t

Douglas Bernhardt is a visiting lecturer in

Competitive Intelligence at Wits Business
School and the University of Stellenbosch
Business School. He also provides consulting
and training services for firms in Africa, Europe,
and the Middle East. Douglas previously served
as Managing Director for the Geneva-based con-
sultancy, Business Research Group SA. His last
book, “Competitive Intelligence: Acquiring and
using corporate intelligence and counterintelli-
gence”, was published in London by FT
Prentice-Hall in 2003. An American citizen,
Douglas is now based in South Africa, and can
be reached at stratcon1@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2009. Decision Processes International. All Rights Reserved.

Intelligence vs. Decision-Maker:

Who Cares and So What?
by Douglas Bernhardt | AUTHOR, CONSULTANT, LECTURER

“One of the chief errors of Western intelligence analysis during the Cold War was
its frequent failure to take the long view. Had analysts remembered the tendency of
autocrats through the ages to be told only what they are willing to hear, they would
have found it less difficult to grasp the striking contrast between the frequent success
of Soviet intelligence collection and the poor quality of Soviet intelligence analysis.”
— Christopher Andrew, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Cambridge University

learly the most worrying aspect spread doubts over the very integrity radically new approaches to strategic

C of so many of today’s business

strategies is that they simply
will not work. Put another way,
the medium- to longer-term strategies
of most large-scale companies in 2009
seem to more reflect the over-optimistic
ambitions and projections of chief
executive and chief operating officers
than they do blueprints for building
sustainable competitive advantage and
superior returns.
This is not good news. As managers
everywhere continue to squirm under
the uncomfortable realities of global
recession—wholesale job losses, credit
droughts, the collapse of formerly
‘invincible’ corporate icons, the resur-
rection of protectionism, and wide-
of the free enterprise system itself, to
name just a few—they continue to tell
themselves, their shareholders, and
the world at large that management
have now fully atoned for their past
sins, and that freshly crafted plans that
virtually guarantee future commercial
success are now firmly in place. Of
course, they add, all they really need
now to restart their corporate engines
are rather large bucketfuls of govern-
ment funds. Unfortunately, under-per-
forming companies, and economies
generally, are not basketballs; they do
not bounce back quickly, or necessarily
in the same shape.
The reality is that managing for
future competitive success will require
thinking and action. Equally, it will
require significant paradigm shifts in
organizational culture and business
models. But perhaps the most difficult
challenge of all for managers, many of
whom are still wondering how and why
they have been so unexpectedly
plunged into “the worst of times” from
“the best of times”, will be their
willingness to accept that winning
tomorrow’s competitive battles means,
in part, that they must embrace,
accommodate, and integrate “knowl-
edge and foreknowledge” of the exter-
nal environment into all aspects of
high-level policymaking and planning.
Executives, in short, must become
eager, open-minded consumers of

