Understand the market, take a position

A message expresses what the company wants someone to understand in a particular situation. A posture conveys an attitude. A position makes a judgement about a problem and commits the business to choices. Companies can share an innovative posture while taking opposing positions on equipment life, open systems or risk sharing.

A market includes more than competing offers. It encompasses the problems customers prioritise, the risks they accept, operational constraints and the expectations of people who can approve or prevent a project. A technology shift, an industrial dependency or a regulatory requirement may change those judgements before it becomes an explicit purchasing request.

The starting point is to compare perspectives: customers, teams delivering projects, industry experts and people debating the sector’s direction. Tenders show what has been formalised. Interviews, reasons for rejecting proposals and recurring questions can reveal what remains poorly understood. None of those sources alone amounts to an understanding of the market.

In a large organisation, that knowledge is often spread across businesses, countries and functions. Communications leaders can bring it into discussion with strategy, sales and operations. This helps identify the questions the company should address publicly, with an understanding of the decisions at stake.

Being considered for a business problem is work that starts before a tender. The 6sense study makes this visible: the eventual supplier was usually already on the initial shortlist. This does not isolate the effect of communication. It does give a communications director a concrete question: which situations bring our company to mind, and what experience or evidence supports that association?

An operations director, a finance team and procurement may assess the same investment through different risks. A useful position explains those constraints and offers a judgement: which problem comes first, what trade-off is acceptable, which assumption needs examination? It gives those people reasons they can use in their own deliberations.

A position needs to withstand discussion before it can be reduced to a headline. With industrial equipment, for example, procurement may focus on the purchase price while the operator wants to avoid downtime. A useful contribution explains when each priority makes sense, then shows which choice the company has made in its offer.

Industry knowledge should take the argument beyond observations everyone already shares. An illustrative case is the service life of industrial equipment: a position on longevity needs to examine maintenance, parts availability and the cost of downtime. The contribution becomes useful when it helps customers assess those criteria, including ones that might favour another supplier.

Internal importance does not establish public relevance. The work invested in a launch explains the team’s attachment, but not its value to a buyer. Ask which decision the development helps someone make differently, and for what reasons.

A company may have a convincing view of its market while selling an offer that contradicts it. A commitment to repairability makes maintenance terms part of the argument. A claim about technological sovereignty needs an explanation of remaining dependencies. The position gains substance when people can follow its consequences through the business.

That brings decisions for leadership: which capabilities need investment, which commitments are feasible and where limits must be explicit. Sales, operations and communications may see these questions differently. Agreeing on a phrase does not settle a service commitment or the resources required to meet it.

The brand promise expresses those choices for audiences. It needs to connect the company’s ambition with its existing reputation: an established capability provides a foundation, while a new ambition requires new evidence. Positioning should make that transition credible.

Harvard Business School’s account of Michael Porter’s work connects strategic positioning with a coherent set of activities and trade-offs, including choices about what the company will not do. For communications, I draw a practical implication: identify the real choice behind the stated position. If any competitor could adopt the same promise without changing how it operates, that work remains to be done.

A position often commits resources beyond the communications budget. A promise of availability requires parts, skills and a service organisation. Unless these consequences are discussed, publication can impose a commitment on teams that did not choose it.

Communications needs a decision process that distinguishes facts, editorial relevance and company commitments. The specialist who confirms a finding may not control the investment it requires. A leader choosing a direction still needs to examine its feasibility with those responsible for delivery.

The process should make it possible to narrow a promise, postpone an announcement or fund a contested choice. A serious position also requires the ability to reject attractive wording the organisation cannot yet support.

A position gives others a criterion they can apply to the company itself. Advocating simplicity invites scrutiny of its own customer journeys; advocating longevity raises questions about repair conditions. This test is intended to identify gaps at the centre of the argument, without demanding impossible perfection.

I ask which observation would make the company reconsider. If none can be named, there may be a principle of presentation but no examinable proposition yet. A known objection needs a responsible person who can address its substance.

Contradiction can improve a position by clarifying its uses, distinguishing progress from ambition or exposing a dependency. Readers can then see what they may reasonably expect and what the business does not commit to deliver.

People recognise a position through continuity of judgement. Subjects change, executives speak in different settings and experts face new objections. Audiences should still be able to understand what the company considers important and why. This requires choosing discussions in which it has something to contribute.

Sustaining a position also requires knowing when to revise it. An assumption disproved, a change in use or a limitation discovered in practice may alter the conclusion. Explaining that change keeps the reasoning coherent. Repeating a promise after its underlying conditions have disappeared weakens it.

Becoming a reference in a field means being consulted because the company helps people understand a problem, being considered in the decisions around it and answering when its analysis is challenged. Publishing and public appearances make that work visible. They need this foundation to achieve more than a regular presence.

In an international group, this means distinguishing shared commitments from those specific to a business or country. A group-level ambition may be achievable to different degrees across subsidiaries. The organisation needs to explain what is already in place, what remains an objective and who can commit it on each point. Communications needs access to those leadership decisions to make them intelligible.