APRIL 2016/ NO. 1
TAGS: MANAGEMENT, ACTION, PETER DRUCKER, MASTER CLASS

Top management doesn’t understand strategic intelligence

“Why is Strategic Intelligence the most neglected management concept? Because top management doesn’t understand strategic intelligence and professionals in our organizations stick too much to the short-term operational stuff”
For decades, it has been difficult to climb the intelligence pyramid from data, information, and knowledge to intelligence towards courses of action. A second point is that most of us tend to stick to the short-term operational and tactical level, because most managers are not aware of the strategic direction of the company. Peter Drucker stated that strategy is the most difficult thing in business because it means making choices that differentiate us from the competition. A third aspect is that data and information management in most organizations is generally poor!! Why is this?

Information poverty in business society

According to research conducted by PwC among 1800 business leaders in Europe and the US, only 4% of all organizations were fully capable of deriving value from the information available to them. Almost 40% of all organizations did not have the necessary resources and skills to gain value from information. Over 40% gained hardly any competitive advantage from their information, and 25% were unable to gain any benefit from their information. This research resulted in the first Information Value Index that indicated how organizations manage their information and how they are able to get benefits from it. The average result was 50.1, which means that most organizations still have a long way to go. Other crucial issues that emerged were:
  • 20% had no data-analysts
  • For organizations which had data-analysts, 16% lacked essential skills and 15% lacked resources
  • Hardly any information was transformed into insights which contributed to the operating results
  • Organizations were unable to manage the huge flows of information
By far the majority of organizations do not know what information they have available, nor do they know how this information flows through the organization. Neither do they know when the information is most valuable or most vulnerable.
How can we solve this problem?
Since 2002 many organizations have sent their personnel to our International Master Class Strategic Intelligence, recognized in Europe as the leading training course in intelligence and how to create business insights and foresight from vast flows of data and information.
Two representatives amongst many others, stated:
  • “This Master Class showed me why we should have been in competitive intelligence yesterday”, a Dutch-listed international company
  • “It’s a privilege to attend this Master Class, highly-recommended to everybody in management”, a German company with 20% annual growth
“The majority of organizations don’t know what information they have available, nor do they know how this information flows through the organization and in addition they do not know when the information is most valuable or most vulnerable”
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