IT leaders who excel at understanding their company's market can make strategic decisions about technology and business trends, say consultants from Egon Zehnder Internationaln The C-level competency of market knowledge is about understanding the market context in which a business operates. Competence in market knowledge is usually a requirement of the leadership competencies of strategic orientation, commercial orientation and customer impact.RELATED LINKS How One CIO Develops Her Market Knowledge SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe Anticipating Customers’ Needs At basic levels of performance, leaders understand obvious industry trends, the company’s products and its customers. Middle-level performers see emerging trends. At high levels, leaders understand relationships among the various elements of the market and see how trends could create new customers, affect dealings with competitors and cause potentially profitable changes. CEOs are better at tracking competitors and industry trends than are CFOs. Both perform better than CIOs, who are just beginning to know their markets well. How to Develop Market KnowledgeDeveloping market knowledge is both easier and harder than behavioral leadership competencies. It is easier in that performing at a basic or middle level simply requires study. To get to the strategic level of performance, however, one also needs insight, which comes from understanding the depth and breadth of the business, its market, and the levers by which these may change. Are You Ready to Exercise Market Knowledge? Readers wishing to improve their performance in this competency need to examine their organization’s readiness, and then assess their own. Some questions to ask include: Organizational Does the organization have an articulated strategy that it follows? To what extent is the organization market-driven versus technology-driven? Is the business simple, or does it include a wide variety of products, customers and business models? Is the direction of the business coherent? Individual Do you understand what drives the business and its market? Do you see your role as formulating direction? Can you see a situation from others’ perspective rather than just your own? Can you identify patterns in people and their behavior as well as in systems or processes? Based on the answers to these questions, you can decide how to develop your market knowledge and use it to benefit yourself and your company. Reynold Lewke is Egon Zehnder’s North American CIO practice leader, and can be reached at reynold.lewke@ezi.net. Steve Kelner is global knowledge leader of Egon Zehnder’s talent management and management appraisal practice group, and can be reached at steve.kelner@ezi.net. Related content opinion The CIO event of the year: What to expect at CIO100 ASEAN Awards By Shirin Robert Sep 26, 2023 3 mins IDG Events IT Leadership news Oracle bolsters distributed cloud, AI strategy with new Mexico cloud region The second cloud region in Monterrey, providing over 100 OCI services, is part of Oracle's plan to compete with AWS, Google and Microsoft, and cash in on enterprise interest in generative AI. By Anirban Ghoshal Sep 26, 2023 3 mins Generative AI Cloud Architecture Cloud Computing brandpost Zero Trust: Understanding the US government’s requirements for enhanced cybersecurity By Jaye Tillson, Field CTO at HPE Aruba Networking Sep 26, 2023 4 mins Zero Trust feature SAP prepares to add Joule generative AI copilot across its apps Like Salesforce and ServiceNow, SAP is promising to embed an AI copilot throughout its applications, but planning a more gradual roll-out than some competitors. By Peter Sayer Sep 26, 2023 5 mins CIO SAP Generative AI Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe