0:13 hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and well actually this is the last week that we're going to be on at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time 2: p.m. uh eastern time starting next next week we're going to um be broadcasting at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time 100 p.m. eastern time that's the same broadcast slot as um my Monday show trusts and Estates weekly I don't know why this didn't occur to me
0:48 sooner but having you know different uh broadcast times during the day I don't I don't really know that it makes any sense um in theory I suppose it means if you can't watch uh one show at a particular time you can watch another one but in reality um it makes it so that we can meet together at a regular time each day um and um you know if if you care to adjust your schedule so that uh you know you're you're you know we're you're available um so that that we can
1:25 um you know meet together so um anyway from here on out although we're meeting at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time today we're going to be meeting business and uh business lessons from the military will be meeting at 10: a.m um my show tomorrow people making money will continue at 12:30 pm. Pacific time for a few more weeks and then it's also going to bump up to the 10: a.m. slot so that uh Monday through Wednesday my shows will all be at 10: a.m. but keep keep for now um because I've got some guests
2:00 coming up who are uh already scheduled at 12:30 p.m. Pacific that's going to continue that way for the next few weeks it won't switch until mid December so anyway thank you for being with me um you know a little little housekeeping there to get things going and our topic for the last few weeks has been intelligence the Spy versus spy kind and how we can use Marine Corps War fighting Doctrine on that subject in our businesses and so uh like a good military presenter I do have my um
2:36 PowerPoint ready here we go slid show and okay um so here we are business W for the military um all things at that's weird all things um relate to the three pillars of attainment um here in business lessons from the military we deal primarily in the Pursuits pillar the finances realm although we do at times get into the other two pillars self and relationships um especially friends and and sometimes uh family with
3:13 respect to business lessons Okay we spoke about the objective of intelligence we defined intelligence and we talked about the challenge of intelligence and how to deal with it so if you're interested in any of those shows please feel free to go to um our web our YouTube channel I should say um youtube.com forward slash we're doing well this morning aren't we forward slash at the way to wow and you can see all of our past episodes both for uh this show and all
3:50 the others um and you can catch up on this discussion on intelligence So today we're going to talk about the characteristics of good intelligence okay and this is not meant to be a checklist per se these are the things we want to have in mind as we are either developing intelligence ourselves or guiding our our staff our team to develop the kind of intelligence we need in order to more effectively run our businesses okay so um we're going to
4:27 look at um six character istics of good intelligence and talk about each one for just a few minutes and yeah we're doing okay on time okay so first of all good intelligence is thorough now when we say thorough we don't mean that every single fact has been uncovered every single Avenue has been investigated as you'll as you'll see in a couple of minutes that kind of thoroughness is probably going to conflict with another characteristic of
5:04 good intelligence timely or timeliness okay so what we mean when we say thorough is we get the information we that satisfies the part the needs of a particular decision that needs to be made okay and you're going to see this as a recurring theme all of these characteristics are modif I by by what it why it is we're Gathering the intelligence okay
5:39 so um if if we're if we're looking at market research um because we uh want to do a particular product launch for let's say the upcoming Christmas holidays okay it's not going to do us any good to map out a twomon plan so we can thoroughly um you know develop our intelligence because two months from now the holiday season is long long over okay and and the intelligence won't won't do us any good okay so we're going to have to be um
6:16 we're gonna have to be very we at this point because it's already the middle of November we'd have to be very pointed in what would constitute a thorough job as we examine issues of marketing um uh you know for the upcoming holiday season okay now as a result for intelligence to be thorough we need to be able to understand what we do know and what we don't know or what's known and what's not known okay that can
6:51 be as important understanding what we don't know is as important as understanding what we we do know okay because as we develop this either as the people developing the intelligence to hand over to you know um people who are senior to us in decision-making or working with our team to get the intelligence we need one of the things we we want to know what what don't we know okay you you've got all this what's missing because if something crucial is missing
7:27 we don't have a thorough intelligence picture okay and so we need to have a sense of are all the bases covered probably not probably never okay so then what bases are left uncovered and how might that degrade the value of the intelligence so that we can know all right um we need to spend you know another two days on filling that Gap in order to actually be thorough Okay so again we need the information to satisfy
8:03 the needs of the decisions that need to be made okay and we need an assessment of what's known and what's not known in order to really gain a good picture of whether the intelligence is thorough okay next accurate so good intelligence needs to be based on facts okay and and um here's here's the challenge often times we're not able to know if we've
8:38 got a factual picture Okay so so let's say that again let's stick with our example of gathering intelligence for marketing purposes so let's say we do a survey okay an opinion survey well are opinions facts no they're not so um but you know as a result of doing the opinion survey let's say we conclude that uh 50% of those people
9:14 surveyed intend to spend less this year on their Christmas shopping than they did last year now that that's that may be fact well that that is that hopefully that is factual based on the data that that we gathered here's the thing though did we gather enough data for that factual conclusion for for so that the drawing of that factual conclusion is in fact factual or has has our surveys has who we surveyed somehow
