Shaping revenue: Using hard truths to grow revenue the right way | Fouad Benyoub

Welcome back to another episode of Compete Clarity. Today we sit down with Fouad Benyoub. Fouad was our first ever guest on the show. He rejoins us today to talk about what he sees as the biggest challenges facing a CI professional today and offers his advice on how you can overcome these challenges to thrive in the role. Stay tuned to discover How being a contrarian opens the door for both opportunities and scrutiny, and how to deal with that scrutiny to best benefit your career. The difference between giving stakeholders what they want and what they need, and how to strike just the right balance between the two. The spoken and unspoken challenges facing CI pros today, and which you can face and fix. And we'll also discuss a little bit about AI's role in competitive intelligence today and how it could shape its future. In preparation for the launch of our AI in CI playbook, which hits your screens this May. For now, please welcome Fouad Benyoub. All right, Fouad, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you back with us. You were the first guest on the show, actually, probably— what was it, around a year ago, I think. So it's great to have you back. You've been on before. People might be familiar with your background already, but I thought we'd just start with something interesting. You're considered a little bit of a contrarian in the competitive intelligence world. Tell us a little bit about how you got that reputation. Do you agree with it? Is it deserved?

Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you, Alex. Very happy to be here. Always a pleasure working with the Alliance in different formats. And yeah, it was a year ago. I think it was the first one. And yeah, I'm happy to be back. And to your point, I mean, contrarian, I learned that over the time. I mean, I was not considering myself as a contrarian per se, but over Over time, I mean, people were sharing with me, let's say, you have to be, let's say, to please more stakeholders. And I was not understanding that because, you know, to me, it was very simple. It's to provide the most accurate picture about the competitive landscape, make stakeholders understand what's happening out there and bring analysis as deep as I can with recommendations. And sometimes it backfired, to be honest with you. And so, I mean, I learned about that over time. Maybe they didn't use exactly contrarian in most of the cases. Some used it clearly. But yeah, there are some. Okay, I will put it this way. I don't care about joining the herd when it comes to doing the job. So one example is like when we are focusing a lot or you have a lot of people or organizations focusing on downstream side of competitive intelligence. I mean by that, it's like, uh, supporting the deal, and it's just that. And I always fought against that to, to, to try to educate people and make them understand that you have to go as upfront as possible. And it goes to business strategy, it goes to product roadmap, it goes to a lot of other things. It's like to not get stuck in that. And sometimes it's not popular to have that kind of position to say, well, This is, you know, this is concrete. I mean, it's clear. Yeah, this is one example. Another example is like short-term versus long-term. And it's like you have requests on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and people rush to just and hustle to be able to just deliver on the request you receive Thursday for Friday. And sometimes for me, I'm just saying, well, no, I'm not going to be doing this because I mean, it's not possible. And most importantly, It's not just even about the time, it's about the value, how valuable it is for, for, for the organization. Big picture, not just being stuck in the rat race, let's say, running after any request you receive. So these are, these are a few examples and maybe the most striking one, either as an employee for companies I worked for or for clients as a consultant. I was consultant for a few companies in the past. Uh, uh, it's not trying to please stakeholders to get money, either within a company or with the client. It's giving them the truth. As Jim Collins would put it in, uh, let's say, uh, Good to Great, old book. Classic. You have to face the brutal facts and do something about that. And this is really my mission. I mean, wherever I work or I help companies is to make sure that they understand the reality and the brutal facts, positive or negative. So sometimes by pleasing stakeholders, I see and I have conversations and challenging conversations. About talking more about the weaknesses of competitors and trying to say things about competitors. So these are two things, weaknesses and say things. And for me, it's okay, how about looking at their strengths and looking for things to do about this? Not just about saying, not just, you know, not just talking point and things like that. No, no, it's missing the point sometimes. So it's, it's very interesting conversations I have sometimes when it comes to that because it's not just about saying, it's about doing. And this is something, let's say, it can go to the opposite of what a lot of people are, let's say, not preaching but trying to. And it's, yeah, it's not about just focusing on the weaknesses and say, hey, we are great and they are not great and they are not good. Bottom line, I mean, for that point, I have a lot of respect for all players in any space because Ultimately, all companies are trying to play the same game, which is serving the customers in that space and let the best win by differentiation and things like that. So the philosophy is different, but sometimes people don't see it that way and it's fine. It's a lot of education, a lot of conversation. It's how it falls here.

Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting dichotomy that you bring up between the phrase that you hear a lot, which is serving stakeholders, increase your value by serving more stakeholders. The implication almost even in the language is, how do I please these people who want something from me? How do I just give them what they want? But sometimes I suppose what they want and what they need might be different things. If they really want to improve the state of the company, then your job as the CI professional is to be that investigator and to uncover what you can about what the business needs to do to win more deals, and so on. And if that comes into strategy, and if that comes into uncovering hard truths and sharing those hard truths and educating people about why it's important to adhere to those and do the things that need doing to fix what might be wrong, those almost, it sounds like, could be two different things, which they probably shouldn't be.

The nemesis and the harshest critic within the organization. And it's not a popular position, but it's not a popularity contest. It's more about, you know, making sure that you're helping them to improve their condition the best way you can. And it's tricky because I can understand a lot of CI professionals, let's say, first, they don't want to lose their jobs because sometimes, I mean, depends on the organization, but it's serious things. And they want to renew with their clients or, you know, sell more services to their clients. So ultimately some will want to give something to their clients. But, but ultimately it doesn't— it shouldn't deviate from their core mission, which is helping them to improve their condition. How you can help them to improve their condition internally or clients. Is to give it to them like it is. Don't sugarcoat something that is not good. If it's good, highlight it, but you have to be neutral and you have to bring it like it is. So this in itself, I mean, I was not expecting it to be, let's say, a contrarian approach, but in most cases it is. It is. And I honestly, I don't like to sugarcoat anything about, you know, competitive space. Any competitor can have weaknesses and strengths. Let's be neutral. Let's, let's say, adopt an outsider position and perspective and try to see it from the eyes of a customer, for example. And they are making a choice. So even if we convince ourselves internally that everything is great, the customer doesn't see it this way. It's not helping the organization to win. So for me, it's helping the organization to win and to differentiate. So Yeah, yeah. This is the harshest critic. But in— and to your point, some organizations, they are learning organizations. They're super open to learning. And they say, say it like it is. I want to know what is not maybe as great in the competitive landscape. And let's work on that. Great. This— if you are in that position, this is great. It's an organization. They will welcome, let's say, anything that you're bringing to the table. In some other situations, and we are humans and organizations are made of humans, well, it can be not so popular. So you have to adapt. But this is my approach, by the way, all about contrarian and being contrarian.

So your advice to somebody who, you know, maybe has uncovered some harsh truths about the state of the business or the state of the business versus their competitors, and is trying to share them with the necessary stakeholder groups and is maybe meeting some resistance or some pushback and is feeling like, well, no, this is actually, you know, is the way that things are and the data backs that up. And your advice to them in terms of presenting that would be, it sounds like, to not sugarcoat it, but to stay as objective as possible, just present the information objectively and maybe even bring in Well, let's think about it from the perspective of the customer. How might they see things?

Yes, definitely. And you make me think of one thing. I mean, I say it this way, but you have to be strategic about how to approach it and how to present it. Anyone, and me too, I have to be careful. And I learned that the hard way because it was like really upfront, like a big meeting with a lot of people and I presented just the hard truths and you see the faces becoming red and people becoming angry. They just want to throw me out of the meeting room. I learned over time because as I mentioned before, we are all humans and we have, let's say, I generally don't have ego invested. It's more about intelligence. The analysis of that intel and recommending things stops there. But I understand emotional intelligence is really important and you need to, let's say, be careful. You don't want to antagonize a team because maybe their side of the business is not doing that great compared to competitors. So you choose the platforms you share that intel, share those insights with them. So for example, if you have an all-hand meeting, you're not going to go there and share everything and saying that, you know, it's not like that. You have— I mean, I think Warren Buffett said, praise in public, criticize in private. So if you know that some aspects are specific to some teams, Talk to those teams. And if you know that it's specific to the team and there is some political aspects involved, you talk to a very limited group. Sometimes it's a one-on-one conversation with just the people involved or the managers or something like that, just to make sure that you make the message get through, but you don't have to broadcast it. You don't have to cast a picture. Sometimes it's necessary, by the way, to broadcast a few things, not to sound negative or something like that, although it might be the impact. But I mean, you have to be realistic. Delusion is very dangerous. Organizational delusion is very dangerous. And you want to help your organization to prevent that. So it's tricky. You need to strategize to make sure that you're not antagonizing people freely because, you know, it's not the goal. At the same time, you can't prevent yourself from bring in the brutal facts, positive or negative, so you can help the organization to face them.