D e c i s i o n P ro c e s s e s I n t e r n a t i o n a l
15 Strategic Thinking Consultants
The Strategist
strategic intelligence; i.e., intelligence
“designed to provide [them] with the
‘big picture’ and long-range forecasts
they need in order to plan for the
future.” After all, good intelligence
‘product’ is nothing less than “informa-
tion that meets [their] stated or under-
stood needs… and has been collected,
processed, and narrowed to meet those
needs.” And today, as we bear witness
to the unhappy consequences of mak-
ing decisions based on ‘gut feel’,
instinct, unchallenged assumptions, or
inadequate information, the alterna-
tive is to look inwards, dismiss the
notion of intelligence as an essential
component of strategic decision-
making, and hope for the best.
“strategy
without
intelligence
isn’t strategy,
it’s guessing.”
Considerable evidence exists to sup-
port the argument that one of the
major causes of strategic failure on the
part of once revered industry
goliaths—AIG, Chrysler, General
Motors, Lehman Brothers, Royal
Bank of Scotland, Woolworths UK, and
scores of others—was the unwilling-
ness of their management to antici-
pate, monitor, and understand the
changing nature of environmental
forces that have such a decisive impact
on their businesses. The surprising
thing is that while executives are right-
ly expected to know in advance the
waters into which they steer their cor-
porate ships, it seems that over the
past decade or so they have spent
rather more time dining at the cap-
tain’s table than looking out from the
helm. How else can one explain the
mess that prevails in an ever widening
array of companies globally? Yes, the
D e c i s i o n P ro c e s s e s I n t e r n a t i o n a l
financial system and those charged
with regulating it let us down badly, but
it’s just too easy to blame “the banks”
for all our woes. There can be little
doubt that many corporate leaders
have a case to answer for.
Given that a major development or
event—from a “surprise” competitor
move to poor financial results—rarely,
if ever, occurs ‘overnight’, one is com-
pelled to ask: to what extent have cor-
porate leaders focused on enhancing
“the capacity of their organizations to
recognize emerging threats, prioritise
action, and mobilize available
resources to mount… effective preven-
tative responses”? In other words, are
managers demanding and receiving
the sort of intelligence on external
threats and opportunities that govern-
ment policymakers rely upon (or
should rely upon!) as they consider
their nations’ interests, plans, and
strategies? It would appear not. To
illustrate: McKinsey & Company, a
consultancy, recently published the
results of their 2008 survey on compet-
itive behaviour, How Companies
Respond to Competitors. Based on
responses from a worldwide sample of
business executives, their findings
should make frightening reading for
any shareholder or employee of the
firms concerned. These include:
• A majority of executives say their
companies found out about a signifi-
cant innovation—or price-related com-
petitive move too late to respond
before it hit the market
• Companies are not doing a good job
of conducting ongoing, sophisticated
analysis of their competitors’ potential
actions
• Despite the potential for serious
earnings drops when a competitor
introduces a significant price change or
innovation, executives say their compa-
nies assess surprisingly few options for
responding
• Any response to a competitive move
tends to be rather slow
The message is obvious: executives
typically devote more time trying to
16
improve operational effectiveness
(‘doing the thing right’) rather that re-
thinking, or reconfiguring the firm’s
strategic positioning (‘doing the right
thing’). Ask yourself, when was the last
time you tested the rigour of your own
key assumptions? Indeed, when was
the last time you instructed your com-
pany’s competitive intelligence unit, or
an external intelligence consultancy, to
investigate a major rival’s key assump-
tions about their business, their mar-
kets, or the industry? A principle aim
of intelligence is to compel decision-
makers to routinely reassess their per-
spectives and their strategies.
Intelligence has, of course, long been
regarded as ‘part of the furniture’ in
the national security arena and the mil-
itary, where it serves as a powerful
“force multiplier”. Indeed, whatever
the political complexion of a nation
state, modern intelligence agencies
have, for some 100 years, been tasked
to inform senior policymakers and
warfighters in an effort to provide
them with decision advantage. Some
18 years ago US President George
H.W. Bush put it this way:
“Intelligence remains our basic
national instrument for anticipat-
ing danger, military, political, and
economic. Intelligence is and
always will be our first line of
defence, enabling us to ward off
emerging threats whenever possi-
ble before any damage is done. It
can also be a means of anticipating
opportunities.”
A dedicated intelligence function,
with a mandate to deliver objective,
unbiased and forward-looking analy-
ses, estimates, and warnings to corpo-
rate decision-makers is just plain com-
mon sense. Or is it? Organizations such
as Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Microsoft,
Nokia, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche cer-
tainly see it that way. But what about
your company? How many managers
do you know that actually welcome
information and analysis that challenge
their agendas and viewpoints?
w w w. d e c i s i o n p r o c e s s e s . c o m
 How many executives are you famil-
iar with that are prepared to suspend
their egos when confronted with “bad”
or uncomfortable news and informa-
tion that indicate a ‘course correction’
