Is your company running in the wrong direction?
Most of the reasons companies fail boil down to one thing: running in the wrong direction.
Poor leadership, weak vision, miscalculated market potential, ignorance around competitors or changing winds, uninterested consumers…
It doesn’t matter how hard and fast you’re running if it’s toward the wrong destination.
Aviation’s “1 in 60 rule” says a plane off course by just 1° misses its target by 60 miles.
What that means for you?
The longer you stick to the wrong bet, the farther off-base you’ll land (and the more time, energy, and money you’ll waste along the way).
Issues within one (or more) of 3 components will tell you if you’re NOT running in the right direction:
1. Foundational stages of your strategy or innovation pipeline
2. Core knowledge pillars
3. Workflows (supply chain of knowledge and insights)
The tricky part? These are all interconnected.
Your insights engine (#3) spans all of the knowledge pillars (#2): you should be monitoring, vetting, and landscaping all of those “Cs” in order to stay on top of, get smart fast on, and deep dive into dynamics, players, and audiences that could make or break your business.
Only with that insight are you then equipped to plant the seeds for strong business, product, innovation, or go-to-market strategies (#1).
As one head of innovation at a $34.6 billion tech company we all know put it:
“That's a requirement of the job – to understand my industry, where it's going, and how it's moving. I would fail at my job if I didn't have that.”
👉 Think about it. If you…
❌ Don’t know about your competitors and developments in their offers
❌ Don’t know about your category and important dynamics affecting it
❌ Don’t know about macro trends or forces affecting your audience
❌ Don’t know about your consumers and their evolving wants, needs, & pains
❌ Don’t regularly monitor relevant conversations, developments, and shifts
❌ Only ask one-off questions in response to requests or random ideas
❌ Only do deep-dives periodically, sacrificing relevance and agility
👉 How on earth can you possibly be confident in knowing who you’re serving, what they need, how to best address those needs, and how to win with them???
Winning the race isn't just about speed and endurance. Those only matter if you're actually racing towards a real, consequential destination.
Of course, we’re in the business of helping companies make sure they’re running in the right direction.
If you’re lacking confidence in your fundamentals (who isn't), aware of a knowledge gap that needs closing (every company has one), and/or realize your insights engine is anything but always-on and proactive (most aren't), we’d love to show you a better way.
Victoria
P.S. An often-overlooked but 💎 of a source for competitor and category insight? 10Qs and 10Ks. So we've built advanced data scraping capabilities specifically for SEC filings to make it insanely fast and easy for you to:
Analyze a public company’s recent performance,
See what’s keeping your top competitors up at night,
Understand what big bets key players are making, and
Mine for mentions of key themes or words
Earnings season is upon us! If you're interested in beta testing this new tool and being the first to know what your competitors are up to, reply and let me know.