tilt the playing field
THE SOUL OF THE WEIRD MACHINE
KENT POTTER AND NANCY POTTER, Bennion-Robertson Inc.
The research is done. We’ve
gathered the data, polled the experts,
and culled the facts. We’ve gamed out
the choices, and we know just what
we’d do if we were in their shoes.
We have a very sure sense of their
capabilities, and a fairly strong grip on
their market prospects. Now, assuming
we haven’t acquired all of their plans,
exactly what will our competitor (or
customer or partner) actually do?
Who knows? Get out the Ouija
board and Tarot Cards – or throw
the bones, Bob, because we may not
have a serious clue. Even when we
think we know what an individual
decision-maker may decide, or how
her team may choose, we’re too often
surprised by choices that seem to come
out of nowhere. It’s almost as if our
target company simply applied results
from a random executive decision-
generator.
(For the more cynical among us,
it seems that it should only be a matter
of time until random corporate choices
become fully automated. This would
certainly make them more convenient,
as we wouldn’t have to wait as long
to learn the results, or our fate. Please
see www.acronymfinder.com/buzzgen.
asp for a sample application – this is
one for simple management acronyms.
Management choices might be similarly
generated with very little effort.)
WHAT HAPPENED?
We may have been foiled by an
enemy that lurked behind one of several
suspect embankments. We may, of
course, have simply done sloppy analysis.
In our experience, however, even
competent analysis runs awry. Analysis
often fails in the face of one of the
following conditions:
Volume 7 • Number 5 • September-October 2004
We may simply lack data.
Deep CI insight into a company’s
plans normally ends where our data
does. We can never truly get enough
solid data about the target company.
Even when we have it, just wait a bit
– it won’t be enough by morning, or
maybe even tonight, because there’s
that new question that the boss just
remembered.
They didn’t act on the preferred
choice.
We may have correctly identified
the leader’s preferred choice of action,
but not anticipated how the company
would act upon that choice. How
many times has YOUR company done
exactly what the CEO announced it
would at the beginning of the year?
Hopefully, the larger strategic plan
guides decisions, but that is not always
the case. As Henry Mintzberg explains,
Strategy as plan and pattern can be
quite independent of each other: plans
may go unrealized, while patterns may
appear without preconception. If we label
the first definition intended strategy and
the second realized strategy, then we can
distinguish deliberate strategies, where
intentions that existed previously were
realized, from emergent strategies, where
patterns developed in the absence of
intentions, or despite them (which went
unrealized). (Mintzberg 1996 p11-2)
WHY THE CHANGE?
Why do organizations sometimes
act so weirdly, and so differently than
their designated leaders originally
seemed to intend? There are many
possible answers:
• unexpected market conditions may
intervene
• a lack of alignment about strategies
and outcomes between differing
echelons of leadership
• incompetence in resource allocation
and management
• a general failure of leadership at all
levels
An even more frequent cause of
mismatches between the top leader’s
choice and the company’s eventual
plan and execution may be simply
this: the leader is not the company!
Leaders strongly influence the choice,
but that choice is rarely a lonely one.
While much has been written on the
importance of profiling individual
leaders, organizational choices are team
efforts.
Once the decision is made, it’s also
a team effort to interpret that decision
for application at every echelon of the
company. Often strategic decisions
aren’t made just once within major
companies. They must be made again
and again, at each level in turn, as each
subordinate grouping decides how to
apply the strategic choice within its own
domain.
HELP FOR THE LUCKY GUESSER
We’ve all known the lucky guesser
– that fortunate soul who seems able to
guess what other companies will do, at
least somewhat accurately. Corporate
decision culture analysis is an analytical
technique that can help us anticipate
how companies will decide – and then
act – when faced by normal conditions
of scant specific data and the seeming
wild card of corporate execution.
(Unfortunately our executives often
expect us to validate suppositions
without a solid backing in fact: What
will they do if we do X? What happens
SCIP 2004 www.scip.org 63
tilt the playing field
if the market does Y? Into these depths
the boss will delve, even if we dare not.)
This is more than simply
speculating what we’d do if we were in
the other fellow’s shoes, a time-honored
tradition amongst leadership analysts.
In the Second World War, General
George Patton said of the Germans
(and especially of General Rommel):
I have studied the enemy all of
my life. I have read the memoirs of his
generals and leaders. I have even read his
philosophers and listened to his music. I
have studied in detail the account of every
*** one of his battles. I know exactly
how he will react under any given set of
circumstances. And he hasn’t the slightest
of what I’m going to do. So when the time
comes, I’m going to whip the *** out of
him.” (Proceedings of the US Naval
Institute 2001 p.76)
Unfortunately, standing in the
other fellow’s shoes doesn’t do the whole
job if that other fellow doesn’t make
the whole decision. Understanding a
company’s decision culture must reach
beyond our efforts to understand the
company’s leader if we want to whip the
*** out of our competition.
ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION
CULTURE
We understand organizational
decision culture to be a subset of
corporate culture. It is that part of
corporate culture that impels and
constrains organizational decision-
making behavior. It helps determine
what information will be acquired and
consumed by the decision process, and
who will play in that process.
This culture may specifically
dictate how decisions are made, how
fast they are made, who is permitted
to influence them, who will interpret
them for the company at large and for
the media, and how that will be done.
Such culture may even determine if any
decision will be made at all.
This is the first in a series of articles
about decision culture. In this series, we’ll:
64 SCIP 2004 www.scip.org
• Define decision culture,
differentiating it from broader
corporate or operational culture, and
specify its importance in anticipating
and influencing corporate choice.
• Show how leadership profiling
and analysis fits into the broader
context of corporate decision-
culture analyses.
• Identify layers of culture that affect
how companies identify, select,
and process information from the
outside world, examining each
layer’s impact on organizational
decision-making.
• Specify important decision-culture
influences and how they operate.
• Tie all of this together by
describing how to conduct and
use decision-culture research
to understand and anticipate
(and perhaps even influence)
organizational choice.
CORPORATE CULTURE
In their seminal work, Kennedy
and Deal (1982) defined corporate
culture as consisting of five elements:
1. A business environment orientation
such as sales, research and
development, or customer service.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you always knew who really had the power?
2. A set of values forming the heart
of corporate culture, such as key
shared beliefs about what matters
most and why those things matter.
3. Heroes who personify
organizational values, serving as
role models of corporate success
(i.e., helping to communicate the
vision of this is what you must do
to succeed).
4. Rites and rituals that ingrain
and enforce expected employee
behavior through careful planning
and celebrations (product
launches and special meetings and
conferences, for instance).
5. A cultural network to disseminate
stories and gossip about valued
behavior and heroic myths
throughout the organization.
Kennedy and Deal noted that
companies bear a remarkable similarity
to tribes. We all have our myths, our
legends, our shamans – and our all-
encompassing religion that elevates
certain beliefs and denigrates others.
After Kennedy and Deal, a host of
culture consultants arose to help
companies improve their corporate
culture.
But we want to use that same
culture analysis to see how our target
Competitive Intelligence Magazine
 tilt the playing field