9:51 skewed what the information that we've gotten and so the conclusion we drew is not act is not not actually accurate okay so that becomes the difficulty in all of this all right and so let's say um let's say we're a toy you know a toy seller right and um we go out and do a survey of people as to whether they're going to spend as much what they're SP
10:26 what they're spending is going to be this year relative to last year year okay and we come up with a conclusion half the people said um that they're going to spend less this year than last year okay so here's the crucial question were the people survey people who are likely to buy toys because if not does it really matter as a toy you know as someone who's selling toys do I really care if people who you know aren't going to buy toys are going to spend more or less next this year than last probably not so the conclusion that we've drawn may be factual but it may not be
11:02 accurate okay do you see how that all fits together so these are the kind of issues we need to consider okay [Music] uh okay um all right next uh that's weird timely so like I said um when I was talking about thorough if we don't get the intelligence in time to use it to make the decision that needs to be made it's of absolutely no value at all
11:40 and so many of the other characteristics are going to need to be viewed through this lens of timeliness and in probably almost every case and maybe in literally every case we can't let the perfect become the enemy of the good or or the better or the excellent however you want to describe that it's unlikely we're ever going to have enough time in order to
12:16 get a perfect intelligence assessment that being the case we're always going to have to look at what is the time window that we have available able and how is that going to impact the other characteristics that we considering as we develop what we hope will be good intelligence okay so timeliness could affect accuracy okay maybe we look going back to our example of the survey so
12:53 maybe we assess that um the the the people that we have um that we surveyed okay are in well we're not we're not clear are these toy buyers or not okay and let's say we've got a week to gather this intelligence so what that may tell us is rather than starting down the road with this group of people maybe we need to um just throw that out even though it means some lost work and some lost time and refocus okay
13:28 we need to we need to focus on time buyers and if it's going to take us two days to figure out you know what who are those toy buyers okay that's better because we'll still have at least five days left to survey them and assess the the data that we get and that within the time frame we have that will give us better accuracy than it would be if we continue down the road that we're on and end up maybe we were able to survey more people but since we don't know we don't
14:03 have a clear picture as to whether they're toy buyers or not in the end we we won't be able to assess the accuracy or at least assess it very well okay so all of those things have come into play as we um deal with with these various issues okay let's move on then to the next set of three right there's like I said there's six Al together so good intelligence needs to be usable okay now that there's a couple of aspects usable means it needs to be I
14:40 mean well I'll talk about that in a minute usable means that it needs to be clear it needs to be concise and it needs to be fairly easily assimilated and the assimilability of the information the the you know how easily we assimilate it is going to be related to the timeliness so the less time we have to gather assess and absorb the good you
15:15 know the intelligence the more assimilable it's it needs to be okay because we're going to need to assimilate it quickly in order for it to be usable Okay so um oh there was another point I wanted to make now I think I've lost it uh oh here it is so if we can create graphic as in pictorial representations of our intelligent
15:51 assessments that typically makes it easier for us to assimilate that information because we can have that picture in our head rather than just a bunch of text okay so one way to make uh intelligence more usable is to figure out how can this be represented pictorially in a graph and a pie chart something like that okay so that the people for whom we're providing it can get that picture set in their mind okay and as they then discuss
16:28 whatever decision it is they need to make they can keep that image uppermost okay again as opposed to keeping in mind a bunch of of facts that are coming off of a fact sheet now if there isn't an effective way to pictorially represent the intelligence the next best thing would be some kind of bullet points where there's short phrases instead of dense paragraphs now that doesn't mean that there can't be more dense paragraphic explanations to go behind
17:03 the bullet points okay but for the to make the data most usable we want to summarize it into as small chunks as we can because again it's easier for us to remember maybe you know two to three or four words than it is a whole paragraph Okay so again we want to make the the intelligence as usable as possible okay next relevant this is an aspect of usability um and that is it needs to
17:38 focus on the decisions at hand okay one of the problems with um intelligence is in a way we can gather endless amounts of information and in doing so we can completely AB obscure the picture of of of which we've been talking about the marketplace we can have so much data so much um um static if you will that we're
18:13 not able to see you know the peral uh forest for the trees or something like that okay we um so what we need to do is distill down out of this huge or or whatever out of the body of information that we've gathered okay what is the relevant information now this is where we need to be careful because we don't want to let our bias or preconceived notions direct us in how we sift through
18:49 and for that matter assess the intelligence so going back to thorough and accurate okay for just a moment we we want want to be as factual as we can all right we we don't want to let our preconceived notions about the marketplace or about a competitor Cloud our objectivity and that's especially important as we look at how at making the intelligence relevant to the problem at hand okay so I I remember when um
19:24 back in my real estate career um I did a lot of appraisal and Consulting work and almost always there was a market assessment as part of my report so the one thing well not the one thing but one of the things I had to be most careful about is that I crafted an accurate picture of the market that didn't um fall into the Trap of confirming
