Intelligence and communications

There can be no intelligence operation without communication and I am frequently frustrated at the restrictions that organisations place on their internal communications, narrowing the range of subjects in focus and reducing information on those subjects to a trickle - and then negating the whole operation by disseminating what is known to the wrong people.

However, the hardest question in establishing an intelligence operation, it seems to me, is the first question: what do you want to know? For that question assumes pre-knowledge of the subject and the issues, the threats and the plots, the ripples that will become waves and the waves that are ebbing away ...

Anyone starting a successful business does so because, in part, their business emerges, fully fledged, with the requisite intelligence for its initial operation, usually derived from the experience, vision, insight and contacts of the founder. But that founder's knowledge cannot extend to the developments and changes in the environment and frequently the business flounders because the big picture is always the same picture, touched up and re-framed occasionally.

The more I think about advising organisations on their intelligence, the harder it is to find a process that will enable the people at the top to understand and address that question. How do you know what you need to ask?