decisions, we have to understand the CPU, you can go a long way toward
in detail who makes them, what predicting – and affecting – CPU
information is used, and how they are output. And that is how the decision
made. culture works with the decision-makers.

THE CULTURAL OPERATING THE FIVE RINGS OF

SYSTEM INFORMATION AND INFLUENCE
We might think of corporate (OR MAYBE SIX)
decision culture as the operating system We see at least five successive rings
of the company. In a computer, the of influence on corporate decision-
company makes decisions. Note that central processing unit (CPU) might making – an onion model of sorts
the sort of culture described really be considered the chief decision-maker (in shape, not smell). (See Figure 1.)
concerns the broader social and of the machine. It decides what is to be We’ll peel this onion in future columns
execution culture of the company, the done with strings of data it is asked to (please, no tears).
culture of how things get done in the access, process, and store. The first two rings (decision-
broadest sense. To deeply understand Application software sets various makers, key leaders) are people, while
another company, we must look at rules for data processing, and oversees the final three rings (unit, industry,
its corporate culture. For the sake of the disposition and encoding of data and national culture) refer to intangible
efficiency, we recommend starting with after it has been processed. But it is concepts. In future articles, we’ll discuss
the target company’s decision culture: the computer’s operating system that each of these rings in turn, and consider
how things are decided within the determines which application will get the impact they have on the core
target company. to send information to the CPU, and decision culture of the organization.
which application will get priority
processing, and how. Final decision-makers
WHO MAKES THE DECISION? To understand the inner workings At the center of the onion – the
Why is this important? Long of a computer, you must know a great core – reside the final decision-makers.
before top leaders and their key staff deal about that computer’s operating They are the ones normally subject
consult together to make choices, system before you can understand how to leadership analyses and remote
other staff members will have collected the CPU will handle its data processing profiling studies. These individuals
information about what they think demands. Even more importantly, once ostensibly have the final say in what is
their bosses will need, or even helped you understand how the operating decided, but not always in the sort of
interpret it, highlighting what they system accesses and prioritizes calls on information they process in making that
think their bosses should see. No
outside information comes FIVE RINGS OF INFORMATION & INFLUENCE
unguarded into the executive
core direct and unadorned.
Although the chiefs may
deny it, most organizational
information about the
1. "FINAL" DECISION MAKERS'
outside world is carefully
selected, vetted, trimmed, 2. INNER CIRCLE LEADERS
and groomed before it is 2 1 INFORMATION
placed before the eyes of 3. UNIT ORGANIZATIONAL 3
executive decision-makers. CULTURE INFLUENCE
Then, once the decision is
4
made, the results are often 4. INDUSTRY CULTURE
once again filtered by layers
of company interpretation,
5
before ever that decision is 5. NATIONAL CULTURE
enacted for the outside world
to see.
If we want to understand
or to eventually influence these Figure 1: Five Rings of Information and Influence

