Influencing For Success Ci Magazine 2010

Volume 13 • Number 2 • April/June 2010 www.scip.org 7

Intelligence professionals strive to support key stakeholders and decision-makers who directly impact the bottom line. Our ability to deliver value to the organization is intrinsically connected to our skill in influencing people and the amount of credibility we have. In fact, credibility is a very precious asset since it takes years to build and can be lost in an instant. Especially in the business environment, relationships take time to develop and require constant maintenance in order to flourish and support the intended collaborative results.

One might be tempted to believe that a mere position or title ensures credibility. But in reality if stakeholders have no trust in the messenger, then the message itself becomes lost. With low or no trust, your ability to influence would be very limited. Even though credibility might take time to acquire, as competitive intelligence professionals, we can increase our ability to influence if we:

• Know the business fundamentals or gain business acumen

• Have a good understanding of our audience

• Utilize effective communication styles

Figure 1 graphical depicts the influencing process.

KNOW THE BUSINESS A good perceptual framework for intelligence analysts

to create is “I am the CEO of my area of responsibility.” Not only should you have a good understanding of your business environment but also become regarded as a resident content expert by others. In order to achieve this, you need a well-developed perspective of the micro- and macro-level

By KaSandra Husar, Intel and Rom Gayoso, Intel

Figure 1: Influencing elements

Influencing for Success

8 www.scip.org Competitive Intelligence

market dynamics in your industry. Start by acquiring a deep understanding of the products or services the firm offers along with a strong knowledge of your company’s branding strategies and market positioning. A succinct knowledge of company financials and strategic direction can enable you to effectively translate environmental dynamics into concrete financial opportunities or threats.

Another important micro-level skill is an understanding of your company’s operational profile, including both its manufacturing process and the supply chain. Here’s one way to view the value of this information: consider what would happen to the supply chain if there is a swine flu pandemic in Central America and the Panama Canal closes. Sound unlikely? The electronics industry had a brush with trouble a few years ago when the Avian Flu epidemic spread across China’s southeastern seaboard, slowing down or paralyzing the flow of goods in and out of the country.

Any serious issue disrupting a major transportation route will affect the company. If it does occur, what kind of contingencies could be put in place to mitigate those risks? The ability to understand your company’s operational profile can also be beneficial when developing a deep understanding of key players in a marketplace, of the supply base, or of a competitor.

Another valuable expertise for intelligence professionals is developing a more comprehensive understanding of macro-level market dynamics. These dynamics encompass elements that relate to the industry, and variables that affect the broader economy. Start by building on the micro level skills you’ve previously developed. For example, a natural extension of understanding an operational profile would be to develop deeper knowledge of the business climate of the home country as well as where the company operates. Further, consider the geographical dispersion of the supply chain, as in the Panama Canal example above.

You will find value in assuming ownership of a firm-specific product portfolio and developing market profile knowledge, and then securing a better understanding of the operating environment. In general, develop stronger business acumen whenever information regarding the industry and the business cycle is relevant to conduct business.

STraTEgIc OBjEcTIvES In addition to understanding

departmental level and divisional level operational objectives, also develop a deep understanding of those strategic

objectives which guide the organization as a whole. Map your intelligence work to all levels of objectives, so that you can easily explain how the intelligence process supports the firm’s strategies. If you cannot map intelligence collection to one of those objectives, then it is not a value-added activity.

Even though it might be interesting to account for every move in the marketplace, you should only consider information that ties to objectives. In today’s information explosion times, keeping track of that alone is a formidable challenge. Once information processing and objectives are connected, you have a much easier job demonstrating value in the information processing exercise and the value of this job function as a key contributor to the organization’s success.

BUSINESS acUMEN: KNOWINg THE ENvIrONMENT

Alternatively, you can develop sophisticated business acumen skills if you approach the understanding of market dynamics according to job scope. If one looks at the market from the scope perspective we would find that the spectrum runs from issues which matter at the departmental level all the way to broader socio-demographic trends which impact the whole economy. When developing a complete environmental picture so as to make optimal business decisions, consider five steps or levels:

1. Understand the individual area of the business.2. Understand the market dynamics for the strategic

business unit at the group or division level.

Figure 2: Scope approach to know your business

influencing for success


3. Become aware of the product portfolio, knowledge of the market position of each of the offerings, and understanding of key financial metrics for the firm.

4. Develop industry level awareness.5. Understand the macro-economic environment and its

forces.

Figure 2 diagrams the steps to take in order to know your business using the scope approach.

