We introduce this section with a few illustrative concerns that intelligence users and practitioners have related: 

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• Different departments look at political risk – by whatever label fits their slice of it – in their own silos, working from different intelligence pictures and sometimes even at cross-purposes. We lack a coherent, overarching concept that binds relevant functional perspectives and enables coordination.

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• When we asked the corporate team for help, they came back with a generic country report and an online index-tracker dashboard that we’d never have time to play with or make sense of. In all of it, our initiative was hardly mentioned. They’re more like data librarians than an in-house advisory unit.

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• We provided very specific insights that could have really helped. In the final project plan, the political risk section was a few lines drawn from the report’s executive summary, without any wider context. I can only surmise that it was a box-ticking exercise. Given how things turned out, that’s regrettable.  

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In volatile times and places, data and information are seldom enough to guide an organisation through and around challenges and change. 

 

Today’s news quickly becomes tomorrow’s historical anecdote, information overload can lead to delays and paralysis, and if we only rely on data analysis to sense the future, we will often be blindsided by deliberate deception, human eccentricity and imagination, and quirks of fate. Additionally, knowing the facts of a situation is no guarantee that we interpret them well. Cognitive biases and cultural lenses can obviate the benefits of even the most relevant information.

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To guide decisions and planning, we need information, but it is only the raw ingredient. How we target the information we need and transform it into actionable insight or foresight is the art, or practice, of intelligence. This is the thought process of moving from vague concerns and uncertainties to appropriately qualified, actionable answers to highly relevant questions. It is also how we check our own biases and habits to reduce their effect on interpretation. 

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Intelligence lies at the heart of political risk management, which deals with dynamic contexts and situations in which research and data analysis alone are insufficient for guidance. It is an important aspect of all Harmattan solutions, but in order to better enable clients to be their own political risk experts, intelligence is an explicit practice area and client offering.

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Explore our intelligence training and review services with the buttons above this introduction or just below.