Blow Up the Readout

This article is based on an episode of the B2B Market Research Podcast. The audio version is also available here.

How often have you sat through a long, dry readout and wondered, “When is this going to end?” After a presentation, how often do you realize you spent the whole meeting answering emails? After the readout, how often do you have a new list of actions to consider?

Unfortunately, I’ll bet you answered these questions “often,” “frequently” and “next to never.”

To address this problem, let’s start with the basics. A readout is not simply a presentation of research findings. It’s the time when you have the most opportunity to impact business decisions.

Often, senior-level stakeholders will participate in the research effort for the first time during the readout. These are the folks with the power to make the business changes you’re advocating, so the readout is exceedingly important to get right. That’s actually an advantage. Your audience will arrive at the readout interested to know what you did and what you found out.

On the downside, your audience probably won’t read the findings deck in advance without some nudging. I realize that many researchers feel uncomfortable implying that reading the deck before the readout is mandatory. Usually, that results in a team of stakeholders sitting through a lecture when they would rather have a discussion.

You don’t have to live with this set of circumstances though.  There is a way to get your stakeholders to read the findings deck before the readout. Simply explain the benefits of doing so and stick to it.

Leaders make cost/benefit trade-offs all the time. If they don’t play ball, reschedule the readout. This suggestion may make you nervous, but think about it. Meetings are rescheduled all of the time. Why waste a chance to show that all that money spent on the research was worth it?

Make it clear that you’re starting your readout from an expectation that people have already read the deck. Establish that you will begin the meeting under the assumption that your stakeholders know what’s been researched and understand the basics of the methodology used. That way, the readout can be used as a discussion of the most actionable outcomes from the research. That’s a much more productive session than a recitation of the findings deck.

This readout model may spook you, but consider how successfully schools have been using a similar model: flipped classrooms.

The flipped classroom model reverses the traditional arrangement of lecture followed by homework assignments. In the flipped model, the homework is what would traditionally be seen as lecture material. Students are expected to read, and/or review video-based lectures on their own time. The in-class time is focused on applying the material through exercises, projects or discussions.

This is almost the complete opposite of traditional education models. In the recent past, students were told what they needed to know in lecture and then they did their homework at home in an effort to apply it. This led to legions of fourth-graders trying to do long division at the dinner table long into the evening. While this worked out alright for some students, it didn’t work for every learning style.

In corporate America, we’ve got the same problem.

The beauty of the flipped classroom is that it rewards learning through engagement rather than simply rewarding passive listening. We can apply these lessons to readouts for market research projects as well.

The traditional readout assumes that information dissemination is the primary goal of the readout. This traditional model assumes that discussion happens mostly outside of the readout, in the hallway and via email. The problem with this model is that the discussion about the implications of the research and how it should be used happens after the researchers have left the building. Frankly, that’s crazy. The researchers have done the work and have a valuable perspective to add- especially if they know the industry and have a sector focus.

For this reason, I strongly advocate a “flipped readout”- stakeholders read the deck on their own time and come to the readout prepared to discuss what to do with the findings. Everyone is in for a more interesting hour this way, and your stakeholders get a bigger bang for their research budget buck.

Here are a few tips to successfully flip your readout:

1. Share the findings deck in advance. In addition, include a tracking beacon in your email so you’ll know if it’s been opened or not before stakeholders attend the readout. If no one opens the deck, push back the meeting until they have a chance to.  You could also use a service like Attach.io to share the deck so that you know exactly which portions of the deck were engaged with the most, whether it was read in advance of the meeting, etc.
2. Pre-record the findings presentation. Share the recording with stakeholders a week or so before the discussion you’re going to have with the research vendor. This will ensure that stakeholders come to the readout prepared to discuss what to do with the research findings.