Awesome advice. Okay, well, the core of what we're going to talk about today is how CI professionals can thrive in 2024. The role is changing for various reasons. A lot of innovation, a lot of disruption, sometimes from the same sources. What do you think are the most glaring challenges, aside from what we've discussed so far, that CI professionals are facing in 2024?

Yeah, it's funny because recently we did a webinar on that as well, and I was preparing for that and I was thinking, okay, how can I— because you have plenty of challenges. I mean, it's not like you have 2 or 3, it's a lot. And how to segment them in such a way that people can understand it? And I decided to segment it into 4 buckets. The first bucket is obvious, obvious challenges that we know of. And it's basically, well, you know, it's about budget, about money. It's about the team, team members, how to get and how to select the right people, etc. It's about, let's say, the role or the position of the function of CI within the organization, the scope of CI, what should we cover and things like that. And maybe even, even AI, maybe people are talking about it as an opportunity, but it's a challenge also for people. And maybe people are not talking a lot about that side of things. But automation means few things, you know, will change. So this is the obvious, okay, then you have, let's say, the deeper challenges, what I call, and the deeper challenges, maybe it's It's really the study of my own experience for the last 20 years and talking with a lot of people in CI and stakeholders not in CI and trying to understand their point of view regarding CI, its value, how they perceive the value of CI for the organization, because that defines how much budget they will give, resources, where it should sit in the organization, etc. And the second one, let's say deeper, is misalignment. Because you have the CI function and it's producing results, but sometimes it's misaligned with the organization goal. So they say like it's, it's turning, turning, but it's completely disconnected from what the organization wants to achieve, what they are struggling with, strategic initiatives and things like that. And this is dangerous because ultimately it doesn't help the CI team overall. Then the third one was like false debates, what I call false debates. And those dichotomies, let's say, between science and art in CI, uh, let's say old school versus new school in CI, for example, short-term, long-term, part-time, full-time CI, and things like that. Uh, this also, let's say, I wanted to address that, and we can talk about that for sure later. And maybe, uh, finally, it's like unspoken challenges Those are beyond all of this. You have unspoken challenges more about, let's say, politics inside any organization. And we think that if we have the methods, we have the tools, and it's fine, and we'll, you know, and value delivery, etc. But sometimes there is office politics, and there is a lot of influence and exposure of CI people within the organization. This is not granted. You know, you have to earn it. And this is something that I know for a fact that a lot of CI professionals struggle with. Either it's communication or building bridges and things like that. Yeah, another unspoken challenge, I think— oh, I forgot it. If I remember it, I will tell you. But yeah, I forgot it.

Well, I mean, it sounds like a lot. It sounds like a lot. I mean, we've got the obvious ones that you mentioned— budget, getting the right people on board. Where does CI even sit within the organization? That's one that rattles around quite a lot. The scope of CI, what should it cover? AI, like you mentioned, we'll talk about that a little bit later on as well. And then all of these deeper layers as well, the false debates, unspoken ones, how your leaders perceive the value of CI in the organization. Where does someone start when it comes to dealing with these? I would assume they start with trying to fix the obvious ones, but what advice would you give to our listeners who are maybe facing some of these challenges and thinking, how on earth do I cope with that?

