Hack:
The Hidden Expert

The Hidden Expert

During the past few years I have been presenting the Think Intelligence methodology with its TINO framework and tools in many situations. I shared with thousands of people the pros and cons of what is termed the 'information technology paradigm', pointing out the need to modify some of the current 'documented'know-how and complement it with 'undocumented' human intelligence.

In my best experience, despite great professional, personal, and geographical differences, most people reacted similarly. They felt we offered an interesting new approach, but that even beginning to transform the reigning knowledge paradigm was practically hopeless. Furthermore, 'Intelligence' usually connoted Business Intelligence tools or such other document-oriented methods.

I am no longer surprised. When I started bringing HUMINT to the business world ten years ago, this reaction was a complete mystery to me. I could not fathom why the business community, who has developed extremely effective methods of data collection and analysis, has virtually ignored what governmental intelligence organizations worldwide understood long ago: far better answers are to be found if we effectively approach both documented data and people.

This seems even stranger if we consider that while governmental intelligence naturally involves the problem of finding people willing to volunteer their knowledge, in the organizational and business world most people are not only happy to share what they know, but are often shouting it in the hope that someone would listen. But no one does.

While many of my clients initially said they are listening, and were honestly trying to do so, I argued that without the right 'business questions' and a clear methodology for collecting the information, it is very likely they are listening to the wrong people.

Still, my argument may sound too abstract. How does it work in practice? I like to answer this question by using the case of a…restaurant.

A restaurant is usually a small-scope business, but it exemplifies most of the common business processes, like strategy, business development, innovation, production, marketing and sales, HR, IT, and so on. Its size makes it ideal as a simple case study, since it has a relatively short managerial decision making process, usually involving one or two people.

When I bring up this example, I like to ask my brainstorming partners what would they answer if that owner, who has many simple and difficult 'business questions ' to deal with daily, will ask them the simplest one: "how good is my food?"

Before reading ahead, stop for a bit and try to answer this yourself. How would you advise the owner? Who would you suggest he should ask?

After presenting this question to a large number of highly-experienced managers, business partners, academic scholars and others, the typical answers were the following, starting with the most common reply:

Is there no one who can give us the answer to this simple question? I believe there is. Someone in this restaurant, let's call him the TIKO, is the best expert on this issue. But very few people ever recognize this.

So, who is the TIKO?

If you would like to share your answers with me (and you haven't heard them from someone else), you are most welcome to send me an e-mail, (haim dot humints dot com) and I will write you back.