0:30 how do you like our new bumper music for those of you who saw the first year of our show you you'll recognize the nautical theme that was um part of part of our title sequence so thought I'd add that in for a little little uh boost to get you into the show so hello I'm uh I'm Kevin bemel and I'm your host on business lessons from the military and we're here every Tuesday at 11:00 am Pacific time 2 pm eastern time to talk about military Doctrine history and
1:06 practices of great military leaders that we can then um uh translate for use in our um professional Pursuits um if we run a business or we work for a business or or even a a a nonprofit or or in Academia I think these lessons broadly apply so um last week we started on a new topic in Marine Corps Warf fighting Doctrine it's actually the final topic we're going to we're going to discuss in this
1:41 particular set of Doctrine and that's intelligence the Spy versus spy type of intelligence and so we're going to continue with that discussion today and let's see here we go share screen excuse me and uh one more moment we'll get the there we go we have anything that has to do with the military has to have a PowerPoint okay um so here we are and of course here's our um three pillars of
2:17 attainment um T today we're as we are with most of the uh episodes of this show we're dealing here in the finances Realm of the Pursuits pillar um although as I've mentioned many times we will sometimes dive into um other parts of the three pillars of attainment so last week we talked about the objective of intelligence and primarily it is to support decisionmaking so um if you're um interested in in um how to
2:53 uh or the in the objective of intell of intelligence so I invite you to go to our YouTube channel um that's youtube.com theeway toow and you can view last week's episode So today we're g to talk about int what I call intelligence defined so um the word intelligence can have many meanings and we want to get very clear on now that we know why we want this information or why we want intelligence I should say um now I think we need to
3:29 be more specific about what it is um int what what intelligence is so we start out typically we can gather information so information is is data it's facts um it may even be um Impressions so um uh you know we may uh um uh we may do a survey of of customers
4:04 for our product um and and ask them um I I I get for for example this brings to mind so I'm I'm on this um um I don't know really if you call it a panel it's just a a group of people that um routinely are asked to respond to surveys um that a that a company does for the Wall Street Journal um and I I think it's done um for their advertisers so the advertisers can determine um uh you know how effective
4:40 is their advertising so typically um one of the surveys will say well uh you know do you remember seeing this ad to which I almost always click no because I frankly ignore the ads in in in the newspaper um but then it on the rare occasions where I'll say yes so then it'll go on to ask me you know what do I think of this company is it a is it a leader is it a this is it or that right so that's that's just raw information and it's not necessarily factual in the sense that um although
5:16 whether I saw the ad or not may be a fact my opinion about the company isn't I wouldn't call that a fact per se right that's just an opinion but that information they get from that survey is is is just that it's it's unrefined um data unrefined opinions doesn't really mean anything okay it's it's like um when you get uh um you know um you mine or and there's gold in it
5:52 but I mean right now all you've got is is the rock with maybe a you know a vein of gold going through it well so um it eventually could be worth something when it's refined but as it is right now it's it's just it's just a hunk of rock for the most part okay what what becomes useful is knowledge so knowledge is refined information right it's it's something that's um usable so to go back to um the
6:27 survey I was mentioning let's say that um for I think I they did one um earlier this week or maybe it was last week I I think it was targeted um at Samsung um which is a um I believe it's a South Korean um electronics company so um it asked me you know have I heard of Samsung what do I think about them kind of thing right so my response by itself is just some information and in fact let's say they got a thousand responses that's still
7:03 just information now out of those thousand now if you take those thousand responses and and let's say they were to find that six um 630 out of the 1,000 had heard of Samsung or knew of Samsung so 63% of responders had brand awareness okay now we've got some knowledge there right and that's something that um Samsung can use especially let's say um
7:40 one of their competitors is uh Sony so let's say a similar survey were done for Sony and they found out that um 80% of respondents uh were aware of the Sony brand so at 63% right now now you've got some some knowled knowled you've got that Sony is has 80% brand awareness Samsung has 63% there's a 17% Gap there okay do you see so that's knowledge it's it's helping you um or
8:15 it's helping the people really in either company understand the market you know we could do the same thing here in the United States with you know Coke versus Pepsi right although I I suspect that Coke and Pepsi have pretty similar brand awareness in in the United States right so um you know what percentage of people um prefer cocacola over Pepsi and vice versa right um in in the sort of Cola Wars right and you could put you know Royal Crown Cola way below and then you've got Shasta Cola and whatever right so I imagine Coke and
