Know the competition is basic business wisdom. Now professional
sleuths will get the goods for you, compiling a psychological profile of
your rival's CEO.
These "competitive intelligence agents" may try to identify their
subjects' styles of leadership, management, and negotiation. They may be
after an understanding of relationships in the company's inner circle:
who's in, who's out. Or they may simply find out what an executive has
done before.
"It's a fundamental law of business intelligence that people tend
to do the things that have worked for them in the past and avoid the
things that have failed," says Tim Ogilvie, vice president of the New
York intelligence firm Kaiser Associates.
In their search for clues about their quarry, these psychological
spies may pore over Who's Who, company bios, and college yearbooks, or
call subordinates, superiors, and coworkers for the scoop."You may only
get one or two tidbits from each person, but when you put it all
together, you get a pretty good picture," says Ogilvie.
Some agents attempt a more systematic approach. Cheryl Pourier, an
analyst at Whitestone Group consultants, relies on the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator, a personality test used by psychologists. Since she can't
administer the test directly, "we fudge it a little bit," she says. "By
looking at the signals the person gives in the marketplace, we infer the
answers that he might give on the test. Then we deduce from that whether
he's extroverted or introverted, neurotic or easygoing."
Though psychologists might frown on this use of the test, Pourier
finds it useful in indicating the moves an executive is likely to make.
But "you can never predict what people will do the future," she says.
"All you can do is narrow down the possibilities."
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