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Highlight:
Best of Intelligence Insights: Part 1 in a Series
Introduction:
One of the temptations in the intelligence field and many other disciplines or activities is the desire to constantly discover more and learn more. While this is an admirable quality it has its downside. The more one moves away from what it has learned in the outset the more one is likely to forget the fundamentals that hold up the entire practice. Thus, I thought it was a good time to review and state what are in my opinion the best intelligence insights I have come across so far. This is part of a series and the list will be continued with investment insights at some point. NOTE: The list is right now in no particular order of importance.
Examples:
1. Just because it is the news doesn’t mean its not intelligence.
Many people are often quick to criticize the value of investment information if it something you read. They expect only good investments can be derived from a good understanding of the quantitative fundamentals. However, let us look at these numbers. The Audit Bureau of Circulations lists the USA Today circulation at at 2,281,831 , the New York Times at 1,121,623 , and the Wall Street Journal at 2, 070, 498. This is an an infinitely small number of people cast against a population of nearly 300 million people. To be sure most relevant news does make its way to CNN, CNBC, and morning shows. However, this still leaves a vast amount of information which is not being read and picked up in smaller and larger publications alike.
2. Intelligence has a shelf-life.
I remembering hearing this at a talk given by Leonard Fuld of Fuld & Co. (the Competitive Intelligence Shop) at a Society of Intelligence meeting in New York. Intelligence has a life span. Like milk or fruit intelligence can go bad. It doesn’t go bad so much it loses its relevancy. If you don’t move on a piece of information about a stock you read about in the morning paper, a book recommendation given to you at a friend’s BBQ, or take advantage of that sale at local store you might soon find that stock has gone up, that book recommendation you forgot, and that item you wanted to buy at the store is now sold out. Windows of opportunity don’t last forever. In the words of ancient philosopher Pittacus” Know Thine Opportunity.”
3. Be wary of deception.
Sun Tzu, the chinese military philosopher, noted ” All warfare is based on deception.” In World War II, Dwight Eisenhower had fake pontoon bridges constructed to hide the real location of D-Day. Deception is no stranger to the business world either. Many a time company A appears in the press as being been linked with acquiring either company B,C, or D. Sure enough company A appears in the paper sometime later on for buying company J? How did this happen? My guess is companies leak their “intent” to acquire a company so as to quite research analysts and investors.Yet, at the same time they attempt to throw them off the trail by naming false companies of interest. This helps to increase the probability that when Company A does decide to buy Company J the stock price has not run up on all the speculation.
4. Who’s the “Source”?
In his book, CIA Inc. Espionage and the Craft of Business Intelligence, former CIA officer F.W Rustmann notes “Evaluating the sources of information is one of the most important tasks of an analyst.” This may not appear to be a novel idea on surface, yet it is certainly an idea that needs to be re-examined. Every person one comes in contact with in life views the world from a different prospective, holds different opinions, and from time to time pushes different agendas. No one can said to be 100% objective. If we know a person’s subjective nature one can weigh their character/personality in the context of the information they are presenting.
5. Articles. 1) Always re-read and 2)Ask yourself ” What happens next?
Most articles appearing in mainstream publications have been well crafted. They bring a great insight and have been rewritten several times before appearing in their final form. (I can attest to this having worked on several stories for the Saint Michael’s College’s student newspaper the Defender.) However, as human beings we sometimes can give good articles short drift. We read articles with the television on, with music playing in the background, and quickly as we switch between different webpages. Productivity expert David Allen in his book Getting Things Done points uses the illustration that even has we read Getting Things Done are mind drifts and perhaps more that once. Attention is certainly one of the scarcities in today’s world. For more on this topic I would recommend the book The Attention Economy Thomas Davenport. If we re-read articles we pick up on information we may have have missed. It also increases the probability you will remember the information. Robert Heuer in his book Psychology of Intelligence Analysis has a great section on how memories are maintained. After you have done this ask yourelf what the implications of what I have just read. Did this article point to a new trend? Did it contradict an opinion I already have?
6. To predict the future shorten the time horizon.
In his book The Fortune Sellers William Sherden states that predicting the future is a risky business. In one example Sherden tells the story of how in February of 1978 a blizzard like storm struck New England with little warning. Sherdan states ” any farmer who bets his ranch on weather forecasts going out more than one or two days could just as well use a roulette wheel.” This point was also echoed by chess master Bruce Pandolfini in the Fast Company article titled “All The Right Moves.” Pandolfini states that the idea of being able to strategize the next 15 moves is a waste of time. The future moves are to uncertain he claims and the best players need only plan for the next few moves and not beyond that. Intelligence is similar to eyesight. The closer the object is to the eye the more details can be seen. At a certain point we are all just guessing.
7. New information makes intelligence.
Robert Cialdini, one the country’s leading experts on persuasion, notes in his book Influence the power of argument in which information is presented to an individual for this first time. This point is also backed up by neuroscience as articulated in the BusinessWeek article “Why Logic Often Takes A Backseat.” People crave new information even if it is not explictly expressed. While the new information may be of little use to you it can be worth a fortune to someone else.
8. The universe may be infinite. Yet, if you look hard everything connections abound.
Many people have heard of the game 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon whereby any actor or actress can be linked back to Kevin Bacon by 6 individual connections. This assertion was recently proven to be fairly valid by Microsoft. See “Proof! Just Six Degrees of Separation Between Us.” The rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are now trying to capitilize on this trend. Even the Internet is trying to exploit this phenomenon. There is a good chance that Web 3.0, also known as the next version of the Internet, will be semantic web search. Semantic web search is the process of linking various pieces of information together based on their relationship to one another. Companies such as Twine and Qitera are already up and running (at least in Beta Phase) and a multitude of more are surely on the way. See the attached article from the Economist titled ” Start Making Sense.”
Implication:
You might find some of the above examples obvious and maybe some of them interesting. The point is that there is an almost infinite number of insights you can use to achieve success in any endeavor. I have come to learn through experience that the problems aren’t with the insights or methodologies in an of themselves. Its the application. We don’t apply them enough? So I ask you how will you apply them?