Volume 7 • Number 5 • September-October 2004 SCIP 2004 www.scip.org 65

tilt the playing field
choice, nor in the ways their decision
will be interpreted and acted out by
those around them.
Inner circle leaders
The second ring is populated by
inner circle leaders. While these people
may often be the obvious denizens of
the organizational line and block chart,
some of them may not be on that chart
at all. They may be situated entirely
outside the formal organization of the
top leadership, or even of the company.
What these people have in common is
the trust and confidence of the final
decision-makers.
Unit organizational culture
In the third ring is the decision-
affecting aspects of the company’s
organizational culture. (Don’t worry;
we won’t cover all of corporate culture
here!) While the emphasis shifts from
people to concepts, it is only because
we can’t reasonably conduct competent,
individual analyses on each employee
– only on key staff.
By the time we reach the third ring,
we must begin to generalize how things
are done around the target organization.
We can then test these generalizations
in our research:
• How are decisions made – by the
book?
• How are decisions really made in
real life?
• What sort of information is used in
making them?
• How long do they take to decide?
• What values are prized in any
decision-making process?
• Who must be involved?
• How must the choice be
articulated?
• How fast is it done, and what levels
of risk are assumed?
Here is where the other ring of the
onion comes in. There are at least two
further parts of analysis at this level.
The first is the formal organization,
66 SCIP 2004 www.scip.org
the one reflected in the line-and-block
charts. The second is the informal
organization, the way things are actually
done. It reflects those people who really
have the decision-making power, and
those who have influence over them.
Industry culture
The fourth ring (which doesn’t
always exist) is industry culture. Where
it does exist, it can be pervasive! What
norms operate within companies in that
sector? Are there notable exceptions?
How do these norms (or variants) affect
decision-making?
National culture
The final ring is national culture.
By this we mean national influences
on decision-making. Here we consider
how national or other characteristics
might affect the course of the decision,
including all key decision attributes.
We intend to flesh out these rings
into concepts that will help CI analysts
do a better job of anticipating corporate
choice in a rapidly changing (and data
scarce) competitive environment. These
same concepts can provide market
strategists new tools for planning
corporate influence campaigns. We
welcome your thoughts and comments
as they unfold.
REFERENCES
Deal, Terrence and Kennedy, Allan
(1982) Corporate Cultures.
Addison-Wesley.
Deal, Terrence and Kennedy, Allan
(2000). The New Corporate
Cultures: Revitalizing the Workplace
After Downsizing, Mergers, and
Reengineering. Perseus Books
Group.
Mintzberg, Henry (1996). The Strategy
Process: Concepts, Contexts, and
Cases. Prentice Hall.
Proceedings of the US Naval Institute.
August 2001.
Nancy Potter is co-founder of Bennion-
Robertson, Inc., a business-to-business
intelligence process and strategy firm.
Bennion-Robertson helps companies
improve their yield on decision-making,
and uses advanced behavioral and
influence models to help companies
understand, anticipate, and ethically
influence organizations. Reach them
via the firm’s website, www.bennion-
robertson.com, or via email at
nancy@bennion-robertson.com.
Competitive Intelligence Magazine