1. Individual areasTo follow the job scope approach, the first step is to

develop an understanding of the individual area of the business. Departmental level business objectives matter along with the individual objectives held by key stakeholders. You can easily identify those stakeholder objectives if you already understand the firm and divisional level’s strategic objectives.

For instance, a commodity buyer conducts company business according to specific standards and broad strategic cost objectives. An obvious one would be management’s direction to secure a certain level of discounts for a given volume order and market conditions. He would also be interested in maintaining good business relationships with the pool of suppliers and creating a comprehensive understanding of supplier health and solvency.

For example, the recent economic crisis caused the most vulnerable members of the automobile parts’ supply chain to collapse and share in the fate of both GM and Chrysler. Here it would have been useful to apply and interpret the Altman z-score statistic, a statistically derived tool designed to estimate firm distress (Altman 1968).

Another way to illustrate the importance of understanding the individual business area would be to look at the role of an iron ore buyer for a steel mill. Since steel itself is a sub-product, the commodity buyer must understand the market dynamics associated with steel production, its consumption, as well as the firm specific strategic objectives.

2. group or division level The next step on the job scope approach involves

understanding the market dynamics for the strategic business unit at the group or division level. Here, pure department level knowledge is no longer sufficient: you would need product knowledge as well as substantial understanding of the technological issues that revolve around the production process.

At the business unit objective levels, company competencies and weaknesses would matter. The specific goals and strategies of this organization within the corporation would be based on the company’s place in the market and the division’s collaborative part to play in the strategy. There could be a coordinated set of strategic

objectives with sister organizations, with each group responsible for parts of the corporation’s overall strategy.

3. Product portfolio, market position and key financial metrics

The third step in this approach is to develop business acumen based on an awareness of the company’s product portfolio, an understanding of the market position of each offering, and knowledge of the firm’s key financial metrics. In this step, intelligence would support the implementation of corporate strategies in light of core competencies and perceived strengths.

For example, consider Southwest Airlines’ expansion through its acquisition of Frontier Airlines. Southwest can leverage its relatively lower operational costs, no frills attitude, and market position to justify the acquisition of assets in receivership. Southwest’s core competencies should be able to turn more airplanes, new routes, more employees and a broader portfolio of offerings into even higher profits and better customer service.

4. Industry level awarenessThe fourth step on the scope approach requires industry

level awareness. In this step, effectively applying analytical tools to understand competitors becomes very important. For example, working through Porter’s Five Forces Model would force you to consider the level of rivalry in the industry, who would be potential market entrants, what is the nature of product substitutes, and to what extent buyers and suppliers have relatively more (or less) power in the supply chain (Porter 1979).

Another way to approach this level of scope would be to consider IBM’s acquisition of statistical software maker SPSS. With this acquisition IBM extended the reach of its software product portfolio into the statistical market, and SPSS users gained the backing of IBM, a prestigious name in the high-tech industry. Although the end result of this transaction is not yet clear, productivity software makers and statistical software makers such as the SAS Institute now must pay closer attention to adjacent areas of the business, as further market consolidation is still possible.

5. Macro-environmental forcesFinally the broadest perspective of the scope approach

involves developing knowledge concerning the macro-economic environment and its forces. Analysts tend to talk about the macro-economic environment only in political, economic, social and technological terms, but it is also important to include the legal and regulatory perspective as well as that of environmental concerns (Gayoso & Husar, 2008). For example, consider the interest in lower carbon footprint and lower emissions as a driver for the adoption of



renewable energy alternatives, such as that from solar, wind, and geothermal sources.

INTEllIgENcE dOSSIErOne potential way of developing strong business acumen

is to utilize a variation of the business dossier approach. This systemic approach enables you to learn your company’s business in the same manner in which a true CEO level would through four pillars of knowledge:

1. product or service2. supply3. external markets4. analytical tools Product or service knowledge is knowing your business

in terms of what it offers to the marketplace. This includes such elements as product or service description, knowledge of component contents, bill of materials breakdown, and more. Supply knowledge entails knowing your business from a supply chain, vendor and operational aspects perspective. This includes elements such as supplier revenue, supply chain structure, business segments and more.

External markets knowledge allows you to understand the markets in which your company, its supply base, and competition operates. This may include total market capacity, industry cost structure drivers, pricing strategy and more. The processing step includes use of analytical tools and incorporates such constructs as Porters industry

analysis, SWOT, scenario planning, and war gaming. This encompasses different types and methods of analysis which allows you to piece together the various data and information to form a environmental picture of your company’s position in the marketplace. Ultimately it sets the knowledge base for the formation of strategy to meet risk factors and develop strategic objectives and plans.

