ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

Productivitree #21 Lessons from the Intelligence War Room with Jonathan Lockwood

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 1 • Episode 21

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In this conversation, Dr. Jonathan Lockwood shares his journey to becoming an intelligence officer, the misconceptions surrounding intelligence work, and the importance of decision-making in high-stakes environments. He introduces the LAMP method for forecasting and discusses the common sources of error in intelligence analysis. Dr. Lockwood emphasizes the need for an intelligence mindset in everyday decisions and offers tactical methods for personal productivity. He also provides insights on leadership and strategic thinking, concluding with rapid-fire questions on crisis management and productivity. 

Takeaways 

  • Dr. Lockwood's journey into intelligence began with a fascination for military history and strategy. 
  • Many people mistakenly believe intelligence officers lead a spy-like lifestyle. 
  • The majority of intelligence work is not glamorous and involves a lot of analysis. 
  • Decision-making in intelligence is often opaque to the public for national security reasons. 
  • The LAMP method was developed to address gaps in analytical methodologies for intelligence. 
  • Sources of error in intelligence include the enemy, the analyst, the system, and the policymaker. 
  • An intelligence mindset involves always considering the source of information. 
  • Flexibility is crucial in adapting to new information and changing circumstances. 
  • Effective leadership requires the ability to adapt and innovate in response to challenges. 
  • Continuous learning and reading are essential for maintaining sharpness and productivity. 

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Dr. Jonathan Lockwood, welcome to Productivity. to be here as always. Doctor, how did you become an intelligence officer? Well, now that started the the beginnings of that started back really about when I was about 13 and a friend of mine uh Bill Dunn down the street from where I lived in uh Invited me over to his house to show me a new game that he had bought and it was called the Battle of the Bulge World War two Battle of the Bulge the Ardennes offensive and uh it was a it was produced by the Avalon Hill Game Company and the game I was fascinated by the game and its mechanics. And because of that interest in that game, I started becoming interested in other games that he had. And I became interested in studying the history, the military history behind the actual games and the battles. And from that, it developed into an interest in history in general. And as my interest in studies grew, I became interested in the intelligence, know, learning how the other side gathered information about these battles. Because in a war game, everything's sitting in front of you, you have theoretically perfect intelligence about what the other side's going to do. But that's not the case in actual warfare. So my interest in military history and strategy grew through high school. And I eventually became interested in, I was in junior ROTC in high school, but also developed an interest in wanting to go to West Point, to go to the military academy. and eventually become an intelligence officer. And so I went to West Point for about 1973 for about 16 months. I there then I decide to resign and transfer into ROTC at University of Tampa. And because I had something I was known as having something of a nonconformist personality. And the interesting thing about that. so at University of Tampa, I met my Russian history professor, Dr. Steven Speronis. And he saw, he recognized in me what my potential was. And he said, Jonathan, if you are going to enter into the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer, being who you are, you're going to need an equalizer. You need something that will back people off and a credential that no one else has. So he encouraged me to apply. to the University of Miami's Center for Advanced International Studies. to get admitted there and to, essentially the strategy was to take an educational delay from active service and delay for my master's degree and then my PhD in international affairs concentration Soviet area studies. said delay until I had completed my PhD degree, then enter the army. And he said, you will have a credential that no one else can match. And I will have a more interesting career pattern. Well, he was correct. uh so I had taken the, and my graduate record exam scores were exceptional. So the University of Miami offered me a tuition fellowship for my master's degree. So you come here to University of Miami, your master's degree is on us. And so, and. that subsequently led because my performance justified it. They also gave me tuition fellowships and economic assistance for my PhD program. So I was able to essentially work my way through a combination of work, study, and the student loans that I had to take, I did have to take out some student loans. But back then in the late 1970s, my student loans, because of the other factors I had, amounted to about $7,500. Those were my student loans. they had provisions so because I was going to the Army, I could defer payment on those loans until for about three years or so and then pay them off at a very low interest rate. So I was able to pay off all $7,500 of those student loans while I was on active duty. So there was no financial strain there. And so I... September of 1980, I entered the US Army as a 24 year old first lieutenant with a PhD in International Affairs, Soviet Area Studies. They told me that not only was I the only lieutenant in the Army with a PhD, I was the only lieutenant in the Armed Forces of the United States with a PhD. And big advantage of that is no one ever called me a dumb lieutenant. So. Yeah. Doctor, what's something most people completely misunderstand about working in intelligence? If you tell people that you are either an intelligence officer or that you work in the intelligence field, the most common assumption people make is that you are a spy. They project that you're living a sort of James Bond type of existence. That you secretly travel to exotic places and you have this exciting secret life that no one else knows about. really for the overwhelming majority. Now that so-called secret life, actually doing spy work, that's a very small minority of the intelligence. They exist, but they don't make a big deal about it. They keep it low profile for obvious reasons. But most intelligence personnel, uh Looking at them on the surface, they're supposed to look like everyone else. Boring. Live happily, live hidden. Live quietly. Don't draw attention to yourself. I mean, it is absolute foolishness for someone who works in intelligence. And I really get anxious about people who in the intelligence community who subscribe to social media. I mean that is a contradiction in terms. Intelligence personnel should never ever advertise the fact that they work in the intelligence community on social media because it makes them a target. It makes them a target for foreign intelligence organizations. even now, even though I'm retired, retired intelligence, retired from the civil service, Yeah, these social, it is only very recently that I've started appearing on podcasts simply because my research in open sources and my insights are, I believe, of value not only to the intelligence community, to the public at large, but also to the current administration because what they are doing has significant intelligence implications. And what is the biggest misconception people have about how decisions are made at high levels? Well... For example, if you're watching the current Trump administration, people are assuming that they're seeing the entire thought process. That they think they know what's going on. The Trump administration, like every other administration, yes, they have certain things which they put out there to keep, to maintain some transparency. But all of the considerations, including the access to classified information, which the Trump administration has, They are not going to put that out in front. not gonna put that out. Never mind that last recent mishap with Signal. That was an administrative error. That's not a practice. That's administrative error. The appropriate people have been dealt with. But as a general rule, there is a certain portion of these discussions which are not made accessible to the general public. simply for national security reasons. also because when you are conducting, the reason that intelligence information is classified, that certain portions, large portions, it is, the purpose is to protect the source of your information. You don't want foreign nations knowing how you got access to certain information, because otherwise they can take steps to make sure you don't get access to it anymore. You could lose the source of your information that you need in order to be able to conduct your foreign policy and your military strategy effectively. So that is why information is classified. It's not because we're deliberate, we're afraid of telling you the truth. We're trying to protect the source of the information. You've dealt with predictions on a national level. What made you create the LAMP lamp method and how is it different from other forecasting models? Well, back in 1992, uh the intelligence committee had an annual competition, what's called the Director of Central Intelligence and Exceptional Intelligence Analyst Program. They select a small number of intelligence analysts who propose a project that they will perform for the intelligence community. And those who are selected are given a budget, a small budget, to perform their research. and I proposed in 1992 to perform a project which was really an extension of my PhD dissertation and my other work. I proposed to study the perceptions of the former Soviet nuclear republics and their perceptions of the nuclear weapons issue because back in early 1992 the former Soviet nuclear arsenal was divided among four republics the Russian Republic Kazakhstan Belarus and Ukraine. And so there was divided control. And I proposed to study their perceptions of each other and of the nuclear weapons issue. I proposed the project, how I would do it, what travel I would perform in support of it. And then I also got a budget for improving my Russian language speaking capability because I was proposing to go to Moscow. and conduct interviews in order to support this project. So anyway, I did that and I also recognized during the project that there was no analytical