In any business, one of the toughest questions to answer is, "What do you need to know to do your job well?"

Whether you're asking an engineering colleague or someone in management, you're likely to get one of two reactions: they'll either reply with vague generalities like "whatever the competition does," or they'll shrug and tell you they need to think about it.

The truth is, daily operations easily consume us, narrowing our vision and causing us to lose sight of the medium and long-term perspective.

Setting the company's radar should address the organization's needs and the individual requirements within each area of responsibility. Reflection must be both collective and individual, and the Intelligence Directive is a powerful tool to guide this process.

What is an Intelligence Directive?

The Intelligence Directive is a strategic document that serves as a compass for monitoring the competitive environment. It allows your company to define, organize, and prioritize the intelligence activities required to maintain competitiveness and proactively respond to critical market changes.

This essential document answers key questions such as:

• Which market aspects must we monitor?

• What emerging technologies could impact our industry?

• Which current or future regulations could affect our business model?

• What are our direct and indirect competitors doing?

How to create an Intelligence Directive

To draft an effective Intelligence Directive, follow these essential steps:

1. Clearly identify your company's strategic objectives and understand how intelligence can support them. We'll explore this in more detail below.

2. Define each element according to specific monitoring areas or departments: technological, competitive, regulatory, etc.

3. Specify clear responsibilities: who will define intelligence requirements, analyze the data, and who will consume the insights.

4. Set priorities based on relevance and urgency for each department or individual involved to ensure systematic and prioritized execution.

5. Establish a regular review schedule for the directive to ensure it remains relevant and adaptable to changes.

Implementing an Intelligence Directive clarifies why certain aspects are monitored and why others are not, aligning closely with the strategic plan, which defines current organizational activities.

A clear Intelligence Directive aligns the whole organization around concrete, timely, and specific strategic information tailored precisely to business needs. Ultimately, it promotes better-informed decision-making.

A practical template for your Intelligence Directive

At Antara, we've developed a simple and practical template for your company's Intelligence Directive. You can easily download and adapt it to your requirements.

We've created it in MS Excel format intentionally, allowing direct import into your SharePoint portal as a Microsoft List for managing the Intelligence Function. Given that many companies rely on MS 365 for their intranets, we believe this offers significant convenience.

How to identify intelligence objectives in your company?

Of all the steps listed above, the first one—identifying strategic intelligence objectives—is undoubtedly the most complex. As noted earlier, asking colleagues directly and without preparation often yields poor results. However, if executed properly, this step can significantly boost the company's resilience and drive more successful innovation.

Here’s how you can effectively handle this critical initial phase:

1. Review existing strategic documents such as business plans, annual reports, and innovation strategies. Absorb these guidelines to contrast them effectively with the needs identified in the process. Highlight significant discrepancies, as these reveal alignment issues between strategy and execution.

2. List internal stakeholders. Select these individuals based on their professional expertise (avoiding extreme cases like very junior staff or disengaged employees), level of responsibility, and departmental alignment. Prioritize areas where intelligence has the greatest potential impact: strategy, marketing, sales, innovation, and regulatory compliance.
   
   If available, consult individual employee objectives and improvement areas identified in performance reviews, ensuring alignment with broader intelligence objectives.
   
   Consider involving external partners like strategy consultants or open innovation collaborators to reveal blind spots—important elements you may not have realized needed monitoring.

3. Communicate your intentions clearly. If your Competitive Intelligence function has already been explained previously, proceed. Otherwise, send an introductory email, share a video, or provide material explaining your goals clearly. Antara offers multiple resources to support this task, so feel free to contact us.
   
   Create a dedicated working group within your collaboration tools (e.g., Microsoft 365) to streamline management and resource-sharing for the Intelligence Function.
4. Conduct initial interviews by selecting a few stakeholders first to refine your approach. Ensure they understand the initial communication. Ask THE critical question privately: "What do you need to know to do your job well?" It's fine if they don't immediately answer; the goal is to encourage deep reflection ahead of a second interview. If responses are vague, guide them with suggestions and concrete examples.
5. For the second interview round, ensure participants have had time to reflect. Send reminders a few days before. Interviews can be individual or group-based, each having pros and cons:
   • Individual interviews allow deeper exploration of specific needs and are easier to schedule.
   • Group workshops stimulate collaborative reflection but may lack depth and are harder to organize.
6. Document your conclusions clearly as the first version of your Intelligence Directive. Share it via email and post it on your intranet.

Common obstacles and difficulties in this phase

Identifying strategic objectives often faces challenges, including:

• Lack of clarity or consensus on strategic objectives. Strategic plans may exist but often fail to influence daily operations effectively or may be too generic.

• Resistance to change or low engagement from key stakeholders. Employees may doubt the practical value or fear additional workloads.

• Insufficient culture of collaboration and transparency. Information-sharing might be viewed as risky rather than beneficial.

Addressing these issues requires deliberate efforts by Intelligence Function leaders. Strategies include alignment workshops, clear communication of benefits, robust senior management support, and fostering inter-departmental collaboration.

Implementing your Intelligence Directive

As a professor from business school once said, it's now time to "get the job done." Implement your Intelligence Directive's findings effectively within your competitive intelligence and technology watch system:

1. Ensure prioritized sources identified by stakeholders (competitors, journals, regulatory bodies) are monitored.

2. Clearly define intelligence needs.

3. Guarantee efficient information flow both internally and externally.

4. Monitor progress continuously using dashboards and adjust as needed.

These tasks become significantly simpler with a dedicated software like Antara. Feel free to request a personalized demo—we’re eager to help!