What do election day and corporate intelligence have in common? Culture.
Here we are in the U.S. with election day upon us. I for one am sick and tired of all the attack ads skewering one candidate or another. These campaigns have upset me without informing me one iota. Similar failures – all be the less deliberate – occur inside companies all the time. Why? Because you didn’t get the message across in a way the executive wanted to read it.
A few weeks ago I spoke to a group of competitive analysts in Brazil about how culture can change the way you deliver intelligence. To be blunt North Americans typically want intelligence served up differently than Japanese, and differently than Germans. This is not a criticism, just an observation. In the thousands of research assignments we have undertaken over the last 30-plus years, we have seen the pattern. To ignore the pattern is to do all the good work only to have the client say “We don’t get it,” or worse, “Please, do not contact me again.”
Rather than deliver you my recommendations, I prefer to open the conversation by posing three different cases to you. What you would do in each case:
• We ran a war game with an American firm which has a China subsidiary. The American executives asked to have the game run in China regarding a new product line being launched in China. They wanted to make sure their very successful Chinese subsidiary make no mistakes. We had a difficult time getting everyone to agree on the game’s objectives, let alone uncover competitors’ strategic weaknesses. By the end of the two days, we did achieve some success but I would have wanted more, more engagement, more “we are one team,” etc. What was the problem, the challenge and what would you have recommended to the client – if you could roll back the clock?
• A Japanese company wanted to learn from the best-of-the best in innovation from American firms. This case took place over 15 years ago, by the way. We chose Intel at the time because in all measures it managed to grow while at the same continually innovating – shedding old products while introducing new, successful ones. The client understood our selection but rejected our analysis. Intel by all measures was America’s great innovator. In the end the client asked us to research another firm, one whose innovative prowess did not match Intel’s. What about Intel do you think the Japanese client rejected? A hint: It had something to do with organization structure.
• Finally, we delivered a monitoring program for a pharmaceutical firm with two internal clients who saw the world very differently. The marketing executive was satisfied with knowing the rival’s strategic direction, while the R&D chief wanted specifics on clinical trial enrollment and other quantifiable success measures. At the same time, we had to make this client – both clients – happy with a single and tightly bounded budget. What would you recommend we do here? Culture was at the heart of this challenge.
