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What is your Stupification Point?
Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in this week’s New Yorker on the nature of espionage and asks some very penetrating questions about the psychology of the business: essentially once you’re in the hall of...
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There is Nothing So Weak as an Idea whose Time Has Not Yet Come
Readers of this blog (there are some out there, right?) have probably figured out by now that I am a sucker for pithy sayings. Yes, I am shallow enough to find meaning in short statements that appear...
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Lessons from a CIA Heretic
Last week I told a story at the Business Innovation Factory Summit, a wonderful event that I was blessed to attend. The storytellers were awesome. (Let me also give a big shout-out to my friends and...
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You Feel the Earth Move Under Your Feet
You feel the sky come tumbling down. EGYPT Egypt is about much more than a popular uprising against a ruler who has stayed in power through what can only be described, charitably, as a corruption of...
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Revisiting Lessons from a CIA Heretic
Events in Middle East have led me to reflect on the talk I gave in September of last year at the Business Innovation Factory. (You can read the prepared text here or see the video of my speech here) I...
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On CIA, typewriters, and sensemaking
Check out my guest blog post on IBM’s Smarter Planet blog. http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/09/10766.html
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Thinking Ain’t What It Used To be
I’ve been reading a great book the last couple of weeks, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kanehan. (I read books like I watch TV, I dip in and out, watching (or reading) several things at one time.) I...
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The Ten Habits of Non-Conventional Thinkers
One of the things I do a couple of times a year is lead a discussion on conventional wisdom. It wasn’t my idea to do this. I was asked a few years ago by someone who was teaching a class … Continue...
View ArticleThinking in the Time of Coronavirus–Part 1
We need to put on our thinking caps. Continue reading →
View ArticleThinking in the Time of Coronavirus–Part 2
Our ability to know is a function of our tools for knowing Continue reading →
View ArticleGoing Forward
I was asked recently whether the Intelligence Community, and CIA specifically, would be able to go back and return to normal in a Biden presidency. My answer was NO! You might think that I was blaming...
View ArticlePolitical instability in US likely to continue even after Trump’s departure
(What follows is a mock analysis piece written from the perspective of an intelligence officer in a more or less neutral country, such as Switzerland or Norway. They’ve been asked the question by the...
View ArticleIn Normal Times…
I’ve been thinking about how White Houses in the past would have prepared for the events of last week. I know that’s a stretch given that it’s hard to imagine any other administration but Trump’s...
View ArticleIn Search of Insight
When I was a manager of analysis at CIA, I would hear our customers, often senior policymakers, demand more INSIGHT in our analysis. And I would go back and tell the analysts they needed to produce...
View ArticleWhy I Watch Airplane Disaster Documentaries
One of the few television shows I watch religiously is Air Disasters. In the US it currently airs on the Smithsonian Channel and many episodes are available on YouTube. Many if not most of the episodes...
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