Intermediaries

The communication of a CI assignment through an intermediary, while often justified from an organizational point of view, is not justifiable from the point of view of effectively managing CI. That is because any intermediary will communicate his or her perception of what the end user wants, even if merely transmitting, or even transcribing, what seems like a simple request. For example, the end user may want to know "what our competitors say when they sell" particular competing products. The request that is transmitted may suggest that the end user wants to know what strong points competitors stress in selling their products, when in fact, the end user may really only want to know what the competitors say about each other, and not what they say about themselves.

Without direct contact with the end user at the initiation of the request, the CI professional cannot try to pursue this distinction. The situation becomes even worse when the CI professional tries to get more specification on the scope of the assignment, often called "pushing back." Pushing back should not be done with an intermediary; it requires that the CI professional have direct access to the end user. The memo following this section shows such a process in action.

If done with an intermediary, pushing back will more often fail than succeed. There are two basic ways that can happen:

The intermediary will not go back to the end user, but rather will communicate what the intermediary thinks the end user needs, couched in terms of a flat assertion.
The intermediary will go back to the end user and get a response to the CI professional's question. That response will generate yet another valid question. At some point, however, the intermediary will refuse to go back for additional clarification.

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Intermediaries

Intermediaries