Harvard Business article “Companies Collect Competitive Intelligence, but Don’t Use It” written by Benjamin Gilad talks about Competitive Strategy in companies.
It highlights appropriate steps a companies need to take when trying to be competitive and offer professional service. Gilad in his article starts by: Elaborating the different competitive strategy requirements needed by companies, how a managerial expert like “Peter Drucker” often sees these strategies, how a simple powerful suggestion to companies can change them. The companies must follow without some expectation requirement. The first requirement for being competitive: it’s known what others in your space are offering or plan to offer so you can judge the unique value proposition.
The second requirement: it is to anticipate response to your competitive moves so that they are not derailed by unexpected reaction. The third is to ask the question, do we have common sense. In the work in competitive intelligence, it met them many manager and executive who made major decision, and involving billions of dollars of commitments with only scant attention to the likely reaction of competitors, and the effect of potential disruptors, and impact of long term industry trends. The competitive perspective is an almost always the least important aspect in managerial decision making. Internal operational issues including execution, budget, and deadlines are in companies, but what other players will do is hardly ever in focus. The paradox is that companies spend millions acquiring competitive and market intelligence from armies of vendors.
Instead, management implicit assumes the information is being used, and used optimally. Leadership is happy to ask that proposals and presentations be backed by data. Peter Drucker is often quote as coming up with the managerial bromide, “What gets measured gets managed.” It’s clear from his writing that he worried that management often measures the wrong things, and believed that some critical aspects of management can’t be measured. He believed that Management sometime only focuses on easier tasks.
The failure to measure the impact of competitive data leads to an interesting dilemma for companies. Improving decision quality is how companies will succeed. The competitive information on an organization’s decision is one of those things that can hardly ever be measured.
It is neither direct nor unambiguous. For example, many companies he or she worked with management measured output. How many reports, and research projects were analysts issue. This is searching for car keys under the street lamp because that’s where the light is. The failure to measure the impact of competitive data leads to an interesting dilemma for companies, even when it’s obvious that the company has missed an opportunity by a threat because they failed to consider data are at a loss how to improve the situation. Improving decision quality as the extent to which decision makers use all available competitive information, its require focus on usage rather than production of intelligence.
This is a major mindset leap for most companies but are offers a way to improve decisions without directly measuring the elusive impact. Improving competitive intelligence usage requires an “audit” of major decision at the product or service. That said, a company can’t force its manager to use information optimally. It can, however, ensure they at least consider it.
Drucker said “work implies not only that somebody is supposed to do the job, but also accountability. “It is only reasonable to ask top management to apply the same principle to itself, and a may keep major issues on the table. Some of us tend to see our goals as opportunities for advancement, achievement and rewards. We think about what we might gain if we are successful in reaching them. If you are someone who sees your goals this way, you have what’s called a promotion focus. Everyone is motivated by both promotion and prevention, but we also tend to have a dominant motivational focus in particular domains of life, like work, love, and parenting. In my opium, this article is People’s deep confidence in their decisions and abilities is often at chances with reality.
Most people, for example, regard themselves as better-than-average drivers. The tendency toward overconfidence readily extends to business and the managers of a fast-food chain, recognizing that customer satisfaction was important to profitability, believed that low employee business would keep customers happy. “We just know this is the key driver,” one executive explained. Confident in their intuition, the executives focused on reducing business as a way to improve customer satisfaction and, presumably, profitability
