It’s a cliché that we live in a world of exponential change. Having spent 32 years at the CIA, from 1978 until 2010, I thought I’d seen plenty of change already—the end of the Cold War, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the rise of China as a communist/capitalist hybrid economic power, and, of course, September 11.
But arguably even more has happened in the five years since I retired:
- Unparalleled social churn, the most recent example being the validation in the US and Ireland of same-sex marriage
- The metastasis of extreme, perhaps even nihilistic groups claiming allegiance to Islam but—more to the point—acting upon their hatred of the West and of existing governments in the Middle East.
- The return of state conflict in Europe as Russia and the Ukraine flirt with war.
- The emergence of the smart phone as the planet's most powerful tool for development and disruption.
- The fraying of the great European experiment—the EU.
- The cyber-threat pandemic.
Even the least judgmental among us has to admit that government institutions often fail to anticipate, let alone keep up with such exponential changes. If government, with resources devoted to intelligence and research, falters in navigating today's world, how are businesses expected to cope? Leaders of corporations and NGOs can't afford to waste resources and perhaps even put lives at risk because of poorly-conceived decisions.
Many are now forming threat intelligence and security units in hopes of gaining some decision advantage. They often look to former intelligence professionals for advice and expertise, but corporations and NGOs need to be mindful of the pitfalls of intelligence. Intelligence professionals do some things right, but we also make errors of judgment, bias, and execution. Here's my guide to what businesses and NGOs should replicate and avoid as they grow their capacity to make better sense of the world.
Do this!
Develop hypotheses about what's going on in domains you care about and test them against data and information. As Yogi Berra famously probably never said: “If you don't know where you're going you'll end up somewhere else.” Good intelligence is not about monitoring a stream of information. It may begin there but without a sophisticated framework for interpreting the information and placing it in proper context, you will simply be reacting to events rather than understanding them. Good intelligence units create analytic landscapes of the issues they cover, test them frequently and modify when needed—which should be often. If your ideas about economic conditions in China haven't changed in the last year, you are not paying attention.
Don't do this!
Assume that your information accurately represents reality. I'm ashamed to say that I was well into my career before I realized my flow of secret information did not accurately represent reality. Intelligence officers have a habit of looking first to secret information for answers; in a company that might translate into giving priority to proprietary information. But if you have never tested the “fit” between your information flow and your insight needs, you're not unlike the drunk in the famous joke who only looks for her car keys under the street lamp because that's the only place she can see.
Do this!
Develop a knowledge strategy that includes eccentric information. Once it articulates its analytical framework, an intelligence unit needs to execute a knowledge strategy that includes both standard sources and unusual and even eccentric information flows. Competent intelligence professionals identify non-obvious or indirect indicators for issues of concern. For example, I think graffiti is an interesting indicator of social cohesion in a community; the emergence of used car lots are signs of economic vitality in lesser-developed countries. One way to develop a rich index of indicators is to identify “adjacencies” to your issue. For example, as the Greek situation deteriorated and banks came under threat, I would have identified digital currencies as a possible new adjacency to events in Greece. By following information about digital currencies such as Bitcoin, I would expect to gain insight on Greek public confidence.
Don't do this!
Underestimate exponential causality. In his must-read book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman documents how humans fail to comprehend exponential mathematics. I think exponential functions extend well beyond mathematics to include social and human interactions. When we think linearly, we identify a finite number of consequences for a particular event. This is a common sin among intelligence teams, who correctly think in terms of cause and effect but too often incorrectly limit their thinking to first and second order consequences. And because our information sources aren't diverse enough, we don't even consider events outside the geopolitical framework that could have disruptive, exponential consequences. That's what I mean by exponential causality—many events have multiple orders of consequences that interact with each other to generate even more exponential energy. My favorite current example is the smart phone. Little did we know that early cell phones would evolve into powerful handheld computers. Smart phones altered political and social dynamics, not to mention how business is done. And I think almost all of us missed it.
Do this!
Explore alternative views all the time. If you're thinking that getting a complete fix on exponential causality is impossible, you're probably right given the current state of computational techniques and artificial intelligence, although I am hopeful. Until the breakthrough comes, intelligence professionals explore the range of consequences by using alternative analysis. Alternative analysis involves exploring multiple perspectives, not just the one your team thinks most likely. This is difficult to do in most hierarchical organizations that tend to default to the views of those in charge when there are differences of opinion. That's why in the last few years, the Intelligence Community has established independent units, such as the CIA's Red Cell, whose only job is to explore all the other ways things can turn out.
Don't do this!
Leave the cognitive diversity of your team to chance. There's an important trick to exploring alternative views—the members of your team cannot all think alike. And yet today, most organizations lack a method to ensure diversity of thought among their knowledge workers. In the Intelligence Community we tend to hire experts without, in my experience, consciously balancing conventional thinkers with creatives and concrete minds with individuals who think conceptually. This is admittedly a new approach to talent management, but organizations that master cognitive diversity going forward will achieve meaningful improvement in their sense-making ability.
I purposefully crafted my list of exponential changes over the last five years to include positive, negative and ambiguous developments. I did so because looking in only one direction is a significant occupational hazard for intelligence professionals. We too often focus on the terrible and ignore opportunity. And we too often hastily label a development as good or bad when in fact the most appropriate posture is ambivalence—we just don't know. So as companies build out intelligence units, they need to be mindful of the most ironic consequence of the intelligence profession—an inappropriate air of certainty. Although many business leaders anticipate that their intelligence unit will allow for more certainty in decision-making, I think that expectation is naive. At its best, intelligence units will create conditions for more fluid conversations, more nuanced decisions, and more resilient organizations capable of navigating our exponential future.
Carmen Medina is a former CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence. A 32-year veteran of the Intelligence Community, she is also the author of Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within.