8:52 Pepsi are probably you know up here at the top then you have all the little ones down here at the bottom so you can take Raw information but then it's you can turn it into knowledge okay so oh well that's that's so weird when it does that okay stay there all right so in intelligence then is the analysis and synthesis of information that turns it into knowledge okay and
9:29 the reason I think it's it ends up being called intelligence is it takes thought to do that to contextualize the information so that it's it has some utility right some usefulness right so so going back to the example of uh Samsung and Sony so if we see that Sam and and by the way I'm making these numbers up I I I don't know that they're accurate but if there's if 63 if some Samsung has 63% brand awareness and Sony has 80% brand
10:06 awareness right so that information has been analyzed it's been synthesized and now we have a picture of the relative um a awareness of of the brand within the marketplace okay but more than that what really makes this um intelligence is it leads to some that is actionable on the part of Sony it's to maintain its Market lead in the case of Samsung it's to see
10:42 what the Gap is and that there's room for growth okay so if 80% of people have heard of Sony um then presumably um Sam there there's there's more than 63% of people who want to know about the type of products that Sony and Samsung manufacture so if Samsung is down here at 63 they've got an opportunity to increase their brand awareness and perhaps 80% by the way isn't the ceiling so another type of of
11:18 um information you might gather is you know how many people use um uh televisions or um I don't know do people use players anymore I think everything is streaming but let's let's just say televisions right so if um 90% of people use televisions right even for Sony they've still got a 10% Gap in essence to make up because evidently 10% of people who use televisions don't know about Sony and that Sony makes televisions and and even more so for
11:54 Samsung okay so that can lead to an objective for those companies to try and meet okay so we start out with information we an analyze it and synthesize it through the intelligence process to end up with knowledge but in order for that knowledge to truly be intelligence it must be actionable okay so that's kind of the stack up of of how
12:31 we Define intelligence both from a military standpoint and from a business standpoint okay so let's uh yeah I think we we've got time to this so let's just take a little example of um intelligence in um at the Tactical level of um of of a a military situation okay so let's say you know you're a company commander and you have orders to take a
13:06 particular objective okay so you you certainly don't want to attack that objective blind okay you you hopefully you can you you you've got some intelligence about the strength of the enemy where the enemy is placed what kind of artillery it has etc etc okay now um let's let's let's take one of those um pieces of intelligence let's say um the enemy there there the enemy has a force of 250 um men okay so
13:44 well I mean that's fine but I mean are they 250 Riflemen are they 150 Riflemen and 100 AR 100 artillery men or are they um you know 250 headquarters people like clerks and um you know radio operators and and and all of that right so there's a vast difference in the actionability of the intelligence based on what it
14:20 really is so um if if the intelligence is that um there is a um a um an infantry company holding the objective okay that's that's a much more actionable well I that's a much more different type of piece of piece of intelligence than that there's a companys siiz group of people on the objective okay um and and by the way um they could say well there's there's a there's a company headquarters in the on
14:56 the at the objective um but but it's just the headquarters element wow so that that make that's for that makes a much different um action on the part of that um that that company that's looking to take that objective then then that there's a company of artillery there I mean there's a an infantry company there okay now presumably when they get this intelligence so let's take the example where the intelligence is there's an infant company holding the objective
15:31 okay so presumably with that comes what the composition of a typical infantry company for the enemy is comprised of right it's comprised of uh you know three um uh three platoon of infantry um a headquarters elements and a you know One battery of artillery or something something like that okay so now they not only do they know um the size but they know the composition of
16:07 the enemy and they can then plan their attack with with a lot more confidence that that intelligence is much more actionable than just knowing the raw numbers okay so that's what we mean by the the intelligence must be actionable in order for it to truly be intelligence for it to truly have value as intelligence it should help direct what it is that um in this case the the attacking company um needs to do
16:43 likewise going back to business then um in order for intelligence to truly be actionable it should it should give um um guide guidance signposts if you will as to what steps the organization can take in order to better meet its Mission okay all right and I think we' got one more yeah okay now here's the what I call the intelligence challenge Intelligence on a competitor
