CHALLACON

Using CIA Tradecraft in the Real World

Imagine a daunting assignment: You need to create an employee development training course on problem-solving skills. Sounds easy, right?

It should be easy. After all, you have been solving problems your entire life. Maybe you have a Masters of Business Administration and excel at managing employees. Maybe you have made some great decisions and consider yourself successful. Or, maybe (like me) you have actually completed multiple analytical courses or the intelligence community advanced analyst program. Whatever your journey, there is no doubt you have developed a problem solving process.

How do you do it? Is it different from the way I solve problems?

I have always thought problem solving skills have an individual-specific component. We all don’t see the world the same way, so why would we all solve problems the same way? While I still believe this to be the case to a degree, I have had to concede that there exist universal analytical steps that can make problem solving easier.

The Sherman Kent School is the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) analyst training, development, and proving ground. One of their textbooks is available online: A Tradecraft Primer: Structure Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis.

While my daily problem solving is usually used to decide when is the best time to get groceries, CIA analysts have to provide recommendations for decision makers on national security topics. A mistake in my problem solving means I wait in heavy traffic; a mistake for them often means people’s lives are disrupted. These analysts solve problems by following a step-by-step analytical process as shown above (from A Tradecraft Primer, page 38). If you have some time (say, like a few days off for a holiday, perhaps), this is a quick and easy read.

When someone follows this guide, they would go from defining a problem, identifying assumptions, and brainstorming to red-teaming, devil’s advocate, and analysis of competing hypotheses (ACH). The analytical tool chosen depends partially on the problem. But, there are inherent challenges with these techniques in everyday life. Most of these techniques work best in group settings, require hours to complete, and need information that is often unavailable.

While this is all great, is this how we solve real world, private sector problems? I would say “yes”. I would argue that we all utilize elements of these steps in our daily lives. We may not always title the steps the same, but I believe we are generally involved in these processes to a certain degree. It is only when we face larger problems that we try more structured techniques. (Think about a young person deciding between colleges or a person evaluating which car to purchase.)

Back to my original question: How do you train people to solve problems better?

I’m still working on the details, but I have settled on developing curriculum with these deliverables:

(A person, after completing this training, will be able to…) Explain the identifying characteristics of a problem that will require greater concentration and effort to solve;
Demonstrate performing a “self-check” in which they 1) clearly articulate the problem and restate it if necessary, 2) brainstorm potential solutions, 3) identify their own assumptions regarding the problem, and 4) critique any implicit biases they may have regarding the problem, the people, or the potential solutions;
Describe the benefits and challenges to using a structured analytical technique like red-teaming or ACH; and,
Role-play using devil’s advocacy to find a solution for a simulated client problem.

This potential curriculum is still in the creation stage, but I am actually quite excited to give this a try in the near future. However, I am open to suggestions. Does anyone have other thoughts on how to teach people to problem solve better?

Applying Learning Styles to Electronic Health Records (EHR) Training

In the educational world, learning styles can be a taboo subject. The learning style field is filled with nearly a dozen distinct models all claiming to encapsulate and categorize learners. As an education professional, I frequently must modify teaching opportunities to my students and their various learning styles. This can become overwhelming – you must plan material that is compatible with the various learning style types.

In my current position, I am responsible for training new employees on the various electronic health record (EHR) systems (there are dozens of them). A specific health information management (HIM) employee may start their day using a Cerner system, move before lunch to an e-Clinical Works (eCW) system, and then end the day with the NextGen or AllScripts EHR. Not only do these HIM professionals need familiarity with the various systems, everyone supporting them (e.g., their supervisor, manager, quality assurance professional, etc.) must also be proficient in the systems. And, I am responsible to better develop training to educate HIM employees on these various systems.

I have not, to date, identified more than a few ways to teach something like an EHR to someone. The learner can read about it, hear about it, watch it, practice on it, or teach it. This is also the logical progression for how a person learns about a topic. Currently, I have structured training to involve portions of reading, listening, watching, and practicing on the EHR. I am always looking for a better way to train; therefore, I start reviewing over learning styles again.

Among the various learning styles is the Felder-Silverman learning styles model (1988). has four dimensions: active vs. reflective; sensing vs. intuitive; visual vs. verbal; and, sequential vs. global. A typically learner would fall somewhere on each of these planes. An active learner, for example, would want to work in a group more than a reflective learner, who would generally prefer to work individually. For me, it really depends on the materials or topic what type of education I prefer.

Similar to how we compartmentalize people with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), I believe we can utilize a similar model to understand the aspects of learning styles. By breaking down each dimension, we could create quadratic categorizations with brief descriptions on an activity that would best operationalize the specific learner. So, I tried to do this. That is, I sought to produce 16 different activities, each geared toward a specific Felder-Silverman learning style. As a caveat, I had to rename “sensing” to “direct” and “verbal” to “words” in order to come up with the included guide. Here is my view on this topic: EHR Training FSLMS

Engaging with an Unreceptive (or Hostile) Audience

CAVEAT: This is geared less toward sales and more toward partnerships.

