Questioning the Process Behind an Assessment

Below is an except from an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal The full article may be read here.

"Shortly after the end of the Cold War, an American defense official named Phillip Karber traveled to Russia as an advance man for a visit by former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. "We were meeting with Russian generals," Mr. Karber recalls, "and we met a three-star who told us they had 40,000 warheads, not the 20,000 we thought they had." It was a stunning disclosure. At a time when legions of CIA analysts, Pentagon war-gamers and arms-control specialists devoted entire careers to estimating the size of the Soviet arsenal, the U.S. had missed the real figure by a factor of two. ..." WSJ 10.24.11

Whenever the expectations preclude the assessment, it is time to question the process that was being used.

Following is a listing of critical strategic factors of what an ideal strategic assessment process must emphasize on:

• the macro and micro configuration of the grand setting and the many situations that lie within it;
• the psychological configuration behind the chief decision markers and their various teams; and
• the logistics behind the process.

Is your project team doing it? ...