There are some executives who, more often than not, get it right. They launch the products and services that win customers in the teeth of tough competition. They have a gut feeling about what customers value, what they dislike, and the reasons for both. They know the market intimately even though they do not occupy frontline positions. They have a reputation for being intuitive and insightful.

Take Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit. For more than 10 years, the US software company has been making the best-selling personal finance software, Quicken. Although 46 competing packages were on the market when Quicken was launched, it not only captured the mass of customers, but also increased the size of the market a hundredfold. Unlike its competitors, Quicken had a simple user interface, eliminated all complicated accounting features and was fast and easy to install.

Mr. Cook's strategic insight was to realise the difficulty of installing personal finance software. Simple observation made clear the shortcomings of existing products and pointed the way to a better solution. Mr. Cook has since come up with other successful products, such as TurboTax, which helps people process tax returns.

Tucked within the story of Quicken is a crucial lesson: if executives want to get it right, they must use their eyes. "Seeing is believing" - and it is what allows managers to achieve strategic insights and to act on them with speed and conviction.

Over the past seven years, Insead has studied more than 30 path-breaking companies across the globe and their less successful competitors. One of our most striking findings is that the best business strategists see things first-hand. They do not rely on numbers or market research studies of what matters to customers, but go and watch customers using their products and services and tirelessly try them for themselves.

Take Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet, who takes up to four flights a week to experience what it is like to use his airline. Or Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, the 26th largest company in the world, who, until he retired last year, would work as a stock boy on store floors to understand customer needs.

Unfortunately, many managers are less assiduous. While the high-performing companies we studied were out in the field with customers and employees, their less successful competitors were content to outsource their eyes and rely on secondary data. Of the managers involved in strategic planning at these companies, less than 10 per cent had gone to the trouble of meeting customers in the preceding two years to learn their concerns and desires.

An oil group we worked with, one of the biggest companies in its sector in Europe, revealed that a new chain of hypermarket petrol stations was overtaking its petrol stations. Customers were flocking to the competitor. Yet not one of the managers responsible for that billion-dollar business had visited its outlets to assess what needed improving. Instead, they commissioned more market research.

The sad truth is that 10 minutes of casual scrutiny of the competing outlets would have made the problem clear. The hypermarket stations had a wide selection of branded foods, clean toilets, friendly service and fast checkouts. Our company offered only a single generic food brand at premium prices, less-than-spotless toilets, mediocre service, more expensive petrol and slower checkouts. Yet it was stuck in debate mode; at no point did anyone suggest actually visiting stations to compare and contrast.

To avoid this trap, managers need to get out of their offices regularly and use their eyes. It does not take a genius to know that long queues and disgruntled-looking customers mean that checkout times need to be speeded up.

If you are a manager, ask yourself to what extent you actively observe the market to find out what really matters, as opposed to relying on other people's observations. How often do you watch customers using your products and services? How often do you act like a customer, critically trying your products in the same everyday settings that customers do? Can you roll off effortlessly what is great about your products, what is weak, what is inefficient and what is complicated or easy to use?

And if sales are down,  or complaints come in, how often do you go straight to the source? Do you call customers directly to find out exactly what is going wrong?

If you want to develop insight, if you want a reputation for being on the mark, you will have to score highly across all of these questions. Because that is what the best business leaders do. They do not just analyse, instead their strategic priority is to go out in the world to see for themselves.

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 1995-2002