Often, we are required to develop partnerships with organizations and people who are less than receptive to our message. Even if we are passionate about what we are doing, we sometimes are unable to convince people to partner with us.

As part of my community engagement work, I have attempted to partner with several large religious organizations. In one instance, I was specifically told by the organization’s leader they would not be working on this project…nothing personal, but the organization was making a stand against the government’s involvement in this matter.

Being shutdown or rejected like this is difficult. I left this interaction with questions about how to better approach the situation. I spent some time reviewing over other, previous interactions which started out similarly. And, I feel the following points were very helpful to me to engage with unreceptive or hostile audiences:

Actively listen to their viewpoint and objections. I often have a tendency to have my response or rebuttal already formed prior to the other person even ending their statement. This is the wrong approach. This is something that I am actively working on—being a better active listener. I need to ingest and digest the other person’s points of view before continuing to develop a relationship. I need to listen to their full statement before I attempt to counteract it.

Meet them where they are physically and mentally. Physically, it is important for me to show that I am willing to go wherever they want to meet — to break down the tradition of meeting halfway or having the other person come to me. This go-to-them attitude shows that I respect their time so much I will make a personal sacrifice to meet them.

From a mental standpoint, meeting them where they are means for me to empathize with their position. Often, I find myself taking a more indignant position—I know that I am right because I am right. Or, I know I am right because this is how it is going to eventually be. In my time with the FBI, I had this mentality in certain instances. I would participate in joint projects and activities with my colleagues from other agencies, but I knew when things “got real”, we (the FBI) would probably take over and control the environment. After all, we were the feds.

Be open to change or modification. While we all have standards to adhere to, it is important that we know the rules and protocols well enough that we can change or modify to meet their needs. As a former Bible school student, I learned about missionary work being done in South America. Many, effective, missionaries would learn about the indigenous cultural traditions and then find a way to marry up the Gospel with the local traditions. There were times, obviously, this didn’t work. But, it is important, especially when dealing with an unreceptive audience, to attempt this method as best as possible.

Be patient. One of my favorite expressions is “it’s not a sprint, it is a marathon.” This is important for how view our progress with these audiences. We should realize that we may not be able to immediately change or sell them to our cause. We should try to focus on the little wins we make along the way.

I’ve used this expression before, but instead of viewing this process like ‘The Game of Life’, we should view it as ‘Monopoly.’ We should realize there are going to be many cycles we make around the board before we get to a stage of having some comfort or control in the environment.

Like in the game Monopoly, there are always going to be times in which we have to venture into other peoples’ territories. This can be scary, but if we “actively listen to their viewpoint and objections,” “meet them where they are,” “be open to change or modification,” and “be patient,” then we will be more successful in our journey.

Read the original here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/engaging-unreceptive-hostile-audience-darin-challacombe

Across the Microwave

Today, I led a group of seven volunteers to visit a local shelter for people experiencing homelessness. The shelter’s volunteer coordinator and I had talked a few months back about providing a cooking class for the residents. There was one catch: The residents would only have access to a microwave.

I like to cook, but I mostly just cook for meal prepping. I do not use the microwave very often. Designing a recipe booklet with only microwaveable choices was difficult, but I felt up to the challenge. And, over the past month, I have curated a few recipes and tested them out.

I put together a recipe book for the clients. Feel free to download, try out the recipes, and let me know what you think. I have the sourcing for the recipes if you are interested.

The photo was taken today at the shelter. (I received permission for the photo.)

Learning Styles

Several years ago, I worked on a project with youth from a state’s foster care agency. This project required teaching youth about their learning styles. My (then) boss talked about the five learning styles, specifically visual, aural, verbal, mathematical, and tactile. We all took a short quiz and rated our learning styles. I found out I scored high in all five, which I attributed to having to adapt to different styles based upon my years of formal education.

Christian Jarrett posted about a recent study conducted using the VARK learning styles tool. The study, authored by Polly R. Husmann and Valerie Dean O’Loughlin, found students who were provided learning matching their preferred learning style did not learn any better. While interesting, a few points to make:

The study focused on a sample of college students in an anatomy course. This would indicate these students were probably pre-med or similar academic track.
From the VARK site, a good portion of the aggregated participant samples are those identified as “university”, “two-year college”, or “high school”. This is a younger group of participants, which may support my experience (e.g., finding out I was not polarized on one learning style or the other) may be more common than is reported.

The Jarrett post and Husmann/O’Loughlin article tend to negatively focus on learning styles as a whole. I would like to argue that there is enough research to support there is something to learning styles. I believe, however, as an individual gets older and more experienced, the individual adapts to other styles and, in turn, loses a real preference for a specific style vs. another.

That would be an interesting study…