I have noticed, however, that, oftentimes, these lists contain many, if not all, the same books. Everyone recommends Heuer, everyone recommends Sun Tzu, everyone recommends something of regional or topical interest and for good reason -- these are great books.
Over the last several years, though, I have identified a number of books that I think every intelligence professional ought to read ... but aren't yet on anyone's list. Typically these are not books about intelligence, or, at least, were not intended primarily for the intelligence audience but still have deep meaning for intelligence professionals in all of the various sub-disciplines.
Without further ado (and in reverse order):
#5 The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science In The Twentieth Century. If you are like me, you probably did not much care for statistics in college. That is probably because you did not have this book to read. It is an absolutely fascinating book that tells the story of modern (frequentist) statistics. Nothing I have read helps put the numbers in context -- what you can get from traditional stats and what you can't -- better.
#3 How To Measure Anything: Finding The Value Of Intangibles In Business. While this is pitched primarily at the business audience, it really isn't a business book. It is really a book about how to think about problems creatively. While there are many tangible strategies discussed in Hubbard's fine volume, it is the attitude that Hubbard has as he approaches seemingly intractable problems that I find most compelling here. It is a nearly perfect approach for intel professionals confronted with wicked problems.
#2 Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? What is the correlation between forecasting accuracy and years of experience? .00. Between forecasting accuracy and education? .02. Between forecasting accuracy and access to classified information? .02 In other words, almost none. Philip Tetlock's 2005 bombshell of a book is still not as widely read as it needs to be by intel professionals. Whether you ultimately agree or disagree with his findings, it is a must read.
#1 Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams To Solve Hard Problems (Lessons From And For Intelligence Professionals). Hackman, like Tetlock, has spent the better part of a decade researching his subject (in this case small teams of intel analysts). His findings and recommendations about how to structure and manage intel professionals charged with solving difficult analytic problems in challenging environments where collaboration is required are essential reading. In a world that constantly talks about collaboration, Hackman has done the hard work to lay out a roadmap about how it can and should be done most effectively.
How about you? Do you have a favorite book that you think ought to be read by intel professionals but no one ever talks about? Leave it in the comments!
I am currently team teaching a class called Collaborative Intelligence with one of our adjuncts, Cathy Pedler. I like to say that the purpose of the class is to explore "how to work in groups and how groups work."
Specifically, we are tapping into our own research and experience working with small groups of analysts (as well as the research of others) to teach students how to optimize group work processes with particular emphasis on group work in virtual or distributed environments. In addition, we are also teaching them how to collect useful information and produce analysis using a variety of online and social media tools. For this part of the class, we are emphasizing social network analysis as a core methodology.
In order to give the class some focus, Cathy and I decided to have the students take a hard look at strategic minerals (such as the "rare earth elements"). In order to share the results of our efforts, we also created a class blog, Strategic Minerals, where students could post both some of their collected information and some of their analysis for others to examine and comment upon.
On the blog you will find a couple of different kinds of exercises. First, there are INTSUM-like entries that summarize recent news articles but add snippets of commentary or analysis (Note: For those who have not tried it, blogging software is a nearly perfect way to replace traditional INTSUMs. You get all of the benefit and none of the costs of creating them the old-fashioned way).
Second, there are classroom exercises, like our recent effort to build a down-and-dirty model of the non-chemical relationships between the various strategic minerals using social network analysis. Third, and most recently, we have been posting some of our (very preliminary) analysis of the impact of trends in these minerals on national security, law enforcement and business interests in the US.
While none of our current analytic efforts are very sophisticated (Don't worry: We will get better), how we are producing these results is likely to be as (or more) interesting to many of you as our analysis. For example, the most recent assignments required the students to produce their analysis without any face-to-face interaction. Instead, they had to use nothing but the suite of collaborative tools we had been discussing (and using) in class. If you take a look at the "Methods and processes" section of these most recent reports, you can see how well this worked, what problems they had to overcome, and how they went about making the reports happen.
In the coming weeks we will be diving much deeper into social network analysis, talking a lot more about group dynamics, learning how to use Twitter, Pintrest, Facebook and other social media as collection tools, and producing increasingly complex reports involving larger and larger groups of analysts.