To summarize, the benefits of flipping the readout are:

• Better engagement with stakeholders. It’s much more fun to hash out solutions to problems than to be lectured.
• A quicker path to decision making. When stakeholders are required to review the findings deck prior to the meeting, you can focus on decisions to impact in the readout. Otherwise, these important discussions, if they happen at all, depend on the right hallway or Slack channel at the right time.
• Better use of stakeholder time. Let that hour you have with all of the stakeholders present be one where they engage with each other, your team and the research vendor. That’s a way more worthwhile use of time than a lecture.

A flipped readout is relatively painless to implement and yields hugely positive results. The only reason it isn’t more widely adopted is inertia. Change is hard, sure, but if the education sector can do it, so can corporate America. Don’t do your readouts the way everyone else has done it for years.  It’s time to make a change.

This B2B Market Research podcast is brought to you by Sean Campbell the CEO of Cascade Insights.

At Cascade Insights we specialize in market research and competitive intelligence for B2B technology companies.

Our focus allows us to deliver detailed insights that generalist firms simply can’t match.

Got a B2B tech sector question? We can help.

Fellows First Friday: Scenario Planning and M&A Driven Disruption

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) have been a part of the business environment since the advent of capitalism. Companies merge for many different reasons and the impact of the M&A will vary greatly. Between the reason for an M&A and the impact of the M&A, there are an almost infinite number of possible outcomes, many of which can have disruptive implications on the market and your company. Scenario planning is a tool that can help you anticipate disruption, develop strategies to mitigate its impact, or even position you to lead the disruption.

Forward-thinking companies use scenario planning to identify a potential M&A and to assess the impact that M&A will have on operations. Scenario planning allows staff to model out how a competitor will act under different situations and from there develop a robust strategy that can work under a variety of scenarios. In this Fellows First Friday, we’ll go over some ideas on how to incorporate M&A disruption into your scenario planning and strategy development.

The fundamental function of scenario planning is to think of alternative futures and identify non-linear disruptions. Most business planning has a straight line aspect to it, meaning it is based on a core assumption that everything will continue as it is; markets will continue to grow at set rates, competitors will stay in their usual markets and with their usual patterns, the technology will move at its same pace, and so on.  However, since the real future is not straight line, scenario planning will help you identify and respond to disruptions.  There are many different ways to go about scenario planning, ranging from high-touch interactive facilitated sessions to remotely lead automated software systems. Which to use depends on your culture, budget, time, and personal preference.

Building a scenario planning session around potentially disruptive M&A activity needs to focus on market drivers and assumptions. This step helps to put the planners in the mind of the competitors and to challenge internal assumptions about the competitive set. It is almost equally important to determine your own company’s internal assumptions about the market and competitors. Since these assumptions determine how the market and competitors’ strategies are considered, each must be challenged and verified as valid. Often, deeply held assumptions can be dispelled at this point, openly the path to identify new change drivers. However, deeply held assumptions require strong counter arguments to be effectively dispelled, which can be best provided using primary research.

In addition to the market drivers and assumptions, building a scenario around disruption must also focus on “wild cards”, potential changes that can cause disruption. A tool we frequently recommend to identify these potential wild cards is STEEP. This tool looks at changes in Society, Technology, Economy, Environment, and Politics to identify trends, future scenarios, and direction in business. By examining trends in each of the STEEP elements, it becomes possible to create scenarios that align market drivers with likely changes and quickly show gaps between market drivers and the scenarios, while also determining what is needed to fill those gaps.

Using the STEEP trends, combined with the market drivers and assumptions, scenarios should be created to show how a change in one STEEP factor will effect the competitive environment. Some may be obvious, while others are not as clear. It may take several rounds to complete, but in the end several mini-scenarios will emerge.  These mini-scenarios are linked by the likely STEEP factor change, including the wild card, market drivers and the assumptions behind the drivers. The mini-scenarios are further assessed to identify common elements across each, which may re-shuffle the deck. As the deck is reshuffled, key STEEP changes and market drivers, that is STEEP changes and market drivers that cut across multiple scenarios, start to emerge.

