“Analysts think analytically of what can go wrong…Executives tend to think wishfully of what might go right”*
I recently had the opportunity to attend and speak at a senior round-table session in Europe. Truly amazing sessions with fascinating speakers. My session was titled “Intelligence-Driven Organizations” which is a topic I present on frequently in light of recent and increasing global dynamism (Please see blog on Hyperconnected and Hyperturbulent)
Government and private-sector organizations are eager to find new ways to understand the changing environment and adapt – not just to survive but to prosper. The reality of the world in which we do business is increasingly one where external forces – social, technological, economic, political and more – continue to play a major and often decisive role in the success or failure of an organization.
Effectively leveraging intelligence know-how helps an organization prepare when competition over scarce resources increases and the nature of the competition foments greed, corruption, lies, and security threats. How does an organization best posture itself to check their exposure to global uncertainty and protect themselves from unfair market/adversary forces? Create resiliency and agility by using intelligence to drive organizational decisions.
Here is a synopsis of the topic:
Intelligence-Driven Organizations
Noting the environmental impacts of globalization, demographic shifts and the environment, how do decision makers prepare their organizations to not only address issues but get in front of them. This roundtable will outline the key aspects of intelligence from a US National Security perspective as well as discussion on how to develop intelligence capability in your own organization and align it to your overall strategy. Finally, the conversation will discuss counterintelligence and highlight the importance of integration of security into corporate intelligence activities.
To keep from developing yet another dry powerpoint presentation, I enlisted the support of Brian Tarallo of Lizard Brains Solutions to help me craft something a little different to go along with the discussion.
Brian took my draft slides and together we crafted a graphic storyboard that in itself would be a handout for the seniors to take back to their respective organizations. Our hope is that this better assists the attendees in remembering our conversations in this session.
First…Brian crafted the icon set and then set the storyboard in session:
After the initial design decisions were made – the rest of the story board came together nicely (and quickly)….
The discussions/handout covered many points including:
- As a discipline, intelligence seeks to remain an independent, objective advisor to the decision maker.
- The realm of intelligence is that judgment and probability, but not prescription.
- The Intelligence product does NOT tell the decision maker what to do, but rather, identifies the factors at play, and how various actions may affect outcomes.
- Intelligence analysts must actively review the accuracy of their mind-sets by applying structured analytic techniques coupled with divergent thinking
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Critical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses inferences/conclusions
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Networking, coordinating, cooperating, collaboration, and multi-sector collaboration accomplish different goals and require different levels of human resources, trust, skills, time, and financial resources – but worth it to ensure coverage of issues.
- Counterintelligence and Security to protect your own position
- and more….
If you want the whole presentation and the knowledge behind it – drop me a note. Happy to discuss how your organization can more effectively leverage intelligence solutions and tie these solutions to your organizational strategy.
My gratitude to Brian at Lizard Brains Solutions for his help in putting together my thoughts and presentation in a new way that captured the flow perfectly in a fun layout. He even made it into a “Prezi” for me in case it was needed. Here is the final handout in Prezi mode. (please respect the creative commons licensing – info below). Additionally – If you need a fantastic graphic facilitator or someone to give your ideas a different medium – you can contact me or Brian directly.
Intelligence-Driven Organizations by Zofia Consulting, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at http://zofiaconsulting.com.
*Treverton- “Reshaping National Intelligence in the Age of Information,” 2001