It promises to be an interesting term. We hope to learn something about strategic minerals but more importantly, we hope to learn how to work in groups and how groups work.
Recently I posted some of the early results of our research into using wikis as collaborative tools for managing and producing intelligence. While my focus has been on the process, it makes just as much sense to focus on the people involved in the collaborative effort.
CentralDesktop, a provider of a wiki+ solution to small and medium sized businesses, has produced an interesting infographic (see small version below but you will probably have to go to the site to see the blown up version) that captures their own experience with the various different kinds of collaborators. I suspect the evidence for the typology is anecdotal and that some of the intent behind the infographic below was humorous. That said, I found the idea of thinking about the kinds of collaborative personalities involved in a project to be an interesting one.
From a design standpoint, it would seem important to address the needs of the different types of personalities in order to engage as many as possible in the effort. From a management standpoint, however, it would seem important to focus training and cash on software that offered just enough variety (but not too much). While these two needs conflict with each other to a certain extent, there is likely a sweet spot where they overlap.
While this may not appear to support Google's attempt at world domination to quite the extent the headline to this post makes it seem (whew!), it does.
Previously, a wonderful little online product called Etherpad was the only such real-time collaborative tool available. Lots of people loved it but, when Google (the plot thickens...) bought it out a few months ago, the people who wept loudest were -- wait for it -- teachers.
I myself had used it in the classroom. It was easy and efficient and got students working together quickly without a whole lot of admin fuss and bother. The final collaborative product wasn't very pretty (no real formatting options) but, once the content was agreed upon by the students working on the project, it was easy to move that content into Word or PowerPoint or, for that matter, Google Docs, to pretty it up.
For those of you who did not have a chance to experience the magic of Etherpad, you can still see what all the fuss was about. Google (kindly) made the code for Etherpad open-source and several people developed almost identical clones of the product (my favorite is Typewith.me). I strongly encourage you to find a buddy or two and use this product. Everyone who has played with it, loves it.
Particularly teachers.
Where teachers go, students are sure to follow. Once you have had a taste of the speed, the increased level of intellectual engagement and, frankly, the fun of real-time collaboration, it will be very difficult to go back to the old emailing-the-doc-around-sort-of-thing. Google is more than happy to share its apps with schools and over 7 million students currently use them. Students (at least here at Mercyhurst) are already using Google products extensively and Google has just given the millennials one more reason to go Google and stay Google.
I have a couple of gripes, though. First it seems you have to have a Google account to set up a Google Doc. It is unclear whether or not you have to have a Google account to access the doc (We tried this in my Advanced Analytic Techniques class today and people with Mercyhurst addresses could not access the site while people with Gmail addresses could). This was not the case with Etherpad.
Likewise, you can only have 10 active collaborators at a time (though more can view the doc). While I recognize that teachers and classes aren't the only audience for this product, maybe in Mountain View they only have 10 students to a class but I would suggest that this is not the norm.
More importantly, some of the features demoed in the video below were not obviously available to us when we did get access. If the version we used this afternoon is supposed to look like the version in the video, it didn't -- and there was no obvious way to change it. We also experienced some lag in seeing each others' edits, something I had not experienced before with Etherpad.
One thing you can count on with Google, though, is that it will continue to improve its flagship products. I may not like what they are currently offering ( I am sticking with Typewith.me for the time being) but I am virtually certain it will get better over time (and, in this case, fairly quickly, I expect).
Whether you like Google or you hate it, don't blink -- it is definitely coming to a document near you soon.
One last thought: My personal hope is that someone will take the open source Etherpad code and make an extension for MediaWiki. Can you imagine the increase in productivity (not to mention usage...) of Intellipedia with an extension that allowed easy real-time collaboration? Yoikes!
MakeUseOf.com has a good post about how to get more out MS's Outlook by making it easier to collaborate. There are tools here for college students, professionals and just people who want to get more out of this nearly ubiquitous tool.
Original material on Sources and Methods Blog by Kristan J. Wheaton is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Without further ado (and in reverse order):
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