methodology that was suited for conducting this kind of analysis. And I realized that I would have to invent, I would have to create a new methodology in order to perform this type of analysis because it involved actors, three to four actors, and differing perceptions of the issue. So uh I began my research and I built on my previous research that my wife Kathleen was assisting me with as my co-author on this book. And we eventually, uh where it all crystallized was after I had come back from my trip to Moscow and I was on a train in Germany. going from Heidelberg to Munich, because I was going down to the radio-free Europe to their offices to conduct more research. And I was there on the train, a Bundesbahn train, drinking a nice cup of German coffee and going through there. then things started crystallizing, the steps of how this analytical method, just in a sort of moment of insight. And I began writing down the steps, which eventually would become the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction. And I had completed the steps and sketched it out, got there, and then began integrating that into my, what would become my term paper, my master's thesis on the subject. And when I finished it, she finished the proposal and briefed it to my superiors at the Defense Intelligence College. They said that they wanted me to continue my work on the LAMP because they saw that it had great potential for the intelligence community. as an analytical methodology. They recognized that it was unique. And so oh I ended up doing that. And what was rather amusing is that naming the method, why did I call it LAMP? Well, at one point, tried several acronyms. One was the Lockwood Predictive Analytic Method, LPAM. uh No, that doesn't work. That sounds like something you'd spray on your frying pan to keep eggs from sticking to it. Yeah, and that doesn't work. Then another one, Lockwood Method for Predictive Analysis, LMPA, LIMPA. That's a, that's a, LIMPA, that sounds even worse. It's even more awkward when you consider the fact that at the time that I produced this method, I was producing it for, now. You have to sound this out in your mind. Let's be polite. I was working for the Defense Intelligence College, DIC. LNPA, DIC. Ooh, that produces a combination of acronyms that dare not speak its name in polite company. Very bad. No, no, no, that's not going to work. Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction, LAMP. That's cool. That's something you can put on coffee cups and t-shirts and you don't have to be embarrassed about saying the method when you brief it or teach it. Lamp it is. Let's go with that. And of course some purist uh years later says, prediction is not quite accurate. It's because you're actually doing an estimate. No, I'm not going to call my method lame. L-A-M-E, uh no. That's not going to work. I'm calling it prediction. It's really a matter of semantics. Because no matter whether you call it prediction or estimate, the decision maker is going to treat your analysis as if you are, in fact, making a prediction. He's going to treat it that way. He's not going to make a distinction between prediction and estimate. He's going to hold you responsible for your conclusion. So therefore, might as well call it LAMP. Doctor, you've said that intelligence often fails. What is the number one reason that even the best systems and organizations and people sometimes misses the mark? Well, I wrote an article on that back in 1994, spring 1994, in the Defense Intelligence Journal entitled, Sources of Error in Indications and Warning. And there are actually four sources of error, four reasons why intelligence fails. Four they are, the enemy, the analyst, the system, and the policymaker. You know, those are four sources of error, four reasons why intelligence can fail. It can fail because of the enemy who successfully conducts deception and fools the intelligence system into making an error. So you have the analyst who can fall into any number of analytical errors in performing his or her intelligence analysis. The most common error is mirror imaging, projecting your logic. onto the opponent and assuming that our opponent or other actors see the situation the same way you do. That is an error because you are not considering their perception, their culture, their mindset, their language. There are a whole host of factors which can affect the way an opponent sees you or sees the situation. So analyst, that's another source of error that the intelligence community is aware of and strives to avoid. You have the system. bureaucracy. An intelligence analyst can produce a very good intelligence analysis, a very focused one, but as it proceeds up the chain, goes up the chain of his superiors, look at the analysis, he comes under critique and be massaged or altered. I said, no, we can't say that. so you can have a source of error resulting from bureaucratic error, bureaucratic organizational biases. And finally, the policymaker. And this is where it really gets interesting. The intelligence analyst, the person who is without power, is nevertheless responsible for having to speak truth to power to the policymaker, to the person who can do something with the intelligence analysis. You have to convince the policymaker that your conclusion is correct and that the policymaker should