Yeah, yeah. So some of these challenges can be addressed, they can face them and deal with them. Others, you have no way, let's say, or you just need to adapt. As a CI professional, this is what I would say. Adapt. Let's say there is either we change things or we adapt. Either we deal with things or we get them covered if we can't deal with them. So get it covered, let's say you or other people. And the obvious ones, well, this is the thing. I mean, budget to deal with that. I mean, good luck to find more budget if you have other considerations with any organization. I mean, you go out there and you see any analysis or stat, all companies are working for more efficiency and things like that. So it's not— I mean, maybe it's avoiding distractions. This is one I would advise people to work on because there are a lot of distractions. The debates I was talking about, let's say about, hey, you should be doing just this or this, etc. And my advice is like, find what works for you and learn. This is super important. Learn from the old, from the new. Learn from the technique, from the art. Learn from the practice and hot tips, but learn also from, let's say, the frameworks, well-established frameworks. You have PhDs, you have people working very hard to build those methodologies and things like that. Learn. If it applies to your job, do it. If it doesn't, throw it. But, you know, at least you consider whatever you can leverage because you're asked to do more with less. So maybe the main advice is to be creative on how to do more with less. And there's no way around learning unconventional ways and bring maybe some tools from different areas of the company. I'm going to give you an example. Well, that works for me. I don't know if it will work for the audience or other people, but borrowing from product management, product strategy, and lean movement and lean practices for CI. I've been fortunate to be a product manager and part of the product team. I love product management and product strategy and building great products. That is a great motivator for me usually to work with teams. And what I borrowed was like a lot of, uh, the, the lean, uh, practices and methodology. It's not at all for competitive intelligence, but if you take the Kanban, and although even either you are a lone CI professional within the organization or you have a team, you have to ensure that you prioritize your work to provide value, and you have to keep a steady flow of value delivery for your stakeholders, meaning the key intelligence topics. It's a steady flow, let's say, can't stop. You, you have requests and which ones you deliver. So Kanban were not at all created for competitive intelligence, but I use them all the time, and it's a very good tool for synchronous synchronization with, with team members to make sure that we all know what is in our funnel, what is in our backlog, what we are working on, what we delivered, and the value of that for people and the feedback we got from them. So borrow from other places if you are in contact with all places to handle that. So avoid distractions. So the debates and things like that and be stuck into one mindset or something like that. Learn, apply what works for you. I use those techniques. Some techniques are not applicable at all to my context. Doesn't mean that I will try to convince people not to use them. And I learn from practical people just doing it on a daily basis, and they share a few things, and I take it and I try to apply it. If it applies, great. Like one thing I learned from webinar, the person said, and it was early days of budget shrinking and limited teams. And she was sharing that, like, she had— it was impossible for her to cover different requests for teams, so she self-served most of the outputs for teams, let's say for tactical teams. And this is something, even with experience I have here and there, This is something I learned, how she did it. Not that the fact that we need to self-serve a few things, but how she did it exactly to make sure that any stakeholder can have access straight to the content and output they're looking for. I learned from, from anyone, and this is my advice. I mean, be open-minded about whatever can work for you in your context. So I hope, I hope it helps. So some, some challenges you can address, others you can't. But the deeper ones are the more important ones because it validates the value you're bringing to the company. And if they can't pay the price, if they don't see the value or the promise— so the price is budget, teams, tools, name it. And the promise is what is the value for the organization, not for your team. What's in it for them, not for you as a CI professional. If they don't see it, they can't justify, and shrinkage will, will follow. And it's unfortunate, and it happened to me, by the way, personally in the past, and it's fine because we learn from that. But, uh, yeah, the unspoken is like more about the people side of things, and whether you are working in CI or working on something else, but your influence to develop it, uh, how to handle the politics within the organization. You have stakeholders management strategies, it's well documented. You have the Mandalo matrix, for example, you can use it according to the influence and interest of people, how to keep people informed, how to manage closely and things like that. And then internal competition. This is the one I forgot. I just remembered internal competition because you have a lot of people inside your organization. Maybe they are fully aware of the competition for one segment. And whenever you come with some intelligence, they will be there and sometimes they will challenge you and they will tell you, let's say they know more than you. Fine. I'm happy to meet people knowing more than me because my role, the way I see it, is federating and creating a network of intelligence inside the organization. And sometimes I connect people to say, hey, this person knows way better than me about this competitor. And I stay in the loop and I add my input. But if it's just a conversation to help one about one specific case, one specific competitor, good. I want to know who these people are. And I, and I usually involve them in the process. And I thank them a lot because it's super helpful. So this is my advice to people. But it's more about people skill development and influence development.