17:20 is not as as concrete as knowledge about ourselves okay so if knowledge is the process of analysis and synthesis of information to knowledge we can create intelligence about ourself okay and and the we or we can go through the intelligence process really on ourselves what we end up with in terms of knowledge will be concrete because there are no well at least presumably
17:55 there are no barriers to our um access to information and we can be much more we can be much clearer about the analysis and synthesis we need to do in order to gain knowledge of our own organization now when we're working the intelligence process on a competitor right off the bat we're going to face some some challenges in terms of getting information not just in collecting it but in determining the accuracy of it
18:31 okay so the the Challenger could be um sort of letting information out um and depending on how that's being done we may not know if if that information is correct or maybe they're just letting that out to to to fool us right to trick us um it's sort of you know disinformation and that that word gets I think o overused a a little bit but um we we can't be sure so we can try and verify information that we have about the competitor um but we may not
19:09 be able to verify it 100% as a result we can't be as sure about our analysis and synthesis of that information into knowledge about our competitor so that's that is the challenge of intelligence and and typically we when we typically when we talk about intelligence we don't talk about intelligence with respect to our own organization we really mean uh or not we don't mean knowledge about our own organization we're really talking about knowledge of our competitors right
19:44 so that's why I call it the intelligence challenge because the intelligence that we have of our competitors is is never going to be or I shouldn't say never but rarely is it going to be as as thorough as concrete as the knowledge we have about our own organization okay and so while intelligence can clear up some of the fog of the marketplace and and and the business competitive market it it can't
20:19 clear away all the fog okay and that's that's really not the goal right the goal is to do as good a job as we can in the time we have allotted right to go back to our primary objective which is to support decision making so an intelligence process that is not getting us actionable data within the time frame that a decision needs to be made is a flawed
20:56 intelligence process at best right because it's not supporting this primary objective which is being able to make decisions or I might have put being able to make better decisions than we could have in the absence of the Intelligence on our competitors right so just you know reviewing real real quickly then intelligence is the analysis and synthesis of information into knowledge okay it's
21:32 a process we tend to think of intelligence as a product and and it is but it's also a process and and in many ways it's an ongoing process so each time we get new inputs we need to potentially reanalyze resynthesize um our our information into knowledge um so that we can see how does it affect the actionability of of that intelligence right as as we seek to deal with the challenge the
22:09 intelligence challenge of never having as concrete a view or as concrete knowledge about our competitors and and the overall Marketplace as we can about our own organization right so that's that's that's the the definition and challenge of intelligence okay and that that pretty much took us to the end here so go ahead and uh actually here stop sharing that's what I need to do okay oh I need to end this as well that's right
22:45 okay there we go so um that's that's the show for today and next week um on business lessons from the military we will continue in this discussion of the uses of intelligence in the business World taking these military Concepts and um you know converting them for use in in the in the private sector so um tomorrow um at 12:30 pm is uh people making money and we will be talking
23:20 about um financial statements so if we want if we want to really understand and our organizations whether it's a business whether it's a nonprofit um at least part of that is understanding our financial situation if we want to understand our personal finances okay financial statements are a way of doing that so I'm going to I'm going to be talking about the two most um basic financial statements that we can generate and what they're about and how to how to compile them and that kind of thing as a way of um you know gaining
23:57 better uh better knowledge about our personal finances and our professional finances so that's tomorrow uh 12:30 pm uh West uh Pacific Time 3:30 PM eastern time and then uh next week on Monday at 10: am. is the next edition of uh trust and Estates weekly so those are our three shows for the week and I invite you to join us you can join us live here in the meetings and that way you can ask questions um you know of what we're
24:34 discussing or you can watch us um online through our YouTube channel live or through um eight other um uh social media Outlets uh LinkedIn uh Facebook x uh twitch and I don't remember the other ones um but they're all they're all available for you to watch on your favorite social media channel so so invite you to do that as well and if you haven't been to uh my YouTube channel um please do check it out and and while you're there would you consider subscribing I certainly would appreciate
25:09 it um and that way you'll be informed whenever a new uh a new episode posts so thank you very much for watching I appreciate it I wish you a wonderful rest of of the day and look forward to seeing you tomorrow and signing off as I always do Marie you're my bell darling