Helping Intelligence Analysts Gain Insight

Abstract

Abtract Decisionmakers expect intelligence assessments to be insightful. Still, intelligence professionals do not understand the insight process well enough to achieve consistently such indispensable outcomes. Little, if any, research has studied how intelligence analysts achieve insights. A qualitative, interview-based unclassified study was conducted to understand how insight emerges in 36 intelligence analysts who solved novel problems. The results include an emergence process consisting of two interacting elements—internalized tensions and priming—across the emotion–cognition and individual–social dimensions, and that the relationship between the two elements is complex. The emergence of insight is not predictable or controllable, which has significant challenges for the management of intelligence analysts because intelligence agencies typically are hierarchical organizations that emphasize order and control, conditions antithetical for nurturing emergence. This conundrum requires a major individual and cultural shift by management. The study suggests that the findings are generalizable across intelligence analysts in any national security organization, domestic or international.