So yeah, having that humility, so it seems super important, you know, like, there are going to be subject matter experts in the business, outside of the business, who maybe you can draw on If they want to insert themselves and say, hey, I know more about this thing, getting out of the way sounds like is oftentimes one of the best things you can do. Let them speak, give them the platform that they need to share what they've got to say and what they know about the subject. When everyone has all of the information to hand that it's possible to get, everyone wins, right? Because it just means that better decisions get made.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you're right. It's, it's, and what helps with that is ego versus education. And if you, if you put yourself in a student mindset, you're here to learn. So if you have a subject matter expert, regardless of how they present things and personality, and maybe sometimes can feel very threatened when you have subject matter experts or industry experts come in and say, no, I know this and this is how it happened in the past, etc. I don't, I don't feel threatened by that. Quite the opposite, I'm taking notes because I say it all the time, I'm student, I learn. So if you put yourself in that mindset, and sometimes, I mean, you're tired or something like that, so your ego gets in the way, but overall, if you are in the student mindset and you are here to learn from anyone who has intelligence or who has knowledge, who did analysis, Ultimately, the goal is to help the organization. So you're not here to own everything and to try to show or shine. You want to share, you want to, you know, build that community of interest. So no, my advice is recruit them, recruit them and bring them and give them, give them the platform to share their knowledge. They will be happy about that and learn from that. Use it. And even when you use it when they are not there, give them credit. Give them credit. Say, here, it's coming from this person, and this person is super knowledgeable about this side of the business. I advise you to talk to this person anytime, even if you're not there. I do it gladly because, look, it's not about ego. It's about helping to improve the condition of the organization I'm working for or working with as a client. So I try, let's say, purposefully and intentionally not to let any ego get in the way. Not mine, not people's ego, because we are humans. And, you know, so, yeah.

Great advice. So it sounds like your advice to people, kind of whatever the challenges that they're facing are day to day, It sounds like this would be great advice for anybody looking to deal with any kind of challenge in any kind of role, to be honest. You know, it's avoiding distractions, focusing on what's really important, learning from anywhere and everywhere that you can, keeping an open mind, not letting your ego get in the way. Focusing on value flow and delivery, um, as well. Um, would that be fair to say?

Yes, yes, uh, very well summarized. And, uh, you said it, and when, when you're talking, let's say, I'm, I'm thinking that you make me think of, uh, and I put it in, in, in writing, by the way, either when I'm working with the team or for myself, it's like deliver value week in, week out, no matter what. Keep doing that. And what is the most valuable thing you're working on for the organization? Not for you, not for you to shine, but for the organization to see better. And that is super important. And when you start from that place, I mean, the ego can— you can, you know, factor it in this equation to say deliver value. You have an expertise, the gift of knowing the methods and techniques and experience in competitive intelligence and strategy, because there is strategy side of it. How you can help people? So keep on delivering the flow, avoid distractions, learn from conversations, but not— don't get stuck into one mind frame or something like that. And, uh, bring anyone who can support. Uh, they don't have to be part of the team all the time, although some— I mean, it's amazing. Sometimes you discover some people within the organization, they do a great job of gathering and analyzing intelligence, and they don't— they are not into competitive intelligence. They are not close to it. And those people, I talk to them a lot, and I try to involve them as much as I can. So it's collaborative work. Because the reality is like it's a small team most of the time for many organizations. So it's not about authority. It's not about power. It's about influence. It's about building bridges. So that aspect maybe that I want to address here and there because it's not about techniques. It's not about the tools. The tools will never do the whole, the full job. So yeah, but well summarized. I can go on for hours. So you have to stop me sometimes when I'm answering.

Well, Well, speaking about, you know, the collaborative nature of the role and bringing others in who perhaps know more, but then also talking about tools a little bit as well. One thing that I have wanted to ask you, I know you have some thoughts on this, is AI and its place in competitive intelligence work. I talked about it last episode with Ben Hoffman from Adobe, but I wanted to get your take. How much of what CI pros do, do you think AI is set to do for them in the coming years. What place do you think remains for the human being in CI work, possibly today, but also, you know, a year or so down the line, just in the near future, given the speed at which things are developing?

