Introduction:
Knowing More Than Competitors Over Time: For outstanding performance in your business environment, your company has to gather the right information and get it to the right people at the right time. Excessive, inadequate and inaccurate information diminish competitive advantages.
Too much data can be as disruptive as too little. Unless the organization deliberately considers its sensory capabilities, it will continue make errors and miss opportunities. Key to top-notch performance is a sharp, focused ability to notice and capture important information, and feed it into the thinking processes of the organization.
Who’s Getting The Intelligence? How can a company improve its ability to gather necessary information? Consider your people and the roles they need to play as they’re deliberately charged with gathering intelligence as a part of their on-going duties. They have to know what to watch for and understand the significance of what they see.
You can’t leave it to chance. You can rail against the “stupidity” of people who don’t do what you want them to do, or who don’t know what to do on their own---but to what effect? Rather, you can teach them how to gather intelligence well. You can include them in the company’s sensory grid and develop their sensitivity. What’s your choice?
Better Intelligence From The Sales Force
Sales Reps: Sales people are often so busy selling---pushing their point of view---they fail to listen to signals in the environment. Often, when a customer tries to give them critical feedback, they argue about it, defend themselves or pass the blame on to others “inside” the company.
A sales rep that’s simply selling product, especially if s/he’s selling it on price, often doesn’t understand the company’s larger plan. The plan that sounds so good when the executive team concocts it has to be translated (as opposed to told) to every sales rep. If it doesn’t get to every trooper in the field, and if every trooper doesn’t understand it well enough to extemporize from it when sitting with a customer, they’ll miss crucial information.
They have to know what to do. They need to have confidence in their ability to act to gather all relevant information. And, they need to know what to do with the information when they have it. The people who receive the information from the reps also need to know what to do with it, to exploit the intelligence value of what’s gathered in the marketplace.
Getting Them Started---The Sales Team
Starting A Conversation With The Sales Team:
Pose a question. Sit with the sales team, as well as a few of your company’s more savvy thinkers, and ask them to discuss the things an alert sales force sees in their interactions with the broad marketplace that may have implications for the company’s business plan. Structure it as a brainstorming session, generate ideas, and think freely.
Provoke conversations. After the initial brainstorming sessions have been completed, set up a recurring opportunity for conversations about what can be seen and the implications of what is seen. Make these conversations part of business-as-usual. (Use these conversations to identify who among these participants would be strong contributors to your scenario planning team.)
The on-going conversation, with your participation, can continue to keep this sensory node sharp and can serve as a running opportunity for training and development. It is the responsibility of the team to keep these conversations robust rather than allowing them to slip into “one more awful meeting.” Of course, if that slip does occur, that becomes diagnostic and indicates still unresolved disconnects within the organization.
Probe for ideas and connections. During each of these brainstorming conversations, identify someone to play the deliberate role of probing for implications and assumptions that are buried in the content of the conversation. Rotate this role over time, and challenge everyone to play that role as constructively as possible (see Devil’s Advocate).
Provide a path forward. Charge this team with making suggestions for how to use the intelligence gathered in the field. It isn’t enough to simply notice things; they have to be understood by the organization as a whole and they have to lead to action that turns into competitive advantage. This team should offer practical suggestions for how to make that happen.