“Black Hats are a waste of time.”
“We have never had any useful outcome from a Black Hat.”
“It’s just a basic information gathering exercise.”
These are some of the many negative statements we hear about Black Hats, and they can all be completely accurate.
Why are they so often true, and why are Black Hats so often an abject failure?
Here’s one of the main reasons:
The manner in which you executed the Black Hat was poor.
Something many people lose sight of is that the Black Hat session is NOT a coffee talk session for random musings and trivia sharing. The objective of a Black Hat session is to understand what your competitors can and likely will do to win a contract opportunity you are pursuing.
You will NOT achieve that end by spewing out facts, filling out mindless slides, or sprinkling fairy dust and hoping for the best.
How Do Black Hat Reviews Fail?
Oh, let us count the ways:
| What happened to lead to failure? | Why is this a problem? |
| “We’re just checking the box.” | Why are you even bothering? Has anything ever been accomplished by checking items on a clipboard? You might as well just stare at your belly button. That’s similarly productive. |
| “Here are slides to fill out. Come back in four hours.” | Oh wow! Exciting! Let’s fill out slides with minimal critical thinking. Have you ever enjoyed filling out forms before a doctor’s appointment? Was that thought-provoking? Unlikely. Filling out forms is also “going through the motions.” Waste. Of. Time. |
| “Go do some research on the competitor. Come back and report on it.” | Most people don’t have the time or inclination to do this. And if you think some GenAI platform will give you anything other than “Master of the Obvious (MOTO)” material, good luck. Unfortunately, turning to your obligatory subscription databases won’t do much good either, as they have a very narrow set of sources. Just another MOTO viewpoint. |
| “Let’s discuss what we heard about the competitor.” | While sharing any information collected is useful, has it been vetted? Are you checking sources and corroborating them? Most importantly, the simple act of collecting information does NOT segue into the rigor of making sense out of it. |
| “Go find anyone on our team who is a former employee of the competitor. Have them join the Black Hat.” | This assumes their knowledge is (1) current, (2) relevant, and (3) they have the right level of analytical skills to support a critical thinking exercise like a Black Hat. There are no participation trophies here. Either you add value – or you don’t. Moreover, there is more to creating a solid Black Hat team than just prior knowledge of the competitor… 😉 |
| “Hey, why don’t we just get Bob/Jane to facilitate?” | Having someone “volun-told” to run this exercise is not a good idea. Would you pick someone off the street to extract a wisdom tooth? Would you ask someone whom you heard is good at math to do your taxes? No. Running these exercises is a skill, and not one that comes easily. |
| “Let’s just do a rundown of the usual suspects.” | Competitive landscapes are not static. They ebb and flow like any other market. Businesses change strategies, interests, and even their very composition can shift. Additionally, a quick rundown often just covers information the team already knows—and that surface-level approach doesn’t leave much room for deeper thinking. Black Hats are thinking-intensive exercises. Drive-bys don’t do anything other than spray ammo in a general direction. |
| “Invite everyone to participate. The more the better.” | When was the last time you were in a large group (10+) that was truly productive? Answer? Never. This is not “show n’ tell” from first grade. This is a thinking and discussion-intensive exercise. There is a reason large groups are referred to as a “gaggle.” |
The guiding principle here is that the Black Hat session is, at its very core, an analytical exercise. Many fail to design and execute a Black Hat session in this manner with that core principle as the driver.
How to Run a Real Analytical Exercise
At FedSavvy Strategies, we embrace the core concept borrowed from the national security environment in the form of the intelligence process. This process involves four functions (not steps, but functions):
Figure 1 – This image is from Kristan Wheaton’s “Parallel Intelligence Process,” which best embodies the non-linear nature of the intelligence process. Source: https://sourcesandmethods.blogspot.com/2012/03/part-12-new-intelligence-process-second.html
This is not a linear process. In the context of a Black Hat review, here is what you should do to be more successful:
- Modeling – Start by identifying what drives the opportunity—what the specific customer truly needs and the mission they’re trying to accomplish. That mission should shape how you model the opportunity. This step is critical: it helps focus the Black Hat on what really matters. Use it to frame key questions the session needs to explore and resolve.
- Collection – There will be some collection of information during the Black Hat session itself, BUT the majority of this should be done before the session, so you can focus more on…
- Analysis – Using your model to guide your effort, along with the intelligence collected up to that point, to understand how a competitor will approach and solve the problems of the customer. This also needs to be driven by a skilled Black Hat leader who understands the process and adds value by understanding capture strategy.
- Production – This function involves converting all analytical output into a structure that decision makers and other contributors can easily follow and act upon. Consider that the capture team will be revisiting their solution and how they need to adjust. Think about price-to-win and how this provides valuable input to that vital function. The results from the Black Hat must be summarized and refined into a usable document to perpetuate all learning from the session.
Takeaways
- Running a proper and effective Black Hat session involves choosing a facilitator who understands analysis at its core and can command a complex process.
- If you don’t invest the time, effort, and mental focus necessary for this exercise, you are wasting everyone’s time and resources.
- Just like anything else in life and business, you get out of something what you put into it.
- Black Hats are thinking exercises. If it is not mentally challenging, you’re likely doing it all wrong.
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