So What Do You Really Know About The Outside World?

Do you really know what you think you know?

Far too often your business’ managers are unaware they are using obsolete, or incorrect, information about your customers, the markets you deal in and your competitors.

In many cases your  management team has focused inward with such intensity on improving the performance of your business within the building you have become disconnected with the influences outside the building. Often you are operating under incomplete or false information and making critical business decisions that are flawed from the start.

As noted in our last article: “The First Step To Value Creation: Internal Awareness” it is critical to invest the effort, time and energy necessary to stay up to date with what is really happening out there in the “outside world”.

This not only assures important decisions are made with accurate information but also serves to create new lines of communication and stronger business and personal relationships that can play a vital role in your future success. After all business is always person to person.

Two important aspects of any piece of information are credibility and timing. We use the example that it may be more important to rely on information from an entry level engineer received yesterday than information from the general manager 6 months ago. One method to gage both aspects of validity and timeliness is by confirming the details with multiple sources. To do so obviously requires having a number of relationships within your customer’s business, your markets and your competitors. In most cases these take time and patience to develop. Every company should have a contact plan in place to support this important effort.

The internet has opened a whole new channel for staying abreast of what’s happening outside your walls.  This is not to say it should be the primary or sole source of information. Personal relationships should be the backbone of your intelligence network.

The internet can also be quite useful for confirming information, seeking entry points and background information to new opportunities and staying aware of competitors’ activities.

We’ll cover the next element of our value creation process “The need to focus – clarity of purpose.” in our next post. Watch for it soon.

As always your comments are welcome.

If you want to explore these concepts further, please call Gary Gauthier at 248-672-1943  or Dave Gingrich at 248-446-2626.