Guard against prejudices

komboni dam (for farm workers).
Over the years we just limited all our fishing activities to the irrigation and zebra dams.
We never tried fishing in the lodges nor the komboni dam. On Saturday we spent the whole morning trying our luck in the normally dependable zebra dam.

By around lunch hour we had caught nothing. Newton then suggested that we try the irrigation dam, and maybe our fortunes could change for the better.

We agreed and relocated to the irrigation dam which is three kilometres away from the zebra dam. At irrigation we meet Samuel the dam guard. I asked him for advice on where to catch bass that day.

He said: “Go to the lodges dam which is 30 percent full. You will catch a lot there because the fish are restricted to a smaller area. Good luck,’’ and he disappeared into the bush in his tattered worksuit. He seemed to have a bad odour judging by a swarm of flies which followed him wherever he was going.

We all faced the dilemma of mankind which is simply, “Who do you hear from; when is it convenient to hear, which source of information do we trust and how do you react to new information?’’
We had an argument thereafter. Muzipaz and Newton did not buy the advice from Samuel presumably because he looked confused and was dirty. Samuel was not a credible source of information, they said. Though I agreed with Samuel’s observation, his appearance swayed me from following his advice.

We struck a compromise position. We would fish in the irrigation dam for four hours; if we fail we would then try the lodges dam. We endured the barren spell at irrigation dam until 5pm. Muzipaz then said:  “Why don’t we try the lodges dam for at least an hour before we go home?”

More out of desperation than conviction, we tried the lodges dam around 5pm. We caught more than we bargained for. All of us were overwhelmed by the rate at which bass was biting at this dam. We had to force ourselves to go home around 7pm. We regretted why we did not take Samuel’s advice and started fishing at the lodges dam from midday. We mistook his poverty for inaccurate information.

Where does market intelligence come from?
Market intelligence can emanate through formal and informal channels. Formal channels are deliberately created by the company to capture market information. These could be marketing departments, customer services departments, advertising companies, research companies and other data mining tools available to the company.

Sometimes formal channels can be in form of questionnaires or suggestion boxes. Information from research journals or industry journals also constitutes some of the formal information channels.

Informal channels of information can be information emanating from non-marketing functions within the organisation or from other stakeholders. Some marketing intelligence can come from the newspapers or the internet.

The challenge facing many organisations is not lack of information available to it but how to evaluate and test the authenticity of the information companies receive on a daily basis. Almost all companies suffer from information overload.

Three important behaviours were observed during our interactions with Samuel. The first being when information is received, it must be acted upon with the urgency it deserves. Secondly, information must be evaluated on its own merits not based on who supplied the information. Thirdly, people are scared of trying new options.

We therefore advocate for the following recipe to take advantage of market intelligence.
Have courage to try new options.

Most companies would rather react to the information they receive as a last option and consequently this greatly reduces the likely benefits if they had taken the bull by its horns. Most companies are comfortable fishing in the tried and tested zebra and irrigation dams. Fishing in the lodges dam will be more out of desperation than out of their own design. Managers are encouraged to take calculated risks and venture into new territories.

Guard against prejudices
We failed to tap into the market information supplied by Samuel because we judged him by his appearance instead of his fishing substance and his fishing experience at Carolina Wilderness. What could come out of a man who was putting on a shabby worksuit?  We only visit Carolina once in two weeks but Samuel guards these dams everyday of his life. We treated Samuel as a second-class citizen and we accordingly disrespected his advice.

Social stratification can be a serious barrier in collecting market intelligence. In some instance rich people lose out on market intelligence if the source of intelligence is from a poor person. The same applies to religious leaders and political leaders.

Another source of prejudice is religious affiliation. In Zimbabwe’s current religious dispensation, Mapositori look down on Pentecostals, Pentecostals look down on Protestant believers. Christians look down upon traditionalists. Traditionalists look down upon Moslems and so on.

These religious differences create a barrier to how information will be received. In some instances business intelligence is not well received if it emanates from a person of different religious affiliation which might result in lost opportunities.

More often than not people are a victim of their own prejudices.

Evaluating information not favourable to us
Sometimes we receive market intelligence which is not in line with our market perceptions or our beliefs and we tend to reject this information hoping that one day someone will confirm that the information is not true. The opportunity presented by this information will be missed. In our view the lodges dam had no good fishing prospects because we tried it once seven years before and we caught nothing, we therefore concluded that the dam had no good fishing prospects .How wrong we were.

Regardless of where the information is coming from, it is management’s prerogative to test the validity of information received before discarding it. Remember information is only power if we use it wisely and timeously.
The writer is a managing consultant at CLC Training International. E-mail [email protected].