As a former practitioner of economic intelligence and author of a book ("Revealing the Language of American Business Intelligence") and several articles on the influence of national culture on economic intelligence, ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_...) Ive had a chance to verify that, to be effective, intelligence needs to operate in a balanced manner along four dimensions: technical/analytical, synthetic/synergistic, administrative/detailed, and qualitative/interpersonal.
The US culture of intelligence leans excessively towards the first dimension, with an exaggerated in the power of technology, and a chronic difficulty to grasp the underlying human factors. The most balanced approaches to intelligence are found in Sweden, followed by Germany, Japan and France.
A can be expected, the same national cultural blindspot affect how US organizations approach IT implementations. In the 90s I had a lot of experience with large-scale ERP implementations in the US and Europe. In the US, most corporations expected these systems to create magic and adoption to happen with little effort. In comparison, European companies were a lot more aware of how challenging the human factors would be and invested a lot more in fostering adoption.
I see the same happening with Enterprise 2.0. While everyone in the US says "its 90% about people and 10% about technology, the reality in the field is that its 90% about technology and 10% about people, which results and will keep resulting in huge financial waste.
We in the US have a lot to learn about the central importance of the human factors at play in collecting and processing intelligence, and about how secondary the crunching power is.
And along these lines, we also have to pay greater attention to how central the human factors are that rule adoption of technology.
Amy
· 3 months ago
Concern #1 - Data and knowledge from non-IC sources (like sousveillance or NGOs) can now be just as valuable (if not more) than the most complex and sophisticated sources and methods of collection and analysis. Integration cannot be limited to just the IC, behind the firewall.
Concern #2 - The vision states the IC must exemplify America's values. What are those values? Are we respectful of human rights enough to fly with those who have beards and are wearing headscarves? No amount of technology or intelligence will ensure our nation's security if we lose sight of the human behaviors and conditions that create threats in the first place.
cdorobek
· 3 months ago
Prof. McAfee -- Great post -- of course. But also so timely. It really does seem that the intel community is at a turning point with Intellipedia -- and it is a difficult question... do they continue with what has worked... or do they move forward and invest in Intellipedia. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
Chris Rasmussen
· 3 months ago
Dr. McAfee: thanks for the shout out.
The DNI’s formal guidance helps, but research has consistently shown that informal culture trumps formal guidance in many cases.
We are at a crucial point with analytic transformation within the IC. The IC’s social media "existence" story was inspiring to many inside and outside of government several years ago. The sentiment was “if the IC can host these tools so can our toothpaste company and we don’t have half the security.” It was amazing that a secretive bureaucracy even hosted these tools in the first place. But after four years one has to ask, what has happened to one of the leaders in Enterprise 2.0 collaboration? I know many like to spin “change takes time” clichés but four years is a long time. That’s high school that undergrad college. Also, this is not a training issue. Training is important but all the tool proficiency training is for knot if the process underneath doesn’t change and does not reward horizontal knowledge co-creation.
Intellipedia, for example, touts some impressive user stats and hosts impressive office, technical and scientific content, but Intellipedia is weak on true social science-like analytic content because not a single agency recognizes Intellipedia or A-Space content “official.” The primary view of most social software-based knowledge is “good for collaboration but not the product. “Products” in the community are agency-specific vertically vetted (chain of command) reports. Each agency is essentially an independent publication center and most interaction between them in the collaborative space is viewed as mere “coordination.”
This product-centric view of intelligence needs to be reformed. My team argues that a move toward “living intelligence” is the appropriate step. We suggest moving the review process into the same place where the collaboration takes place and to view intelligence more as a service rather than a “product.” This would actually replace something and would be fundamental reform. One must ask of any “2.0” effort: what has this replaced and does it provide fundamental or structural change? If the answer is “incremental, nothing, or very little” then you have a marginal revolution. Speeding up the current process has some advantages but in many cases these types of moves often treat symptoms rather than the root cause.
Please take a look at the YouTube video “toward living intelligence” that explains our thesis and solution.
This is right on. In order to be more competitive or more successful or move faster or solve harder problems, we've got to get more people (more brains) working on the problems. Whatever we can do (2.0 tools and ideas) that makes this go faster and better is something that is moving an organization or team in the right direction.
Atle Iversen
· 3 months ago
The field of artificial intelligence is very interesting, but it is nowhere near the capabilities of the human brain. Therefore, "powerful computers running sexy algorithms" is not the solution - at least not for the near future (if ever).
However, I agree that computers can and should help us to "make sense of data", but analyzing the data (or rather, the information) should be left to people. The technology and tools are progressing rapidly, but maybe the amount of data is increasing even faster ?
Mike Dolbec
· 3 months ago
How We’ll Get Smart, I found this article a very interesting perspective on the use of Enterprise 2.0 technology in the IC.