That's the hottest topic of our time, I think, and it's not gonna go away. I don't believe it's just a bubble. I think it's a massive shift in everything beyond competitive intelligence. But look, I think it's, it's, it's coming and it will have a massive impact. I think we're just scratching the surface of what it can do. And now, and thanks to the Alliance, I mean, last year we did like a webinar about AI and what CI professionals should do. And the advice back in the time was like, learn, experiment, test. And, you know, the future, a lot of the things will be automated. The obvious ones are, let's say, let's take text generation, content generation for a CI professional. Let's say when you are building a summary, a battle card, etc., you can, you can search Google right now and you will find Plenty of platforms doing that right now, you know, accurate, not accurate, reliable, not reliable, etc. So this is one example, but you have plenty of tasks and activities, let's say, that we are performing. And I truly believe that it will be automated and rightfully automated because this is not the most value people are, are building for their organization doing that. It's— I would call it, and I'm completely transparent, And we are all victims of that sometimes when we are tired or something like that. It's the path of least resistance. So it's, it's, it's, it's fine. It's not too demanding mentally. But once again, value. And if it's easy for you to do, it will be easy for the bot or generative agent to do. So it will be automated easily. What is more complex for me is deep reasoning, sophisticated key intelligence topics. And yeah, there are— the complexity will be complex for generative AI as well at the beginning. Future, we don't know. GPT-5 and beyond, who knows? But with the current state of things, and it's evolving fast, you have what we call toil And I talked about that, by the way, in 2021 before LLMs and things like that. And I had a chapter about that in the Competitive Intelligence Playbook, my book that I published back then. And the chapter was like about the future is automated, the future is augmented. Automation of tasks that we do manually, it will be automatic, whether it's platform without AI and you have AI augmenting those tasks. So bringing more let's say, you don't have to think about it. So a few areas, and the intelligence cycle is clear. You have, let's say, defining your key ITs, intelligence gathering, analysis, sharing, which I replaced by recommendation, then sharing. Part of it, intelligence gathering, is very easy to automate. Reliability of sources, I, I, I'm I'm fairly confident that very quickly you can find tools doing that. And the feed you have for intelligence, that can be, you know, automated. It's an RSS feed, or you bring it via API and you handle it. It's not a big deal. So if— and this is very serious for me because maybe my advice, and why I'm talking to CI professionals— if your job is doing that, be careful. Because what— look, it's, it's, it's a lot about cost efficiency. And if the cost can be optimized because something can be easily automated and augmented, some people will ask themselves questions about, you know. But again, going back to the most valuable CI programs, uh, handling more sophisticated, more complex issues for the organization key intelligence topic aligned with strategic initiatives of the organization, strategic goals of the organization. I do believe that AI at this stage is not able to understand the context of the organization and few stuff. So I would pause here just to, you know, but there's, there it will be, there will be an impact. On CI, that's for sure. And buckle up. That's my advice. And it's not just buckle up, let's say, fear and things like that. I mean, okay, first you have to adapt and know that is coming. So second, prompt engineering is, let's say, the first thing coming to mind when it comes to reskilling. It's not about searching and Boolean operators and, you know, traditional thing with Google and search platforms. This is becoming, let's say, commoditized completely. You know, it's not now how to ask those LLMs and augmented search engines. You have some examples like Perplexity and others, how to get the information you need and how to save time with that. Try, learn. Test. This is the time, it's not later. It will be like maybe late. Um, anyway, one thing I used in the webinar was like the Black Swan and the book from Nassim Taleb and the fact that the Turkey's destiny wasn't a black swan for the butcher. And that is super important, let's say. Don't If you're happy about automation and a lot of things being automated, be also, how to say, mindful that that automation might not make you happy in the future. So get ready by getting more sophisticated. This is what I would put it and focusing on more strategic things rather than easy to ship, you know, stuff.