Once down to a manageable number of scenarios, the process can begin to identify those scenarios that include a disruptive M&A, or the likely targets for an M&A by a competitor. As noted, some of the disruptions will be easy to spot, others will take some time to emerge. Typically, a disruptive M&A will hinge on identifying a gap in what is needed to compete in the scenario and the capabilities, capacities, and strategy of the competitor. The disruptor will find an acquisition that can fill the gap, enabling the disruption to move forward.

As an example of how scenario planning can predict future M&A activity, consider the case of Tesla and the disruption it has had on the technology and sales model of the auto industry.  Major traditional automotive companies could have predicted the emergence of a Tesla based on an understanding of market drivers and changes in STEEP factors, many of which favored the emergence of an all-electric vehicle. Similar STEEP factors were present that indicated a growing movement to on-line sales, which presaged the Tesla non-dealership sales model. Scenario planning, may have lead a major automotive company to merge or acquire Tesla and its technology and taken on the role of disrupter.  Applying the same tools also indicates that once Tesla hits sales volumes that end federal subsidies on all electric vehicles, it is likely to merge with a larger company, perhaps a national dealership, or be acquired for its technology. In either case, the new Tesla will continue to disrupt the automotive market.

Effective scenario planning helps companies anticipate a disruption before it occurs and develop plans to counter the disruption, or even take a leading role in implementing the disruption. By looking at the market drivers, assumptions, and it the impact of STEEP changes, scenario planning brings focus to the disruption process and helps companies build robust strategies to survive the market evolution.

FELLOWS FIRST FRIDAY -Competitor Analysis – so much more!

There are numerous analytical tools out there to understand what competitors are doing – War Gaming, Management Profiling, Shadowing, Win/Loss Analysis, etc. However, when most people talk about analysing their competitors, most see the same nail and bring out the same hammer – SWOT!!

Unfortunately SWOT is the most misused analytical tool and in effect cannot analyse a competitor at all. Why? Because a SWOT cannot uncover a competitor’s real thinking!   Using a SWOT is all about your thinking (or should I say your assumptions/blindspots/interpretations) about the competitor!

One of my favourite tools for analysing competitors that has delivered amazing insights for clients over the years is Competitor Analysis or as it is commonly called the Four Corner Analysis. Developed by Michael Porter this tool challenges thinking about competitors and manages to deliver some amazing insights. Are competitors really predators or prey?

Competitor Analysis attempts to answer the following four questions:

What is the competitor’s real focus?

What likely moves or shifts will the competitor make?

Where are the blind spots/assumptions of this competitor?

What is the competitor’s likely response to market initiatives going to be?

Using this technique will help you uncover your competitor’s thinking, assumptions, and interpretations – not yours.

I am most interested to learn what has been your experience with analysing competitors? What worked for you? What did not work for you? What are your thoughts on Competitor Analysis? What tools do you use in your organisation to analyse your competitors and do you think they answer the same questions?

FELLOWS FIRST FRIDAY — You Never Know: Also, How to Prove You’re a Good Strategist

“You never know” is the all-purpose excuse, the duct tape of debriefing, the final shrug. It fits well be­cause it’s true.

You don’t know. Neither do I. But that doesn’t stop us from being smart strategists. That’s a hint of the exciting invitation I’ll extend to you once you get through a few more paragraphs. It’s an invitation to enter a strat­egy tournament and prove you’re a good strategist.

Sometimes it seems that the ultimate goal of intelligence is to find the number. The industry will be 48% app-driven by April 17, 2018. My top competitor will launch their high-end service on Tuesday. That new regulation will ban products exhaling more than one pennyweight of carbon per league.

Next, we turn into strategists. As strategists we assume that if we know the number we will know what to do.

I have logical, mathematical, and consistency objections to all that knowing. Plus, I don’t like assuming that a weakness today must remain a weakness forever or even that it is a weakness at all. The Tourna­ment, for example, turns the weakness of uncertainty into the strength of exploration.