act on it. But the policymaker is the one who holds power. He or she has the luxury of being able to ignore what the intelligence analyst is saying, but therein lies the problem. Now, the best case in this is when the intelligence analyst is correct and the policymaker believes him and he says he's correct and the good guys win. Great. Okay, then you have one where the intelligence analyst is wrong and the policymaker ignores him? Nah, who cares? He was wrong but nothing happened. The intelligence analyst is uh wrong and the policymaker believes him? Okay, so what? But the worst case is when the intelligence analyst is correct, and the policymaker ignores him, that's when you have the potential for strategic surprise. And that can be a disaster. So the problem here is that no matter how thorough you are, the intelligence community is fully aware of these sources of error. And they have all sorts of different regulations and guidelines for how to produce intelligence analysis. that strive to avoid or minimize the likelihood that these errors will occur. The problem is, they are so pervasive and so rooted in human nature and all these other things that it is next to impossible to avoid all four of these sources of errors all the time. These are what I call the occupational hazards of the intelligence profession. Get used to it. How can people adopt an intelligence mindset in everyday decisions? Okay, and everyday decisions, when you are looking at a whole source of advertisements and all sorts of people are claiming something, my dad always gave me some very good advice that I have adopted all throughout my life. Always consider the source. Always consider the source of any claim. Consider the source of any remark. Don't just take it at face value. Don't assume that the person who's talking to you is telling you the unvarnished truth. You have to cross check. Always cross check with other sources. When you're looking at the daily news, when you are looking at a headline, don't assume that that headline is telling you the truth. You have to cross check. You have to look at other sources. If you look at MSNBC, also look at Fox. If you look at other sources, you look at multiple sources of news because the truth, ground truth, the pure truth is not always grounded in one. Some sources may be closer to the truth than others, but you can't always be sure that the absolute truth or the pure truth, it is always a constant search. And as an intelligence officer or intelligence professional, you are always engaged in a constant search for truth, constantly sifting evidence. Winston Churchill once said that the truth is so, in wartime, the truth is so precious that it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. So that is something we have to be careful of. is one tactical method from your world that can increase personal productivity. I make use of a personal journal and personal, I'm very 20th century that way. I write down my objectives, what I want to achieve, and write down ways and pathways that I can go about it. I don't try to put them on a computer simply because they're vulnerable to crashing or being tapped or so I use a journal for a hard copy. I say it's invulnerable to electromagnetic pulse, it can't crash. But if you write it down and you can map it out, it does in fact cement it more firmly into your brain. it does, you tend to become more committed to accomplishing that objective. You actually write it down. How do you balance in the world of intelligence? speed, getting information or reaching to a conclusion fast versus having enough data and information to make an accurate, as much as possible, accurate decision. You're always gathering information is a constant process. And again, in my particular position right now, I am constantly altering or making adjustments to what I thought was my previous prediction based upon new information that I gather. And by the way, any lamp analyst, any group of analysts that use the lamp will find themselves doing the same thing. because you are constantly altering your assessment of what alternate future is most likely to happen based upon new information that they get. Because the core assumption of the lamp is that the future is the sum total of interactions of free will. Every action at every moment in time by every person, every actor or organization has the potential to affect the future in ways either subtle or dramatic. And the example that I use now is, for example, say you are at a political rally and you turn your head to look at a chart just a split second before a would-be assassin's bullet that was intended to go through your head instead goes through your right ear. And with President Trump, no matter whether he turned his head or did not turn his head, at that critical moment in space and time, those two decisions would each have a decisive effect. on the future, not only his personal future, but the future of America and arguably the world. That's a decisive effect on the future. And there is no such thing as an action that has no consequences. It does not exist. So you must get as very, when you're looking at a lamp problem, as you get new information, that has the potential to change the relative probability of the alternate futures. People who look at, who read my lamp book, and who look at the examples