KNOW YOUr aUdIENcEAnother important determinant of

your ability to influence your audience relates to understanding what is important to them. Often analysts are too concerned with making a point or promoting ideas that are important to their own department. Instead we should concentrate on the needs and priorities of our clients (higher level managers) and understand how the way we operate can help them meet their own goals for the organization (Goldsmith, 2008).

Since we all work in an environment where we need to deal with organization politics in one form or another (Vigoda & Cohen, 2002), we should focus our energy on understanding those key stakeholder’s needs, so we can be of greater value to them and ultimately survive longer as a function. A structured approach to knowing your audience can be applied through stakeholder management, which is a condensed process people use to organize thoughts and reflect upon relationships in general.

Note that stakeholder management can also be successfully applied to help build a representative framework for all our work relationships. Any effective program or project effort needs to design the process of organizational engagement in such a way that its very existence implies a certain level of stakeholder management.

Stakeholder management One way to understand the audience is to map out the

stakeholders inter-relationships, their roles, and the ways they interact, which will give us a way to chart our work place environment. One useful tool for cataloging stakeholders is mind mapping.

Modern mind maps generally take form in the way Buzan and Buzan (1996) envisioned them. The main thesis of mind maps is based on the way that computers ‘think’ which is linear – one concept after another – in a neatly organized format since computing algorithms are mostly based on linear programming patterns (with the exception

Figure 3: Intelligence dossier elements



of artificial neural networks). On the other hand, our brains are known for their radiant thinking which is a system based thought process. Thus the brain can make sense of very complex systems in a very short time.

Mind maps are spider-web-style graphs where a key concept is in the center and a series of other topics or thoughts are distributed around the outer rings (Wu and Wang, 2009). In practice, mind maps have been applied in several higher education and engineering environments, as well as being a powerful knowledge management tool on the hands of information professionals (Lamont, 2009). Currently, computer software such as Microsoft Vizio or Java-based FreeMind help create maps of complex tasks in a very cost effective and expedient way. Svendsen and Laberge (2005) took the mind map concept one step further. They advocated taking a systems view of relationship networks, as stakeholders are better able to improve their interaction with each other when their goal is to make the organization more efficient and meet higher level management’s needs.

Network maps are flexible instruments. They can be used to describe a wedding much the same way they could be applied to describe the relationships between the heads of manufacturing (“bride”) and research (“groom”), along with their auxiliary organizations such as Finance, Marketing or Human Resources. (See Figure 4, which depicts a stakeholder map/network of a family wedding.)

Network maps can also be utilized for a new product introduction. One example would be when a finance company tries to launch a new socially responsible mutual fund. In this case key nodes would represent the fund manager, most important customers (such as pension funds) and a few other key social actors or stakeholders. Network and mind maps can also be drawn to represent key intelligence topics and their relationships, instead of customers or people.

Key intelligence topicsUnderstanding your client’s (or if an

internal client, your organization’s) Key

Intelligence Topics (KITs), comprised of Essential Elements of Information (EEI), is another fundamental building block for understanding your audience. Herring (1999) argued that the KIT process not only helps competitive intelligence professionals identify their organization’s needs, but the process is also fundamental to creating a viable

Figure 4: Family network example

Figure 5: Network mapping example



communications structure built around their elements of information. Even though KITs are often used within the military context, competitive intelligence professionals can derive great benefit from applying them in a corporate environment.

Once you have identified your KITs, you can also organize them in a mapping format. In this format you can evaluate the relationships among them, as well as understand the type of infrastructure needed to support the investigation and additional situations where those KITs or the information they yield align with the organization’s strategic objectives. Nevertheless, the intelligence process does not exist in a vacuum – it too requires the existence of structure in order to function properly.

Infrastructure Needs Another important building block in the process of

understanding your audience is to develop the infrastructure sub-components needed to help intelligence analysts work through the KIT process and meet stakeholder’s needs. Within the broad infrastructure category, such infrastructure building blocks are typically referred to as sub-components or network systems. There are three main such networks: people, information, and tools.

Understanding the people networks means identifying the players in the intelligence network strategy. This would include head count information, as well as the amount of resources consumed to support the network. The information network consists of the components that support the intelligence sources strategy. Knowing what data and information is available can be essential to creating an effective intelligence function. The tools network relates to analytical techniques and strategy.

• What kind of information technology system is in place?

• Which types of analytical models can be used (such as Porter’s Five Forces)?

• What types of techniques (such as econometric modeling) are available in-house to support analysis?

