Happy New Year! Welcome to 2017 and the repost of our annual Intelligence New Year’s Resolutions.
The last couple of years I’ve posted the same 4 critical resolutions for your competitive intelligence or “market reconnaissance” capabilities. These original resolutions are summarized below and remain as relevant now as when originally published.
In 2016 I added to the original 4: Don’t Wait to be Blessed!
Don’t Wait to be Blessed came from a discussion with my friend Becky Okamoto about the challenges of organization change. She pointed out the common laziness and lack of personal leadership that are rife in organizations screaming for help, whether with personnel development or growing capability.
Borrowing her phrase, I still see too many nascent (and established) intelligence groups waiting for some voice from on high to “bless the mission” and somehow sweep away obstacles to organizational uptake for intelligence.
Don’t wait!
The blessing and the sweep aren’t coming … or at least not in a form satisfactory enough to ensure success.
First off, many of your bosses and clients won’t understand what you are trying to do until you’ve done it. Second, chances are you won’t get it right the first time or two.
Intelligence is a fluid, trial and error enterprise. Focusing on “paint-by-numbers” action planning and organizational chartering is mostly a waste of time. And waiting for a clear mandate from above is a sure license to fail.
Instead, go do it! Go make results and then build from your success. You can put wrapping on the intelligence gift after it’s opened … no one will remember that you acted before you got permission.
The original Strategy Shapers’ Intelligence New Year’s Resolutions…
Put Winning First … Our raison d’etre is (or needs to be) to help our firms succeed in the market. Too often we get wrapped around the wheel of process and forget this simple mission. In 2017, let’s put winning front and center. Read more….
Take Responsibility with Passion … Too many intelligence professionals adopt a dispassionate, stand-offish … dare I say, “clinical” … attitude to their work. They want to leave the hard work of “owning” decisions to others, to their bosses. If we want to make a deep and lasting impact on our firms … if we want a healthy profession … we need to stop this and join the team. Read more….
Take it to the Street … If we can’t translate intelligence insights into BOTH tactical and strategic actions that are practical and tuned to current market realities, whatever brilliance contained in our analysis will be lost. If we act like theorists and not like operations, marketing or sales lieutenants, then our impact on business results will be forever limited. Read more….
Think Financially … Good, bad or ugly, the world marks organizational success and failure in financial terms. All the best primary source evidence, analytical sophistication and analyst passion can’t overcome financial market opinion. So let’s not dismiss the Wall Street or Fleet Street point-of-view. Let’s understand it and make it part of our intelligence toolkit. Read more….
What resolutions and goals do you have for your intelligence team? Let’s talk about them. Add your comments or send me a note. Happy New Year!