that my three of the best examples that my wife Kathleen selected to be included in the book. You can take that or any LAMP problem that they devise and as you get new information, will and your analysts revote the relative likelihood of alternate futures, you will find that your assessment will change based on the receipt of new information. So you must always adopt a mindset of flexibility. You will never arrive at the definitive answer. Matter of fact, one of the mistakes that I had to correct my students on when they would brief their LAMP papers to me in graduate school, one or more students would make the mistake of saying the LAMP method concluded. No. I would stop them right there. No, know the LAMP method did not conclude anything. You did. You made the conclusion. Don't put it off on the method. All the method does is provide a framework into which you project your own analysis. It provides structure to your analytic thinking. And so therefore, so that anyone else who looks at your analysis can see how you got from point A to point B in reaching your conclusion. It renders your analysis transparent. And that promotes intellectual honesty and taking responsibility for one's conclusions. Let's talk workplace leadership. Do you think that most corporate managers would survive in a real crisis room? Okay, corporate managers in a real crisis? I would say that, now corporate leaders in the business world, when they have real threats by competitors, I would say oh the History Channel has some wonderful things talking about how early competitors uh try to handle their competition challenges to their market share and so forth. That's as close as uh corporate managers come to a crisis, to a wartime situation, as you will get. corporate managers, the lesson you learn from watching those types of presentations on the History Channel is how corporate managers have to learn to be flexible. They have to learn to, as they say, think out of the box, come up with new solutions. They have to be innovative. Not being innovative or not being willing to change your approach, that is fatal in the corporate world. So you will, in the corporate world, you will always run into situations based on the nature of competition and surviving and making a profit and growing your business. You are always going to run into challenges and you have to be willing to adapt. You have to be willing to change your approach as needed. whether it's regard to how you treat your employees, giving them more authority and say so in your corporate decisions, it might be that. But there's always that you have to be able to adapt and change. I've had to do that in my career. So that's simply the nature of the beast as it is. If someone want to think more like an strategist, what's the first thing you tell them to stop doing? Stop assuming that you know everything that you need to know. You are always learning. You are always developing more. Even in the study of military history, you are going to get a story. You are going to get a version of history. That's not always the case. And one of the things that I used to like to do with my war games is look at alternate strategies. How could it have been done differently? And one of the things that I produced, that I produced is I produced, oh, back in 1998, a I took one of my old war games on the Battle of Gettysburg and I modified that war game into a what-if version of Gettysburg. basically I divided the students into two groups. One became the leaders of the Union Army, Army of the Potomac. The other group became the leaders of the Army of Northern Virginia. And I taught them the simplified game system and they would Both groups would plan and then fight using my war game, at least the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. But in my version, they could change the order of march in which their armies arrived on the battlefield. They could change the strategy. They could change the tactics that they used in the battle. And potentially, in the victory, they could change the outcome of what actually happened. I used this war game, I used it on sixth graders at this one school, Rockbridge Christian Academy in Millersville, Maryland. Of course, the sixth graders, were absolutely fascinated by it. I said, this time your opponents on the battlefield will be your classmates. They're like, cool. They got into it. you have not truly lived until you have seen sixth graders having staff meetings. At sixth grade you are starting to see a foreshadowing of what they are going to be like as adults. And it's a little scary. Sometimes it's very, sometimes a little scary. This is what they're going to be like. This is how they're going to operate. But what it did was it put these children into an imaginary adult situation. It forced them to, as one of the teachers said, she said, they're using higher order thinking skills that I didn't think they had. It forced them to do it. And so it stretched their minds of what was possible. So use of these types of games is, I am a very big advocate of use of gaming theory, games and game theory in the classroom. And to basically put the students into a more difficult situation because it forces them to use their minds. what games do is that it causes you to think of solutions that you would not ordinarily think of. And so it expands your