In a 32-year plus career in the Intelligence Community, Carmen Medina made many different types of intelligence mistakes and suffered the consequences of faulty thinking.
But along the way she learned a thing or two, and she is now eager to share these learnings. In an entertaining and practical talk, she will share her favorite shortcuts and intelligence process hacks to help analysts think better and communicate their findings more effectively to their clients.
I found that this is relevant not only for spies, but also to improve strategic decision making in companies. In this video we find some of the same mistakes and clues that I work on with managers.
Some key ideas:
- Avoid the streetlight effect bias (paying attention only to info that is most accessible. It’s similar to missing unknown unknowns.) Some of the answers on how to do this are below.
- Review and revise your methods of data capture (and «analytic landscapes«)
- Know your thinking/decision making style (although there isn’t a single test for this, try Gregorc, Optimism/pessimism)
- Use a thinking partner, someone who thinks differently from you
- Deploy diversity of thought. Teams that have more ideas and more dissent, and deal with it well, make better decisions, even though the dissenters are wrong. It challenges everyone to raise their game. Harmony and speed are not signs of a good meeting.
- Think together from the start. Collaborate so that you don’t get to the end and only then realize there’s dissent.
- Respect your intuition.
