Chapter 12

Profiling the Competitor CEO

In This Chapter

arrow Measuring the agility of an organization’s leadership

arrow Predicting how an organization’s leaders will respond to change

arrow Gauging an organization’s risk tolerance

arrow Evaluating a competitor CEO’s approach to product development

Individuals are products of their past and creatures of habit. Based on their past behaviors, the size of their egos, their aversion to risk, and other factors, you can generally predict how they’ll respond in any given situation. For example, based on the media’s labeling of a politician as liberal or conservative or a hawk or a dove, you can often predict the way she’ll vote on a particular issue.

The same holds true in the world of business. By studying a company’s CEO or an organization’s culture, you can often plot its future course. Do it well, and the result is almost as good as having the opposing team’s playbook a week before the big football game!

In this chapter, I guide you through the process of profiling an organization’s CEO and the corporate culture that drives the organization so you can begin ...

Get Competitive Intelligence For Dummies now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.