mind and expands your outlook. So one of the things that you learn is that be prepared to change your thinking, be prepared to adapt and adopt a new way. And I used this oh Gettysburg What If war game. ah I used my prototype. I've used it at the National Intelligence University. I've used it at NSA. I've used it at elementary schools. Basically, all ages, all the way down to sixth grade. And adults, they react the same way. It puts them in a new situation. It taps into their fantasy. Because many people have thought, wow. What would it have been like if I had been at the Battle of Gettysburg? Well, this, in a way, using the rule system that I created, it puts you into a pressure situation where you have to think under time pressure. Because I don't just allow you to sit there and say, oh well, like you're playing a game of chess with all the time in the world. No, this doesn't do that. It forces you to think under time pressure. Doctor, let's do some rapid fire questions, answer in 30 seconds or less. Number one, what's the worst advice you've ever heard in a crisis? Well, I've heard a joke about the bureaucrat, when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and Losing your temper in a crisis or blowing up, that's about the worst thing you can do. Because when you lose your temper, you lose control of yourself and you hand in control of situation over to your adversary. So losing... Yeah, go ahead. is too much information worse than too little? In a way, yes, because if you don't have the ability, if you don't have a construct for filtering that information and analyzing it, and it also depends on how much time you have. If you don't have sufficient time, know, proceeding with too little information, too little information forces you to be cautious. Too much information might force you, might make you decide to take a course of action where you think you know enough, but you actually don't. Number three, are performance reviews in corporations outdated or essential? They are essential, but they all too often are used as weapons. Number four, what's your biggest productivity power? biggest productivity power is being able to is the way that God wired my brain is to be he gave me an almost inhuman ability to focus and to and my wife Kathleen she has she is an absolutely voracious reader and researcher arguably arguably more intelligent than I am and she she is able to see the big picture and absorb lots of information whereas I am able to hyper-focus and get that. So in combination, the two of us can accomplish a great deal. Number 5 Besides Yours What's one book every leader should read? Besides my book, okay, right. uh My book I would recommend if you're having trouble getting to sleep at night. But every leader should read. Okay, well. I would say that every leader should read uh one or more books by any military leader who has been through combat. I would say Grant's memoirs. Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs because that was his life work. He completed his memoirs one week before he died of throat cancer. Hmm. those royalties from those memoirs became a best seller and took care of his family for the rest of their lives. But Grant's memoirs were full of insight and they would provide very good leadership lessons. Doctor, m what is the secret to staying sharp and productive after decades of high stakes works like you have done? The secret of staying sharp is always being willing to read and learn new things. Don't assume that you know enough or that you don't have to read anything more because as has been said on more than one occasion, the person who will not read is no better off than the person who cannot read. Dr. Lockwood, how can people get in touch with you, know more about your book, buy your book, learn the LAMP method? Well, the easiest way, now getting in touch with me personally, I tend to shy away from that sort of thing because again, for obvious reasons, I want to be able to stay focused rather than getting involved in back and forth on social media because I can see how big of a distraction or uh an energy drain that can be. But as far as those who want to take advantage of my books, the Russian view of US strategy, it's past its future. and the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction can both be found, are both sold by Amazon Books. Just go to Amazon, look Amazon Books, put in that title, they'll have them available, certainly in hard copy and paperback. But also, they are, as far as I know, they are also both sold as e-books. So people who want to get it by e-book, they can buy it that way through... through Amazon books or through ebooks for sale. They just simply just type right in the title and they are produced in ebook format. Doctor, thank you so much for spending time with us today and with the audience and for bringing the secrets of the intelligence room to all of us and the normal people. If there is something I'll take away today, it's your point on cross-checking reference. In the age of headlines on Facebook and buying absolutely everything that it's a headline online, I think it's wise to... go back to the source and check who have said that, who wrote that, and if there is any validity or information to back up those headlines. Doctor, thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you.