Many are too focused on what they can find from “big data,” the Internet and social media–which anyone can have access to who has time and money. If you want to learn what’s really happening, you need to talk to human beings on a regular basis, not just for competitive intelligence, but for anything in life that you care about.
By the end of Markham Nolan’s TED talk, there will be 864 more hours of video on YouTube and 2.5 million more photos on Facebook and Instagram. So how do we sort through the deluge? Ellen Naylor‘s insight: Great talk by world class journalist, Markham Nolan, based in Dublin. Here are some of the nuggets: …
Read moreMarkham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online | Video on TED.com
Companies have business blind spots, and since they’re run by people: we also have blind spots. Two common blindspots are:
Assuming that others see what you see, feel what you feel, and think what you think
Thinking you understand and remember what others say, when you really only remember what you think about what they’ve said
One way to loosen up those blind spots is to engage in dialog with other people and listen, truly listen to what they’re saying. That’s behind many a successful marriage, business relationships, effective interviewers and successful researchers.
I have been using elicitation techniques for many years, but not quite in the military intelligence way, which seems like using the other person in a more negative way. These techniques take advantage of human tendencies to complain, gossip, correct and inform, which certainly works. However, I like to capture the human desire to be happy.
Developing Your Competitive Intelligence Skills is an introduction to competitive intelligence, which includes the definition of competitive intelligence, and 5 flavors of competitive intelligence: tactical, strategic, technical, counterintelligence and benchmarking. It also illustrates some analytic tools like SWOT, STEEP, BCG share of market matrix, and Adrian Slywotsky’s radar screen. This is a good introductory presentation for …
Ellen Naylor‘s insight: A longer, but insightful read. There are two takeaways I appreciate: Mindfulness thinking and that ability to put distance between the problem you are solving once you feel stumped and can do not more. You might just do something totally unrelated to problem solving which you enjoy and relax. Then when you come …
I recently gave a webinar on “How to improve your collection skills through interviewing and elicitation.” I particularly enjoyed the Q&A and will share my 2 favorites: What are some tips to get the interview in the first place? Reaching people live, referrals or customized email requests leading up to a phone call? How do you differentiate yourself from a telemarketer? Do you say what you’re doing?
Remember it’s not just what you say, but how you say it that makes you a successful interviewer.
People often ask me what is the benefit of elicitation versus the standard interview. Actually they share more in common than they differ. Preparation in similar. You want to learn as much about that person as you can before you talk to them. Elicitation is a conversational interview, a planned conversation. Elicitation builds off human tendencies that most people have: a desire for recognition; showing off, curiosity, gossip, complaining, correcting you.
Be skeptical of the business information you find through digital media and traditional media sources. So much of it comes from press releases and is regurgitated more or less at face value by other news sources. Press releases are carefully crafted to further the interests of the originating organization, whether a company, government organization, trade association or other special interest group. So who is telling the truth? A skeptical, informed person recognizes that news contains some bias, distortion and misinformation. You also know you can’t rely on a single news source, and if the same news is repeated by many sources, it’s good idea to find the original source, so you can check its veracity and the content that JDLR (just don’t look right).
Here’s another vote to have strong #networks! http://ow.ly/h4r5Q #connection @FastCompany Harvard Professor, Nicholas Christakis tells us how network science reveals that innovation–much like the dreaded flu bug–is contagious. Here’s where you need to position yourself to catch one (and maybe avoid the other). “Individuals located centrally within a network will be at both an increased risk for the …