• The logical objection. I’ve run many business war games around the world. I’ve watched almost every business team assume immediately that they know what the others will do. Meanwhile, the other teams are spending hours struggling to figure out what to do. How can we know, in a war game or real life, what they’re going to do when they don’t know?
• The mathematical objection. There are many possible futures. In a 15-minute exercise I ran with one company, we identified millions of them. (See The How-Likely Case about the millions and about what’s knowable and what’s not.) How can we pick the one that will happen? Simple: wait until one happens, then say it was obvious and inevitable and we knew it all along. Shoot the arrow, draw the bullseye.
• The consistency objection. We have august, expensive consultants and pundits who say a company should zig and equally august, expensive consultants and pundits who say the company should zag. They’re all confident and articulate and admirably bold with other people’s money, but all we truly know is that they can’t all be right.

You never know, I never know. Still, we have to decide and act. We just don’t want to be blind about it.

It seems to me that if surprises, whether threats or opportunities, come out of left field, we ought to look at left field. Explore the terrain, test the possibilities, search for alternatives. That’s part of what simula­tion is for. (The other part is to do the arithmetic.)

I’ve been running the Top Pricer Tournament™ for a few years. Over 700 people from around the world — executives, consultants, students, professors — have entered their pricing strategies for generic busi­nesses competing in the generic Ailing, Mature, and Fast Growth industries.

Every one of those people thought they’d entered the best strategies. How do I know? Because if they’d thought another strategy was better, they’d have entered the other one. And yet:

• People have entered wildly different strategies for exactly the same situations.
• People have chosen strategies saying that they want to grow market share without regard to profits, and others have chosen exactly the same strategies saying they want to improve profits without re­gard to market share.
• No human has yet found the best strategies found by the computer.

(For more, please see “Question What You ‘Know’ about Strategy” in the Harvard Business Review.)

No one knows it all but the best way to know some more is to experiment and to be willing to be wrong. I learned that the easy way — in a simulation — when I put my own strategies into the Tournament. I know, I know, that’s not fair, I wrote the simulation, but I was going to remove my strategies after seeing how thoroughly I beat everyone else. Except I didn’t. Just like those business teams, I made assumptions about what others would do, and I was wrong. When I figured it out, I got perhaps my greatest lesson ever in competitive strategy.

You might too. You never know.

Here’s the invitation. You can enter the Top Pricer Tournament. It’s free, confidential, and fun. You will not get put on any email list. You will get a report summarizing how your strategies perform relative to those of over 700 people. You will also help me further my research in strategic thinking (thank you!). And if you enter before March 8 and do especially well, you will (if you wish) be lauded in these pages.

To enter, contact me at TopPricer@DecisionTournaments.com.

Good luck!

FELLOWS FIRST FRIDAY – NEW YEAR, NEW THEME, NEW QUESTIONS: How Can the Porter’s Five Forces Help the CI Practitioner Provide Value to an Organization Operating in a Hyper M&A Environment?

3 years  ago, Cliff Kalb started the Fellow First Friday to spur Competitive Intelligence discussions. Starting in 2016, I have been honored with assuming management of the Fellows First Friday posts.   As the title indicates, with a new year we are taking the opportunity to put a theme around the Fellows First Friday posts.

Given the consolidation and acquisition activities that many of our industries have experienced over the past few years, we thought it would be a good idea to have the 2016 Fellows First Friday discussions focus on the “Importance of CI in the Era of Industry Consolidation and Hyper Acquisition Activity– How CI Brings Value to Your Organization”.

So with this theme as the back drop, I wanted to take this Fellows First Friday to explore the role of CI practitioners in enabling M&A decision making and the use Porter’s Five Forces in enabling such decisions.

