14 January 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

Every day we communicate with a variety of people in a variety of ways.  Professionals tailor their communication to the audience they’re trying to reach – and every audience is different.  In this brief we’re going to look closely at our decision-making audiences to explore what they want, need, and expect from us, and how that impacts the way we must craft our communication to them.

4 February 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

After discussing what our decision-making audiences want, need, and expect from us, this brief will explore how we can relate our topics and issues to our clients’ needs.  We will focus in on highlighting our topics’ relevance to decision-making clients, then narrowing that relevance even further to frame insights that are valuable, useful, and actionable.

11 March 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

One we’ve narrowed down our topics to something our clients really care about, we need to ask the right questions – the ones our clients really want answered.  The problem is, most of us haven’t been taught how to ask good questions that will lead to the insights and new knowledge our clients need.  This session will help us get past our normal “good enough” questions to start asking “really good” ones.

1 April 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

Now that we have questions to answer, we’re going to look at how to best answer them for our clients.  This means delivering our answers as clear, direct, relevant insights.  That’s where managing this message comes in.  Here, we’ll look at turning our insights into a good BLUF – a Bottom Line Up Front that gives our clients the essential insights that answer their questions and anchor our communication.

13 May 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

While a great BLUF is a great start, we need to carry it forward into a great story.  Yes, a story.  Facts and figures, data and details are the lifeblood of an analyst, but they rarely motivate our clients on their own.  Good teams weave the information into a clear, direct story that carries our insightful messages to our clients in a way they can understand, believe, and use.  Join us in this session to learn how to do it better.

10 June 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

Analytic standards serve as the ethical and practical foundation for the work we do.  Even more, they give us the target of what our analytic products need to be, and what we need to do to get them there.  Join us in this session, where we will dig into what analytic standards do for us, and how to turn them into a practical guide as well as a theoretical foundation.

8 July 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

Objectivity is at the core of analysis, but in many ways our brains are hardwired for emotional subjectivity, cognitive bias, and logical fallacies that undermine that objectivity.  Join us in this session to examine some ways to identify and manage these biases and fallacies so we can minimize their impact on our analysis.

12 August 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

As intelligence analysis has gained prominence in national and strategic decision-making, we have sought ways to make that analysis better, more reliable, and more objective.  Using structured analytic techniques for our analysis is often believed to be one of the best ways to accomplish this – and they do have some good benefits.  But, they can’t do everything.  Join us in this session to look at some ways we can use structured analytic techniques to improve our analysis, and not mis-use them in a way that undermines our analysis.

9 September 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

Analysis begins where the information ends.  Good analysis has a solid foundation in information and logic, and analytic thought uses that foundation to generate educated belief.  Understanding how you apply logic to your information to create that belief and communicating it to your clients builds confidence in both the analyst and their analysis.  So, this session will look at how we use logic in our analysis, and how we can best help our clients understand that logic. 

14 October 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

Uncertainty, doubt, conflicting interpretation, and alternative hypotheses are constants in analysis.  The analyst’s job is to manage them in a way that is useful to their clients and their clients’ decision-making.  This session will explore how we can communicate the uncertainties, inconsistencies, and alternative possibilities to our clients in a way that is helpful rather than confusing, and that builds confidence rather than undermining it.

4 November 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

Not all sources of information are created equal, and accepting source information at face value can be a recipe for analytic disaster.  This session will explore several models you can use to critically evaluate your sources of information to better ensure you know the quality and reliability of the information you use, and how to communicate the strengths and weaknesses of your sources to your clients so they can make more informed decisions.

9 December 2025, 13:00-14:30 GMT (London)

No matter how prepared you think you are, looking at a blank page can be one of the most intimidating starts to creating your analytic products.  This session will explore using a variation on logical argument mapping to help you plan out a strong, structured analytic argument to facilitate easier and more clear, concise, and focused professional production.