually don't even know it exists.

The Sound of Tectonic Plates Shifting

As in the case with GPS and driving the roads, technology has been having a revolutionary impact on intelligence in the business world, with the internet placing substantial external information at the fingertips of everyone. As everyday employees become increasingly facile in using the internet, the gap between their abilities to locate key intelligence and that of the average CI professional are shrinking. This, in turn, has the potential to empower many corporate employees to become "one-man or one-woman CI armies" of their own, especially once they get a little basic training about the intelligence field.

Is this a good thing? No doubt some in the CI profession would demur, perhaps on the grounds that their jobs could get infinitely more difficult with dozens and even hundreds of self-deployed intelligence Rambo's careening around out there. And this would be more likely to occur if these new CI armies of one had no training. But, if they did, think of the potential impact all around—a smarter corporation benefiting from fielding a much larger and better set of eyes and ears. This, in turn, would free up corporate CI professionals to move upstream in the CI value proposition to the ground they should be occupying solidly—developing actionable insight and strategies for helping company executives surpass barriers and seize opportunities as agilely as possible.

That's why I would argue that this is exactly what should be happening in corporate intelligence. As at the national level, the availability of technology, the dramatic compression of decision-making timelines, and the flattening of decision-making processes means, frankly, that intelligence is not just the responsibility of a few professionals in a company but of all employees, and especially of those who spend a significant amount of time "touching" the world outside their employers' walls.

Yesterday's Order Winner is Today's Order Qualifier

This shift has lessons for all three of the major sets of actors in corporate intelligence. First, it should no longer be acceptable to think of the average employee, especially those with outward facing or decision-making responsibilities, as having no corporate intelligence function. Just the opposite—in today's nimble, smart company, basic intelligence roles should be nearly everyone's responsibility. And, while keeping your eyes and ears open is a basic human skill, most people are amateurs at it and could use some training to get the most out of their encounters with the world outside the company walls, as well as with how to maximize their internet search activities. Training around such skills—as well as awareness of the legal constraints and the company's ethical guidelines toward using them—should be provided to new employees when they first come in the door. Indeed, this would be a first, key step to creating a living, breathing corporate intelligence culture.

The second part of such an intelligence upgrade strategy should be aimed at the in-house CI professionals. As opposed to being dismayed over the proliferation of their skills sets, CI professionals should look to take advantage by moving further upstream the intelligence value chain, much as service providers still in the US have had to do in reaction to the off-shoring of basic functions. CI pros will still have two key roles to play—first, in managing the synthesis and analysis of the new flow of external intelligence, and second, in taking on the more compelling challenge of helping corporate decision makers make the best use of the new flow of external knowledge. This shift, in turn, will also require new training for many CI professionals; for some, to become stronger business analytical thinkers, and for others, to become more experienced in understanding the business drivers of key decisions in their companies.

Finally, there will be an impact of this tectonic corporate intelligence shift on the executive suite as well. Just as presidents, key cabinet secretaries, and military commanders have had to come to grips with the increasing challenges of using intelligence in a complex, truly global decision-making environment, so too will corporate leaders. Unfortunately, they are handicapped in a way that their public sector counterparts are not, and that is that the vast majority of business leaders have never been trained in using external intelligence to drive strategy. It's certainly not taught in an organized way in business schools. To the contrary, the business world seems to expect that budding executives will come to learn through experience what kinds of external input, from which kinds of sources, and in which kinds of situations they will need to draw upon when they confront key corporate decisions. This, too, should be seen as part of yesterday's world of map reading days, and not in a corporate world where executives will have increasingly valuable intelligence at their fingertips via technology and an intelligence-smart workforce. It's time for everyone to step up their game, since with regard to intelligence, yesterday's order winners are only today's order qualifiers.

To learn more, contact the Thunderbird Learning Consulting Network.


Written By:
Paul Kinsinger
Managing Consultant