In essence, knowing your audience requires a good deal of stakeholder management, key intelligence topics definition, strategic objectives alignment, infrastructure needs and availability, and mind maps application. However, knowing your business and knowing your audience alone cannot guarantee success in our ability to influence key stakeholders. These efforts need to be crowned by effective communications.

EFFEcTIvE cOMMUNIcaTIONS The third building block for your ability to influence

resides in the communications process. In addition to understanding the business and knowing your stake holders well, you must also have a communication’s framework in place to allow the dialogue to be as effective as possible. For communications to be truly effective, competitive intelligence professionals must be able to translate their analysis into a format that matches the organization’s culture, and in a way that the customer wants it.

In order to achieve this effective communication goal, you need to invest time in building relationships and learning to speak the language of the corporation as well as its sub-groups. In the process of building and maintaining relationships, you must develop the soft skills foundation necessary to help you navigate the organization.

relationship Management To ensure effective communications, it is not only

important to build relationships, but also to dedicate enough time to maintain those relationships in good standing. Relationships need to be managed just like you would manage any other important business process. You could argue that it is even more important to invest time in relationship management, as it is either an enabler or a necessary condition for other key business processes. In fact Svendsen and Laberge (2005) remind us that to increase collaboration, it is important to both engage stakeholders and to ensure sustainability of the relationship. Building sustainability in the relationship process is key. Since those relationships do not exist in a contextual vacuum, it is important to take a system’s approach to relationship management.

Consider stakeholder management as engaging with a series of different networks, as opposed to the singular and impersonal view of “engaging management.” Working from this perspective you not only seek to understand how these networks operate, but also work to become an integral value-added part of them. If competitive intelligence professionals add value at their network level, those relationships will mature as stakeholders’ needs become better understood and more easily met. As these relationship networks grow stronger and as managers are more comfortable familiar with your analysis capability, you develop an established reputation, allowing stakeholders to develop greater trust in the work of their competitive intelligence professionals.

This trust building process takes time to mature – it is not an overnight process. Your job title alone does not build immediate trust. Be aware that your most valuable assets are the reputation you develop and the faith stakeholders have on your ability to consistently deliver value.



Trust is a very fluid form of wealth given or entrusted to us by our key stakeholders. Give serious consideration to investing more time and resources into building trust and forming stronger networks, for without them you cannot achieve effective influencing. Also, networks exist within the framework of the firm and those of broader social networks, so invest time to understand the particularities of your key stakeholders.

Currently corporate cultures emphasize the advantage of management diversity. Although it may initially appear to be more difficult to develop connections and rapport with people of dissimilar backgrounds and life experiences, technology has provided several channels to help us better engage through social networks.

One way to deepen relationships is to become an active member of professional associations such as SCIP. Active members not only read the website (which has much valuable content) but also participate in regional meetings and annual events. Another way to be an active member is to share your experience in publications such as this one, where others can relate to you, help you solve a problem, or educate us about the best way to tackle a situation. In any event, sharing will certainly help you grow as a professional and will add value to the field.

Another approach to developing trust and building stronger networks is to leverage our commonalities across the life spectrum, and to value the different communities we share. For example, attend a meeting of the next management level up in your company. It is truly amazing to see how complete strangers can relate to each other and form bonding relationships once we understand that we share common interests or face similar challenges. Even though it is easier to associate with those with whom you share common experiences, it can be even more enriching to associate with others who do not necessarily exhibit these commonalities. One way to approach this is to join your local Toast Masters’ club: its diversity can generate differing perspectives and often a lively discussion.

In any event engaging people who have different backgrounds and who hold different views can only benefit us in the long run, as we acquire the ability to understand multiple perspectives and learn to value others on their own terms. When you develop a heightened capability to understand different perspectives and you invest in trust-building activities, the end result is forming stronger market intelligence networks.

Soft Skills Building stronger relationship networks is not based

on how many models you can generate or how well you can create spreadsheets, but requires more sophisticated soft skills. Your business environment operates with unwritten rules about how to behave, when to engage others, and even how

to say things in a way very specific to our workplace. These expected behaviors and norms are true for individual firms as well as for many industries. Those codes of conduct are the basis of the organization culture which also exists in the manufacturing environment, such as in the semiconductors industry (Gayoso 2007). Professionals in scientific areas who leverage technology and quantitative methods in their work need to make an even greater effort to navigate the corporate philosophy (Hitt 2009).

Those important soft skills involve not only gaining a good understanding of the corporate culture (which can be translated into organizational awareness) but also require some understanding of non-verbal communications, and even developing some degree of political savvy.