might be the smart thing to do? And
how many aging corporate leaders can
you think of that are willing to modify
their decisions or behaviour based on
what they are told by a 29 year-old
intelligence analyst whose evidence,
logic, and conclusions suggest that cur-
rent policies and strategies are, at best,
sub-optimum? Let’s face it, virtually
every element of today’s competitive
landscape—competitors, changing cus-
tomer preferences, discontinuities in
the economy, technology advance-
ments of all kind, and much more—
tend to evolve very differently than
senior business leaders expect or hope
for. The truth is often hard to take.
In my introductory remarks to MBA
students that I teach at South African
and European business schools, I sug-
gest that “strategy without intelligence
isn’t strategy, it’s guessing.” Think
about it: if your organization did not
have competitors, if it was a monopoly,
why would you need anything more
than relatively short-term operational
plans? If, on the other hand, we accept
Professor Michael Porter’s proposition
that “The state of competition in an
industry depends on five basic compet-
itive forces”—i.e., the threat of new
entrants to the industry; the threat of
substitute products or services; buyer
power; supplier power; and the intensi-
ty of rivalry among existing competi-
tors—it should take no great leap in
imagination to understand that the
corollary to this implies “the need for
an organized mechanism—some sort
of competitor intelligence system” to
collect, analyse, and disseminate the
intelligence that managers require.
Next, consider Professor Gary
Hamel’s argument that “competition is
no longer between products or ser-
vices, it’s between competing business
concepts.” The implication here is that
managers are duty bound to seek as
deep an understanding as possible of
D e c i s i o n P ro c e s s e s I n t e r n a t i o n a l
rivals’ business models, let alone their
own. Ask yourself, can you describe, in
any detail, the most important aspects
of your major competitor’s core strat-
egy, customer interface, strategic
resources, and value network? What
about the critical economic, political,
social, and technological forces which
affect your industry and your market-
place every day and everywhere? And
last, is your company’s intelligence
unit tasked to continuously monitor
these and related topics, then report
back to management with impartial,
evidence-based analysis that may, on
occasion, help ‘save your bacon’? Or is
your intelligence team used mainly for
‘putting out fires’ when all other
attempts to meet critical information
requirements fail?
If you’re ready to suspend your ego,
and place your bets on informed strat-
egy, rather than ‘educated guesses’ in
your company’s race to the future, it is
your job to take intelligence seriously.
Even the best intelligence—and it can
never be perfect—will not tell you
what to do, but it will certainly paint
more accurate, more dynamic, and
more up-to-date pictures of the com-
petitive realities you confront than
those you’re probably seeing now.
So what are the metrics of relevant
intelligence deliverables? Here are the
top three:
1. Accuracy. Since no data on the
future exists, the accuracy of
intelligence depends largely on the
reliability of sources—including
human sources, or HUMINT—
and the quality of analysis (which
involves judgments).
2. Relevance. Relevant intelligence
answers the proverbial “so what?”
question for the user, or set of users
concerned. It has a clear and direct
bearing on the intelligence con-
sumer’s policy agenda. It makes a
difference to the consumer’s thinking
and behaviour. It may provide early
warning of threats. It could take
the form of unbiased assessments of
current problems. Or it might be a
17
longer-term estimate of future devel-
opments likely to have an impact on
the firm’s objectives, strategies, and
interests?
3. Timeliness. Intelligence delivered
too late has no value; it’s just
information.
Ultimately even intelligence units
whose products consistently meet the
basic tests for accuracy, relevance, and
timeliness are simply wasting their
time if their output is ignored or reject-
ed altogether by users who simply
cannot “abide analysis or reporting that
[runs] counter to their own view.”
Intelligence which is not integrated into
the mix of factors that influence the
thinking of decision-makers represents
little more than intellectual impotence.
As this author argued in an earlier
paper, the most overwhelming chal-
lenge faced by intelligence teams and
their users (i.e., decision-makers) is
what I refer to as the “consumer-pro-
ducer disconnect”. The underlying
problem is that decision-makers and
intelligence analysts are very different.
Although united in common purpose
(i.e. the success of the organisation), as
individuals they have very different
missions and very different world
views. At best, this state of affairs leads
to healthy debate and helps sharpen
thinking. At worst, it leads to counter-
productive arguments about “what’s
right”, or “who’s right”, as the lines
between evidence, facts, and opinions
become ever more blurred.
If Competitive Intelligence is to
make a difference to organisational
performance, it is management’s
responsibility to integrate intelligence
into the firm’s strategic processes.
Equally, it is a joint responsibility of
decision-makers and analysts to recog-
nize and overcome the very human dif-
ferences that exist between them.
Overcoming the “disconnect” is tough,
but it’s not impossible and it’s certainly
something managers should care
about. Why? Because intelligence does
make a difference; often the difference
between winning and losing, and
between survival and failure.
Strategic Thinking Consultants