Yeah. I appreciate your answer because I think, I feel like a lot of people are trying to soak up value at the moment by purporting to know exactly how things are going to happen when I think in truth, this is all developing so quickly. And I think, you know, even probably people who are developing the stuff are surprised at some of what it can do and, and at the rate at which things are progressing. And I think it's taking everyone by surprise. So It's quite refreshing to hear you say, you know, GPT-5 onwards, even though that's apparently potentially just a few months away. We don't really know what impact it might have, but we can have a sense, right, given the state of where things are right now and what, you know, people are already managing to do. If you just look around a little bit, the kind of impact it could have on, you know, the the lower-level stuff. But it sounds like for now, at least, you feel the kind of larger strategic stuff is a level of complexity beyond what, you know, ChatGPT based on GPT-4 can kind of do. But when it comes to automating, you know, data gathering and things like this, all of those lower-level tasks that you might already be thinking 'Could a Python script do this?' or 'Could I use some paid tool to quickly do this?' You can probably already do it. There's someone probably already doing it, and if they're not doing it now, they'll certainly be doing it in the very near future.

Yeah, I mean, common sense. When you think common sense, and in the same book I was mentioning, let's say, 'Listen to the Silent Evidence,' and it's not so silent now because you have so many processes being, let's say, people are thinking about these kinds of things. It was striking, and I think I shared it with you in some side conversation. Let's come to one recent conversation of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, with Lex Fridman. I was listening to that. Very interesting. And at some point the question was asked, let's say, would you focus the compute power to automate menial tasks and easy-to-do tasks so people can focus on the most complex task? And the answer was like surprising. I was not expecting that because he said, in the future, with the compute being so expensive and will become the currency for the future, would you put your compute in something that is completely manual, or would you put the same amount of compute to try to solve harder, complex problems? And this is eye-opening because As you said it, we have to be kind of humble and learning because it's moving so fast. And I don't think anyone knows exactly where it will land or if it will land anywhere because it's like just evolution. And even when we're talking about reskilling and things like that, well, it's easy to say, but I mean, Beyond 12 months or even that, it's tough to really predict and say, hey, reskill and you will be fine. It's not that easy answer now. And for sure, maybe some people are trying to sell something, so they will tell you, hey, reskill and you will not be worried about that. But at the same time, I mentioned before, Turkey's destiny is not a secret for the butcher. I mean, quite the opposite. I mean, the turkey can think that the butcher is a friend, a very good friend. He's taking care of the turkey, he's feeding the turkey, he's doing everything. And this is not from me. I'm stealing that from the book and Nassim Taleb. I mean, I love that book and we have to be, let's say, mindful that things might not go our way. So look, why I'm saying that, because understanding the context of the organization, and I did some research about that. And the human clues, uh, uh, human clues, let's say the dynamic, the power dynamic, the decision-making process, how it's happening, and politics, and a lot of stuff that goes into making decisions and planning for the business and things like that. It's still super complex. And to map that into a digital twin and making it, it's, it's super tough until now. So I mean, it, yeah, longer term, I'm sure some AGI will be able to do that, but we're not there yet. But you have some very clear areas where it's very simple to do stuff like automating intelligence gathering and generating a summary, things like that about that. It's already the case. But if, again, I always go back to that, if it's the only thing CI pros are doing, they need to do something else, more sophisticated, more complex, deeper analysis. And I love deeper analysis, uh, because it's not just scratching the surface, it's going as deep as you can in your knowledge of yourself, the company, and the competitor, whether it's the product, whether it's their pricing, their GTM, name it, whatever is publicly available. Uh, don't stop just by scratching the surface, go into G2 and getting some feedback from their customers and saying, oh, they're not happy about customer support. Okay, I have a talking point. That's not enough. That's I have to put a request and I have 4 seconds and I will get the result. So wouldn't justify job in the future. So that's my take. I mean, it might be seen like as I'm contrarian. So I'm comfortable with that, with that what I'm saying.

All right, well, Fouad, we've been talking for over 40 minutes now. Was there anything before we wrap up that we haven't covered yet that you would like to in the last few minutes?