For example, in some parts of India shaking one’s head from side to side does not mean ‘no’ but rather is a positive sign. In other cultures, individuals do not look directly into another’s eyes. They do this not because they are untrustworthy, but rather because it is considered rude. Non-verbal communications are based on local cultural constructs and we need to be aware of that, else we will risk some miscommunication, or far worse, develop an ethnocentric view of the world.

Speak the languageEffective communication cannot occur without a deeper

understanding of the verbal communication patterns specific networks develop over time. All forms of communications are socially co-constructed, circumstantial, and contextual. So you must understand the communications styles, group values, norms, and expected behaviors of the members of the different stakeholder networks.

Typically you find at least three different languages in the workplace. First is “My” language, which is the communications style of your immediate associates. As competitive intelligence professionals we tend to talk in codes and use specific jargon. Certainly KITs and EEIs would have different meanings – if any at all – to other professionals.

The second language is the communications style of your organization or company. The expression “FASB #157” has meaning for the finance community and in an accounting firm, but it would likely have little meaning outside those communities as others are not aware of its context. Another example would be a discussion between environmentalists and energy producers, where “mtoe” and “kw” would certainly find their way into the conversation. Although metric tons of oil equivalent and kilowatts have meaning, out of the context of discussions like this they would not have the same importance.

Finally, you must also learn to understand and speak in the same style as your customers. Often our customers’ communications style is dependent on their position in the supply chain. For example procurement people communicate



in a special way. Key stakeholders’ communication styles also vary according to their value set – look at what metrics those people pay attention to. For example, revenue miles per passenger flown would have meaning to an airline executive, but would not be import to those in other industries. Intelligence professionals need to be able to carry on a conversation with diverse people who value different things, who come from different backgrounds, and who communicate in contextual-rich ways.

SUMMarY This article highlighted the importance of knowing

your business and your audience. When you combine this with effective communications, it will result in your creating a stronger ability to influence them. All the intelligence function can guarantee you is a seat at the table. It is up to us to understand which information is the right one to leverage, what time is right for the stakeholder, and what communication form we should use with our customers, so that we can do a better job at meeting their needs.

rEFErENcESAltman, E. (1968). “Financial ratios, discriminant analysis

and the prediction of corporate bankruptcy.” Journal of Finance, September, p189–209.

Buzan, T.; Buzan, B. (1996). The mind map book: How to use radiant thinking to maximize your brain’s untapped potential. London: Plume Publications.

Gayoso, R. (2007). “Organization cultural characteristics applied to semiconductor manufacturing.” The Business Review, Cambridge v9n1, p29-36.

Gayoso, R.; Husar, K. (2008). “Buy side market intelligence practice: Reflections from high tech manufacturing.” Competitive Intelligence v11n2, p26-33.

Goldsmith, M. (2008). “Influencing Up: You make a difference.” Leadership Excellence v25n1, January p5-6.

Herring, J. (1999). “Key intelligence topics: A process to identify and define intelligence needs.” Competitive Intelligence Review v10n2, January p4-14.


Hitt, E. (2009). “Corporate culture in current times: Seeking the right fit.” Science 324 (5928), p821-828.

Lamont, J. (2009). “Managing critical knowledge in higher education.” Knowledge Management World. v18n5, May 20-25.

Porter, M. (1979). “How competitive forces shape strategy.” Harvard Business Review, March/April.

Svendsen, A.; Laberge, M. (2005). “Convening stakeholder networks: A new way of thinking, being and engaging.” Journal of Corporate Citizenship v19, p91-104.

Vigoda, E.; Cohen, A. (2002). “Influence tactics and perceptions of organizational politics: A longitudinal study.” Journal of Business Research 55, p311-324.

Wu, Z.; Wang, X. (2009). “E-Government system demand analysis based on mind map.” In: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Networking and Digital Society.

KaSandra Husar is the supply chain market intelligence program manager with Intel. She is also responsible for driving the design and development of the buy-side Intel Intelligence solution, including the spearheading of a company-wide endeavor to bring together strategic planning and intelligence professionals across the corporation to address competitive and market challenges in the industry. Prior to joining Intel, KaSandra was in Supply Chain Management with Philip Morris Companies in Northern California. She holds an International Masters from the Universitat Wien and an MBA from the University of South Carolina.

Rom Gayoso is an economist and an Intel Technologist. His research interests are on Competitive Intelligence and Market Research. Rom is also a futurist and works with scenario planning.

Influencing For Success Ci Magazine 2010

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