19:59 what my client was hoping to hear okay so um if I was looking at um oh I I remember I did um I I did an appraisal of a lumber mill um and um the property was heavily contaminated with chemicals and such and in researching various factors including the zoning of the property um the the um uh plan use issues it it became clear
20:37 that if that lumber mill ever closed it could never reopen on a practical of a practical matter it could never reopen as an operating lumber mill it just couldn't okay and so I I I explained all those issues in the report in the market section of the report and then I explained that therefore the value I was giving this lumber mill was only valid so long as
21:14 the current so long as a lumber mill was operating there but at the point where it ceased the value would drop significantly because number one you couldn't start up another lumber mill there and number two you had a heavily contaminated piece of land okay so you probably couldn't turn around for example and build you know residential housing there so I submitted the report to the client and the client uh the client had another appraiser review it and she said well you know it
21:49 it this isn't what we want and I said well actually this is what I was you know contracted to do and she said but but this is this is a a value and use and I said yes I was told to Value the property according to the current use he said the other information is provided so that the client can understand the marketplace and the risks of lending money to this particular operator right and and the appraiser
22:25 didn't like that and I think the lender didn't like either because it it ex I think they wanted to do the transaction and this exposed a a particular problem with that okay now my job was not to make sure they could do the transaction my job was to assess the risks and the risks of doing the transaction with respect to the collateral the property okay that's what was relevant and I had to make sure sure I was not letting my bias or the
23:01 client's bias if affect affect what was relevant to the assignment in hand okay in many ways uh an appraisal report is an intelligence report by the way okay finally available so um the intelligence needs to be the people who need the intelligence need to be able to get it okay so first of all it can't be couched in language that they don't understand because it's not available to them then
23:38 okay and um while only while certain types of intelligence may only be AC may only be available to certain people within a company okay those decisions need to be set up in a way so that the decision makers at certain levels do have access to that information otherwise you can have done the best the best it could be the most thorough the most accurate the most usable the most relevant but then the people who need it can get at it and so what was the point
24:14 okay so depending on whether the intelligence is being gathered to make tactical operational or strategic decisions okay then whoever you know your Frontline Frontline people as well as everybody you know uh senior to them may need tactical intelligence okay because and so maybe maybe it needs to be made broadly available whereas strategic intelligence maybe only you know senior leadership of the company needs to have access to that and so it's
24:50 it's kept in a way that only you know the seite executives or whatever the people who you know own the the company um have access to it okay but thought needs to be given there so that we're not Gathering a bunch of intelligence and it's and and it's you know it's being done well and yet it can't it's not being used effectively because the people who most need it don't have access to it okay so just real real Quickly's let's just review the six characteristics again of six characteristics of good intelligence
25:25 again it's thorough it's accurate it's timely it's usable it's relevant and it's available and notice that um two of them availability and timeliness in some ways um are going to Trump the other ones because if it's not either if it's not timely and it's not available to the people who need it it doesn't really matter how thorough accurate usable or relevant it is okay so it it's important that all of these
26:02 be given thought um prior to going forward with the plan to gather and assess the intelligence okay um because if if what you gather in the end is going to be too sensitive for most people to have have access to it even though they really need it to make good decisions okay something something in the plan may need to be altered in order for it to be useful okay and that's that's what's good about um knowing
26:37 these various characteristics is if you understand them from the get-go you can build them into your intelligence gathering and assessment plan and and stand a much better chance of coming out with a re with a relevant a use a useful product we'll call it okay so that is our show for today um continuing on as I said on that subject of uh of intelligence and next week um we will uh well actually let's see next week is uh
27:13 um is Thanksgiving week so um we're gonna um actually have some some classic episodes um for you to enjoy um and so we will pick up with um original content in in two weeks so tomorrow at 12:30 p.m Pacific is people making money and we'll be talking about uh tax tips for 2023 so we are heading toward the end of the year and there are certain things that you may um want to consider doing in order to um optimize
27:51 your tax situation um in preparation for filing your taxes next year so we're going to talk about that again at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow and then um then next week starting on Monday at 10: a.m. uh trust and Estates weekly like I said we're going to have a classic episode for you and on uh seven days from today at 10 a.m. we'll have a classic episode of business lessons from the military okay so I I hope you enjoyed the show for today if you if you have any thoughts comments please do share them in uh
28:28 social media um all of the links to our social media channels uh will be in the show notes after the show posts so I invite you to check it out there and um if you do drop by our YouTube Channel please uh consider subscribing um that way uh you will always know when a new episode posts and you'll never miss any any of our three shows throughout the week so I thank you very much for joining me hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and look forward to seeing you tomorrow signing off Marie
29:04 you are my bell all the best folks