President Obama today said that intelligence agencies failed to connect the dots, disparate pieces of information that when woven together should have triggered more alarm.In reality, all of us live surrounded by an increasing number of disparate pieces of information: a blog post here, a few Tweets over there, that newspaper article from yesterday, that book on your Kindle, the headlines on your web browser, a conversation overheard at Starbucks. The list goes on and on....
And at its best, we'll do more than just connect the dots, but we will blend them to create new meaning and new innovations ... just as the great Impressionist painters like George Seurat formed colors in their masterpieces from a complex array of overlapping micro burst of distinct and separate colors.
From Jeffrey Cufaude, a brilliant reframing and use of current events. With David Brooks's piece in the New York Times, the best I've seen on the Christmas incident. Since I've started writing, Diane Rehm has begun an interview with Atul Gawande on his writing on the need for checklists, and she surprised me by suggesting another way we could connect the dots by saying that Dr. Gawande must be in sync with President Obama not just on health care reform but on national security as well. A audio transcript should be available shortly.
Later in the day, I found this on the Tom Peters site
The late CIA Director William Casey insisted that employees read the management classic In Search of Excellence to encourage every officer to take personal responsibility for solving problems, rather than kicking them on to the next guy in line. CIA Director Leon Panetta should use these searing events to foster a culture of initiative and accountability at a CIA that wants to do the job—but that needs leadership and reform.