G. Lance Strzok
· 3 months ago
Andy,
I am encouraged and pleased with the discussions that are taking place in the IC, and in fact I am a involved with several of many of them.
As for concerns - simply put, I think that the issue we currently face is how do you get that many individual agencies/bureaucracies to make the changes necessary to achieve the provided vision or adopt the enabling tools and practices?
I am not sure there is someone running around with a big enough stick or a bunch of carrots.
limboonchuan
· 2 months ago
I love their comments, but have you notice that a lot of organizations have lofty and fascinating objectives and aims and normally even have them displayed prominently in their web sites or on plaques etc. But the buck seems to stop there. Hope that I am not too cynical, but the lovelier the mission statements and objectives, the more dismal the execution, it seems to be a inversely proportional relationship between talk and task.
Pete Modigliani
· 1 month ago
Andrew McAfee @mcafee on how the IC should embrace Enterprise 2.0 to overcome critical shortfalls and finally collaborate.
All Comments
The US culture of intelligence leans excessively towards the first dimension, with an exaggerated in the power of technology, and a chronic difficulty to grasp the underlying human factors. The most balanced approaches to intelligence are found in Sweden, followed by Germany, Japan and France.
A can be expected, the same national cultural blindspot affect how US organizations approach IT implementations.
In the 90s I had a lot of experience with large-scale ERP implementations in the US and Europe. In the US, most corporations expected these systems to create magic and adoption to happen with little effort. In comparison, European companies were a lot more aware of how challenging the human factors would be and invested a lot more in fostering adoption.
I see the same happening with Enterprise 2.0. While everyone in the US says "its 90% about people and 10% about technology, the reality in the field is that its 90% about technology and 10% about people, which results and will keep resulting in huge financial waste.
We in the US have a lot to learn about the central importance of the human factors at play in collecting and processing intelligence, and about how secondary the crunching power is.
And along these lines, we also have to pay greater attention to how central the human factors are that rule adoption of technology.
Concern #2 - The vision states the IC must exemplify America's values. What are those values? Are we respectful of human rights enough to fly with those who have beards and are wearing headscarves? No amount of technology or intelligence will ensure our nation's security if we lose sight of the human behaviors and conditions that create threats in the first place.
Great post -- of course. But also so timely.
It really does seem that the intel community is at a turning point with Intellipedia -- and it is a difficult question... do they continue with what has worked... or do they move forward and invest in Intellipedia.
It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
The DNI’s formal guidance helps, but research has consistently shown that informal culture trumps formal guidance in many cases.
We are at a crucial point with analytic transformation within the IC. The IC’s social media "existence" story was inspiring to many inside and outside of government several years ago. The sentiment was “if the IC can host these tools so can our toothpaste company and we don’t have half the security.” It was amazing that a secretive bureaucracy even hosted these tools in the first place. But after four years one has to ask, what has happened to one of the leaders in Enterprise 2.0 collaboration? I know many like to spin “change takes time” clichés but four years is a long time. That’s high school that undergrad college. Also, this is not a training issue. Training is important but all the tool proficiency training is for knot if the process underneath doesn’t change and does not reward horizontal knowledge co-creation.
Intellipedia, for example, touts some impressive user stats and hosts impressive office, technical and scientific content, but Intellipedia is weak on true social science-like analytic content because not a single agency recognizes Intellipedia or A-Space content “official.” The primary view of most social software-based knowledge is “good for collaboration but not the product. “Products” in the community are agency-specific vertically vetted (chain of command) reports. Each agency is essentially an independent publication center and most interaction between them in the collaborative space is viewed as mere “coordination.”
This product-centric view of intelligence needs to be reformed. My team argues that a move toward “living intelligence” is the appropriate step. We suggest moving the review process into the same place where the collaboration takes place and to view intelligence more as a service rather than a “product.” This would actually replace something and would be fundamental reform. One must ask of any “2.0” effort: what has this replaced and does it provide fundamental or structural change? If the answer is “incremental, nothing, or very little” then you have a marginal revolution. Speeding up the current process has some advantages but in many cases these types of moves often treat symptoms rather than the root cause.
Please take a look at the YouTube video “toward living intelligence” that explains our thesis and solution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbgQ1V2BLEs
However, I agree that computers can and should help us to "make sense of data", but analyzing the data (or rather, the information) should be left to people. The technology and tools are progressing rapidly, but maybe the amount of data is increasing even faster ?
I am encouraged and pleased with the discussions that are taking place in the IC, and in fact I am a involved with several of many of them.
As for concerns - simply put, I think that the issue we currently face is how do you get that many individual agencies/bureaucracies to make the changes necessary to achieve the provided vision or adopt the enabling tools and practices?
I am not sure there is someone running around with a big enough stick or a bunch of carrots.