Correctly identifying the structure and competitive dynamics of the industry your organization is proposing to enter via M&A provides an excellent overview for an organization to judge whether to make the investment required to enter the proposed industry.   Michael Porter’s Five Forces model provides such an overview.  In addition, it is my experience, that CI teams can provide this level of decision support to their organizations as they typically have a rounded view of the environment their organization is operating in.

The central point of Porter’s Five Forces Model is that the stronger that one of the five competitive forces becomes, the greater the overall competitive rivalry becomes within the industry. The more intense the competitive rivalry becomes, the harder it is for firms within the industry to raise prices or maintain high prices to generate greater profits.  In addition, the importance of each of the five forces is dependent upon the circumstances of the industry which is being contemplated. For example, the overall threat of new market entrants might be insignificant in determining whether the organization wants to enter an industry in its growth phase, but it may be a paramount factor if the industry being contemplated is in its mature phase.
So, to restate the question, is Porter’s Five Forces a key tool in enabling M&A decision making and what’s the role of the CI practitioner in this environment?

FELLOWS FIRST FRIDAY: What can private sector intelligence learn from government intelligence about legitimacy and professionalism?

Almost three years ago, I kicked off the Fellows First Friday series of questions from the CI Council of Fellows with the question “Is competitive intelligence a legitimate profession? The thread of comments that were bandied about offered a wide variety of views including “absolutely yes”, “absolutely not” and “we’re on our way.”  The issue was controversial by design, and the outcome showed no consensus as one might expect around a question where even the “gurus” agreed to disagree.

Several years have passed. The Council of CI Fellows met recently where I informally checked among a sample of my colleagues if anything had changed on this issue of CI legitimacy as a profession. The judgement among the experts still indicated a broad range of opinion on the matter, i.e., no consensus.

Recently I’ve been working with and learning from some colleagues from an intelligence community we don’t discuss too often in CI circles… government intelligence practitioners. Some are academics, some in the military, some in homeland security, and others supporting law enforcement. It occurred to me that within the government intelligence community, there seems to be no debate on this matter at all. Their legitimacy is well established, their role is deemed professional and mandatory for successful operation, and while funding may vary somewhat from year to year, it seems to be consistently available to support their mission.

So let me pose the question another way this time.. How did they get there? Why don’t they struggle with constantly justifying their existence, and acquiring adequate resources to get the job done? How have they proven to their stakeholders that they make an extraordinary contribution to strategy by applying many of the same principles we apply in our CI work, e.g., the intelligence cycle, intelligence topics and action plans, critical strategic thinking skills,  concise, insightful deliverables, and evidence based guidance and unique actionable perspectives for their stakeholders?

What are we missing in CI that enabled  the  government intelligence community the ability to claim legitimacy as a profession so long ago that we continue to struggle to achieve in business?  I welcome your thoughts, commentary and candid opinions that will shed some light on the matter..

 

Who’s first and why does that matter?

November 9, 2015

Several years ago, The Economist reported on a study that has interesting consequences for competitive intelligence (CI). The study essentially indicates that decision-makers are biased by the daily pieces of information they are working with. Or, as the article puts it, interviewers favor those seen first.

For those in CI, that means that the person doing some CI research (and analysis) is most impacted by the first person they speak to about this. Who is that? The Client. In other words, anyone doing any CI research runs the risk of being infected by the Client’s own stated or unstated biases. Why? Because that is the first person that he or she talks to about the project, so the CI researcher/analyst give him/her greater weight than people they later interview in their work.

Carolyn Vella, Managing Partner at The Helicon Group, suggests an even more interesting possible issue. For those who do the research, whether for a Client or for yourself, being methodical may not be a great idea. That is, if you start every project, say, by checking consumer blogs and then checking industry experts (or vice versa), then you may be overly influenced by what that first site or interviewee discloses. And, doing your research the same way each time could tend to assure that you never escape that bias trap.

