NOVEMBER 2015 / NO. 1
TAGS: EXTERNALLY DRIVEN, SCENARIO PLANNING, STRATEGIC WAR-MAPPING, COMPANY RADAR ROOM, FOUR-CORNER ANALYSIS, IT, BIG DATA

Intelligence is externally driven

“If intelligence is not driven externally, then one is not doing intelligence” 
“If a company is interested in finding the future, most of what it needs to do is to learn from outside the industry sector”, Gary Hamel
In our book “Strategic Intelligence in Future Perspectives 2.0” we discussed a wide variety of some twenty-five companies that lost momentum because they failed to react in a timely fashion to discontinuous changes in their external business development. We described why this happens to so many companies and what can be done to overcome this. Here we explain how to do this.
We recommend four courses of action:
  1. Scenario planning: determine what the potential Grey Swans will be 5-8 years ahead, and which of these might impact the existence of the company. Once the Grey Swans have been identified, determine the variables of potential influence. Then start creating your strategic intelligence efforts to generate the levels of uncertainty – impact
  2. Strategic War-Mapping: determine where current and potential/new competitors might hurt your company. Get into the mind of your rivals and also think the unthinkable. The time scope is to be 12-36 months ahead of the game in the current and future competitive arena
  3. Company Radar Room: This is where the variables which influence the Grey Swans in general and more specifically those which influence future changes in the market, customers, competitors, legislation and technology, are monitored 24/7. The big challenge of your strategic intelligence efforts is to create ‘early warnings’ for top management. This generates maximum insight and foresight regarding the main issues for long-term company survival
  4. Four-Corner Analysis on your competitor’s Future Strategy: the focus here is on your key competitors conducting an analysis on their current strategy (1), competitors’ capabilities (2), elements driving the financials, management style, leadership, constraints and culture (3) and finally elements to identify perceptions, expectations, foresight and imagination (4)
Creating these four courses of action means that you will be in a position to deliver ‘actionable strategic intelligence’ that cannot be ignored by top management. Intelligence that cannot be ignored does not come from databases, IT-systems, big data or from the internet. It is, however, the result of analysis as the key to actionable intelligence. Intelligence is created only by analysts. This implies that the strategic intelligence team works continuously and consistently on all the factors, elements, drivers and variables of these four courses of action for the future.
“The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, pride and arrogance”
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