Why is it that analysts always want one-on-one meetings with the most important people in your organization?

If you’ve ever organized an analyst conference you will surely have arranged such meetings. If not, you made a mistake. If you ask them, you’ll quickly discover that the analysts would prefer to spend most of their time in one-on-one meetings with the best people in your company. I guess this only really applies with large companies, because small companies don’t hold analyst conferences, they do analyst tours. Nevertheless it is so. The analysts like talking to your best people.

Here’s the explanation:

Either analysts are trying to understand the world of technology or they are not. If they are not, then they are not really analysts, they are reporters. This is not to be despised by the way, good reporters provide a valuable service. But analysts analyze. Analysts hunger for understanding. Analysts despise marketing gloss and like technical detail. Most of all, analysts like talking to people who have a deep understanding of technology. Given the choice, any analyst worth his or her salt will want to spent time with the best technical man or woman in your company, who might be the CEO or the CTO or simply the one that runs the team that builds the most important product you sell.

The Virtual Circle

As an analyst, I believe it is my duty to try to understand how technology will evolve. When I come to a conclusion on this in some area, I write about it. Sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes not. I’d rather be right than wrong because quite a few people take note of my opinions. I don’t just want to understand how technology works, I want to understand how the industry works. I don’t fully understand it, so I need people to teach me.

There’s a Japanese proverb that says; “You may be cleverer than any one of us, but you are not cleverer than all of us”.

It is not to be taken too literally. When it came to physics, Einstein really was cleverer than all of us. Giants happen. But that’s not the focus of this piece of wisdom. This delightful little proverb tells us that knowledge is usually dispersed among a group, and if the knowledge of a group can be harnessed, it can be very impressive. That imho is what an analyst should be doing; gathering and harnessing the knowledge of a group. But which group?

After being an analyst for 10 years, I concluded that there was “a virtual circle” within the IT industry, a group of individuals, who truly understood the computer industry or at least some part of it. It wasn’t a club that you could join or that met anywhere. It was just a virtual circle of talented men who, collectively and informally moved technology forward. Some of them knew each other and even if they didn’t know each other, they recognized each other when they met.

These were the people I wanted to meet and interact with, because I could learn from them. And so, they were the people I met with whenever I could. How to recognize such people? It’s easy; they know what they’re talking about.

When I encounter any member of the “virtual circle” I do a lot more listening than talking – and when I talk to them, I get them to criticise the way that I frame things or represent ideas. I do everything I can to pick knowledge from their pockets.

I doubt if other analysts see it exactly like that, but I suspect it’s the same for many of them (unless they’re saddled with an unfortunate ego, which insists that they already know everything-and-his-dog). They want to meet and exchange opinions with people that know. They want to connect with the virtual circle. If you are in AR and you enable that for any given analyst, they will be grateful.

And if they’re not, something’s wrong.

Note: This posting is one in a series of postings that deals with the topic of dealing with analysts. Click here for links to other postings in the series.