She also suggests a cure: not only vary the way you start, but start with sites (or interviewees) that quickly disclose their own biases. For example, start with a consumer blog where people tell everyone WHY they are critical or supportive of a product. That is, position yourself to inoculate against your own or your client’s own biases by exposure to the biases of others.

Think about it.

Why Win/Loss Analysis?

Win/Loss Analysis

Fellows First Friday!

As I reflect on Win/Loss analysis, I note that its results if acted on, consistently bring the most visible ROI (return on investment) of any competitive intelligence (CI) technique I know of. Well, perhaps war games are on a par, again if the company takes action!

Below is a short list of common Win/Loss program benefits:

• Increased closed rates
• Improved customer retention
• Higher customer spend, i.e. larger deals
• Product development ideas
• Unmet market needs
• Unintended markets/uses for your product or service

Yet most companies don’t have a formal Win/Loss analysis program. Most do ask sales why they think they won or lost a deal. For more complex deals, there is often a post-sale debrief on what went right and wrong, which engages the sales and marketing team dedicated to that deal. These results are useful, but they lack the additional intelligence you gain from interviewing your customers who chose your product, and those who chose a competitor. However, these results provide great intelligence to feed into your Win/Loss program.

The profession of sales has been turned upside down as prospects are heavily influenced by the product and competitor data they can find on the Internet, whereas in yesteryear they depended on sales reps for this data. Customers buy based on perceptions, whether they’re accurate or not. For example, your company will get locked out of being considered for a deal due to an unconvincing web or social media presence. Perhaps some customers or an industry consultant have slammed you. Or your brand ID is weak. Thus, Win/loss analysis must assess so much more than sales and customer service. Findability is an important addition to an effective program. When sales realizes that Win/Loss isn’t just targeted on them, they will often buy into the process, since they have so much to gain from the gathered intelligence. Plus, the company will make changes in marketing or product development, for example, that will grow sales’ pipeline.

While Win/Loss analysis does provide such a visible ROI, it may be threatened by the ever busy workforce, who we rely on to give us their time to share their buying decision journey, which might include product or service shortcomings that no company is providing. Most of us spend increasing time in the digital world as compared to the in-person world having a conversation or meeting. Some folks are less comfortable in participating in a human person-to-person conversation, which is the backbone of Win/Loss.

On the other hand, being heard and listened to is a basic human need. Opportunities for this are increasingly scarce in today’s business climate. While you can broadcast your thoughts through digital media, you wonder who is listening, since many just passively read and move on. Since Win/Loss interviews take place after the stress of the buying decision is past, customers often appreciate sharing and being listened to—strangely enough, even if they chose a competitor’s solution.

I share this background to ask you to share about your experience with Win/Loss analysis.

• What has been your experience in conducting Win/Loss analysis? Tell us about the good, bad and the ugly…
• What are the benefits your company (if engaged in an in-house program) or your clients (if outsourced program) have experienced?
• What are the downsides?
• How do you see Win/Loss evolving given our continuing love affair with digital connection, big data, and the development of “sales personas”?
• What can you gain from a Win/Loss program that you don’t get from other research?
• How do you use Win/Loss results to help your company be more strategic and competitive?
• What do you see as the key threats to Win/Loss analysis as a viable CI technique over the next 5 years?

Ellen Naylor leads The Business Intelligence Source, a 20+ year CI consultancy, and has pursued this fascinating and ever changing occupation for 30 years. She is the author of the soon to be released book, Win/Loss Analysis: How to Clinch and Keep the Business You Want. Expected publish date: Spring 2016.

Starting It Right Means Finishing It Right

September 15, 2015

When you’re faced with starting a CI project, your instinct probably tells you to dive into it.  That is totally wrong.  You have to step back and consider what it is you are going after before you go after it.

Start by writing or typing what it is you want to know.  Let’s say you found out that the competitor has launched a new product.  Your question may be “What does that mean to us?”