Well, I think it's a very interesting time for competitive intelligence. I think as a community, there is a lot we can do to make sure that we are aligned, to make sure that competitive intelligence is well understood within any organization because this is something, a work in progress, still work in progress. Because maybe it doesn't happen to some of people in the audience, but it still happened to me sometimes. People, I need to explain exactly what competitive intelligence is and people say, oh, battle cards. Well, no, it's not just battle cards, it's more than that. This is the reality. I mean, understanding is the first thing. And the second is, let's say, brand awareness, not brand awareness, but space awareness for companies to understand not just what we do, but what we need to do and deliver value. And this is something if you go, let's say, pick marketing, pick sales, pick, you know, things like that. It's easy to define the budgets, define what is needed, define what is delivered, etc. So that common ground with CI, I love how it is evolving because I know that there is more visibility for CI. And thanks to the Alliance, other organizations as well are trying to do the job. But really, I want to thank you for that. But I think there is massive opportunity for the CI community to find the common ground and stop those useless debates about new school, old school, and strategic, tactical, and, you know, art and science and things like that. We need all of that and we need to shape it in a way that wherever a CI professional goes, they don't need to figure out how to explain what we do for a living. That needs to be more precise, more concise to people, our stakeholders. And that, I think there's— yeah, I've been around for 20 years and unfortunately I realized that it's not there yet. And I really believe in competitive intelligence and the value, the community and what we can do for any organization. I believe that in the future, it will be more valuable. Because we get from that just, you know, simple shipping intelligence to really building added value with insights and recommendations and things like that. Yeah, I'm looking forward to any platform or way we can, you know, help the community to make it easy for our fellow CI professionals to, to, to succeed wherever they are working. Because people are reaching out from different places. I mean, not just in North America and in Europe, Africa, Asia, and asking the same questions. Am I doing the right thing going to CI? And this is something I had fairly recently. Am I doing the right thing? And I'm like biased because I love CI, but at the same time, I'm realistic about, let's say, their chances of success. It's like, it's not a straightforward answer to say, hey, it's going to be fine. And you know, everything is good. I mean, in some situations, in some organizations, they will not succeed, not because they're not good or don't like it, but the organization doesn't get it. If that organization doesn't get it, I mean, Tough luck. And this is something really I will hope that the community, no matter in which capability, I mean, uh, professionals, providers, consultants, name it, but the message needs to be really, uh, clear, powerful, and helping the community. We have a responsibility. Each one of us has a responsibility to help shaping, let's say, the future of clearer CI definition. Yeah. So maybe this is my message to anyone who's listening to me. And there is a recorded conversation or a coffee shop conversation, I have the same message. We're not there yet. It's unfortunate, but we can get there if we come together and build something that we all agree upon. It's fragmented sometimes, and we can make it less fragmented. So as for me as a professional, I mean, I'm open to any conversation, the most challenging ones. As I said it all the time, there's no ego involved. It's more about how we can make the most of what we have as a skill or expertise in CI and how to link it with strategies and decisions and how to help different teams across organizations to succeed. This is how we succeed. So yeah, as I said, I can go for hours.

Well, I know we've spoken about some of that before ourselves, you know, and if the Competitive Intelligence Alliance can help in any way, you know, do let us know. And for any of the listeners who are listening, and if this stuff resonates with you, if these challenges resonate with you, which I'm sure they do for a a lot of you, you know, reach out and talk to Fouad. I'm sure that you're open to conversations with them. You know, and this is part of why the Competitive Intelligence Alliance exists, is to facilitate these kinds of conversations and where we can help you and help the community to kind of solve these issues. And, you know, I'd love to be a part of producing some kind of resource that helps competitive intelligence be better understood by business leaders and so on. If we can just produce a a one-pager that everyone can send out to their boss to explain that.

That would be lovely, huh? That would be great. Look, it's been, let's say, now a while where we're partnering different events and things like that. As I mentioned before, I really thank the Alliance all the time for the effort because this is valuable. And people know me. I mean, I'm available LinkedIn or other places that say Slack. With the Alliance. And my call is, let's work together. I mean, with the audience to make sure that we are building a better clarity for CI. So that's maybe my ultimate message. And thank you again, Alex. I really appreciate the conversations we have, either recorded or on the side. So always a pleasure.

You're very welcome and a great message to end on. Thanks very much for coming back on the show, Fouad. It's been great.

Pleasure. Good day.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Compete Clarity podcast. Head on over to competitiveintelligencealliance.io for competitive intelligence courses, industry reports, practical playbooks, articles, and more, or to join our community of over 2,000 engaged CI pros. Thanks again. We'll see you next time.