The Atlantic Community

Recently I became a member of The Atlantic Community, a not-for-profit initiative based in Berlin and Washington, D.C. Apart from being an excellent source for political analyses the website provides the opportunity to join transatlantic debates on key issues of international politics and globalization.

I strongly recommend to take a look at the different features of this site including a “Top Press Commentary” and a “Best of Think tanks” section, Open Think Tank debates and executive summaries of these debates, not to mention the usual social community features.

You may find a brilliant example of such a debate summary here commenting on the media battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan which provides a lot of reasonable findings and ideas.

Last weekend the German Minster for Economic Affairs stepped down, and a new one was appointed. Since the successor is young and rather unknown, many newspapers and their websites tried to report as much information on him as possible. One strange detail is the absurd number of his given names - aristocrats sometimes seem to be undecisive on that… Anyway: his name is “Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg”.

An author of one of the most important German watchblogs, bildblog.de,  invented an additional given name and inserted “Wilhelm” into the German version of Wikipedia.

And now the crazy part comes: top news media in Germany reproduced the invented name, including the most important online news site Spiegel Online, the Website of Handelsblatt (being the most important financial newspaper), the website of the second most important TV newsshow in Germany (heute.de), and many others. The most important yellow press newspaper Bild even printed the wrong name on the front page.

Okay - maybe that wrong name is a minor detail. (Another detail was mistaking another company for the company of new Minister… ) But it reveals the mechanisms of a turbo-charged news machine that trades speed against accuracy.

What does that mean for your secondary research efforts? What does that mean for decisions based upon open source intelligence? In my experience this story represents only the tip of the iceberg.

Watching the career of this news item in the last 24 hours, you will find three reasons to distrust major media (at least here in Germany, and maybe in other countries, too):

Reason 1: The most important newspapers and online news sites use Wikipedia for background information. Many of them just copy and paste news bits.

Reason 2: Not many of even the most reputable media seem to check facts.

Reason 3: Many media do not even correct faults on their websites (which should be the easiest part). And I suspect many of these faults find their way into the archives and have the chance to influence future decisions.

As competitive intelligence experts, we have to evaluate market moves, competitors’ decisions, political statements. We better take into account that the working conditions in the media industry change for the worse in terms of quality, and that the number of sources with identical content is not in every case an indicator for accuracy. Checking facts is obviously something hard working journalists even at the most important news media just cannot afford any more.

Image you had consultants who would prepare your decisions. Imagine that those consultants had prepared worst-case scenarios and a list of things you would never do because that would endanger your credibility. Imagine that among those things would be moves or the issue of statements that would compromise the relationship to your competitor.

Imagine that you would be considered as one of the brightest heads in your profession. Imagine that your organization even claims that you are always right. Imagine that you just cannot be fired.

Now you make a mistake.

Imagine that one of the core values of your organization is the ability to confess an error of jugdment. Imagine that nobody really believes in this claim of infallibility. Because it just does not fit to your core values. And it does not fit to your current failures. Imagine that you would not miss the opportunity to put an end to one of the biggest sustained delusions your organization suffers from. Imagine that you would be serious about your core values.

Imagine that a lack of intelligence would lead to the insight that life inside your organization is just like outside your organization: Trial. And error.

“Only ethics can save CI profession in France and elsewhere in the world.”

Guy Gweth wrote a very interesting posting I just discovered citing some recent scandals in France where ethical and legal boundaries have been crossed. Now the French government plans to “asepticize the sector” by some certain measures, as Guy reports:

1- Obligatory licence for all the CI professionals

The primary goal of the administration is to make the sorting among all the cabinets of competitive or economic intelligence in France. After that, the State will deliver a licence to those (Europeans only) whose investigation by the secret services reveals CI competences and a good morality. We’re still waiting to know if non-Europeans CI professionals will be authorized to work in France.

2-  An interval to pass from a public intelligence service to a private CI company

On October 19, 2008, the French minister of home affairs, Michele Alliot-Marie (MAM), expressed her will to impose a three-years duration before a former member of a State intelligence service can carry on an activity in a private competitive intelligence agency. “Those professionals will be engaged for their competences and not for their address books”, she said.

3- A law to surround the profession

A project of regulation will be presented in the Council of Ministers at the latest at the end of December 2008. It could lead to the vote of a law in 2009…

I am really curious what that means for international research projects throughout Europe.

“Duplicity” with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen

I guess the film will have two effects on our profession: finally, we won’t have to repeat the term “competitive intelligence” in a conversation any more, and: we have to admit that we deal much more often with competitive stupidity than with corporate espionage.

The man is in office for only three days now, but - what a relief: substance and style differ drastically not only from his predecessor but from the common image of a typical politician as well. Barack Obama transforms the rules of the political leadership game by taking the red pill - to speak in terms of The Matrix.

Just some thoughts on the inaugural address and on the values it communicated:

• Openness: As the International Herald Tribune has pointed out the new president’s family members speak of a number of different languages like English, Indonesian, French, Cantonese, German, Hebrew and African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo. And many members of the new administration also have strong connections to foreign countries which should support multilateral politics as well. “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness… We say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.  For the world has changed, and we must change with it. “

• Truth: Obama addresses problems openly. “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real.  They are serious and they are many.  They will not be met easily or in a short span of time.” No blaming of others. No illusions.

• Ethics: “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” Like it was expected, one of Obamas first measures was to stop the violation of international law in Guantanamo. And torture is not an option any more.

• The power of persuasion: Reclaiming leadership not by military force but by the power of something I would call an “open source intelligence mindset”. That means: watch the world, analyze processes and structures, prepare for consequences - and then act in line with one’s own values while explaining why and to what end: “We seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” And that absolutely does not work when you divide the rest of the world into friend or foe or use any other one-dimensional measure.

Says Michael Hayden, departing CIA chief, on the growing importance of open source intelligence in the area of national security.

At the same time he confirms my assumption why Competitive Intelligence is still the most underrated management discipline: You cannot talk big about the results of your excellent research and analysis efforts because then you are about to lose the competitive advantage you just gained.

And there is even a second order obstacle: If you want to stay in business as a consultant, you will keep your best ideas and methods for yourself.

So what does this mean for those of us who try to make a living by the ethical collection and analysis of openly available information? “I’m not supposed to prove it, but INTELLIGENCE MATTERS, believe me!”??

In this blog, I will try to show that CI and PR are two sides of one coin - and that dealing with both is not a zero sum game.