That is too broad.  Try narrowing the question down by asking couple of sub questions like, “What do they expect to gain by offering this product?”, or “Is it aimed at eventually replacing a product already in their inventory?” or “Is it the first in a line of future products?”

Then look at these questions, and eliminate those that really are not important.  The goal is to leave you with a targeted question that you can focus on.

If this sounds too bookish, try another approach.  Ask yourself,

“If I had the answer, the competitive intelligence that I think I need, what decision could I make or what action could I take that I can’t do now without it?”

If your answer is unclear or uncertain, then why are you doing this? Your goal is unclear.

What I’m trying to show you is that you should use CI for “need to know“, not “nice to know” problems.  Nice to know is – well – nice.  Need to know is actionable and in your hands the CI you develop can be proactive.

There are other benefits of doing this. An article, “Contemplation and conversation: Subtle influences on moral decision making”, and a book, Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, both support this advice for additional, compelling reasons.

• “Contemplation” concludes that experiments show that slowing down will make us act more ethically.  OK. So, assuming that is correct, what does that mean for CI? It means that thinking through your needs and your best approach before you start will minimize the chances that you will cross (or be forced to cross) ethical lines. Not a bad payback for doing it right in the first place.
• Wait deals with the benefits of active (that is good) procrastination. The author, Professor Partnoy, argues that snap decisions are inherently poor. He advocates determining the “longest amount of time” you can take before doing something (like drawing a conclusion from your research) and then to “delay the response or decision until the very last possible moment. If it is a year, wait 364 days. If it’s an hour, wait 59 minutes.”

For your CI project, this all translates into (a) beginning your research after you have finished all of the planning for it, and (b) then, drawing a conclusion only when you absolutely have to.

Some Pig!

July 27, 2015

Let me say a few words about the problem of misdirection in competitive intelligence research (CI).  By misdirection, I mean that you end up looking somewhere that seems to be interesting or important or even attractive, and by doing so, you may miss what is really important.  The title, “Some Pig” is taken from Charlotte’s Web and refers to the scene where the spider draws attention to the pig by doing something spectacular.  In all fairness, the attention should have been on “some spider”, but the misdirection served a good purpose.

In CI, what happens is when we research things, we often have to look over a broad area, and, at first, determine what is likely to be important and what unimportant.  This is where, initially, misdirection can set in.  Now here, I’m not dealing with misdirection that is purposeful by the targets, although that can happen as well.  What I’m dealing with is misdirection because of your focus.

Let me give you a somewhat cleaned up example.  We’re looking at a project that involves evaluating some aspects of a very large industrial complex.  As it turns out industrial complex is made up of several different, but somewhat connected, facilities.  So the first question really is which facility or facilities should we focus our attention on?  To do this, we have to do a first dig into each of the facilities, at least to rule them in or out.

Misdirection can easily set in here.  But when? When the information on one of the preliminary targets is very interesting, or very complex and therefore requires a lot of attention, or, alternatively is somewhat easy to obtain and results in a take of a lot of raw data.  In any one of those cases, you, as the analyst, face the issue of allocation of your resources, that is, how much time you put into evaluating each of these.  And here is where misdirection can come in.  If you find one of the three facilities that seem to have an interesting history, or a very unusual management structure, or a particularly complex way of operating, it is likely you will spend too much time on that facility during the first stage.  You should be, instead, deciding whether or not you be should be spending any time at all on the facility.

Now, misdirection by your target is a whole different thing.  Here you have to be aware of the fact that you are being led in a certain direction, to certain fact patterns, and even to certain conclusions.  The tipoff here is often that the data that you seek seems to be almost too easy to obtain.  But, if pursued, it is also almost impossible to verify independently.  Now it is perfectly possible that the data is correct and complete, but you have no way of knowing that.  So, when you see a target where the “answer” seems to be way too easy, think misdirection (or even disinformation).  Or instead of “Some Pig”, think “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” (Wizard of Oz, 1939).