When Derek Johnson asked me to co-chair the upcoming RECONVERGE:G2 Symposium in Madison this coming April, I carefully considered his proposal for approximately 3.8 seconds. I’ve been impressed with every RECONVERGE conference I’ve attended, and this was an opportunity to give back to the Intelligence Community by helping lead the discussion of the most important topics confronting the field today.

So, my co-chair, Alysse Nockels, and I considered a theme for the event. The first time we met socially it was at a small car show, so the theme was apparent for us. Driving High Performance Intelligence Teams. We’re both car people. And, it quickly became obvious that strong analogies exist between Intelligence and Autos, even to the non-gear heads among us.

Did you know that, in high-performance driving, your first upgrade to your car is usually your brakes?

That’s right, the ability to go fast is useless without the ability to stop and change direction. And, when it comes to your company’s strategy, the ability act on your insights and change direction, to grow and slow with the industry is as important as the ability to operate in the first place. Understanding your market is good, being able to quickly change course is even better.

Understanding how your car is performing is also important. Again, driving fast is useless if don’t know if you’re overheating or you might run out of fuel.  You need the gauges in your instrument cluster to keep you apprised of how your high-performance vehicle is operating. Similarly, a strong understanding of your company’s key metrics is vital. Being able to compare your KPIs to your competitions’ is even better. Come to RECONVERGE to get a better understanding of the metrics that make your competitors tick. Would you even know your competitors’ “check engine light” flashing if you saw it?

Of course, it’s always interesting to see what the future holds. While still a niche player, companies like Tesla represent a radical re-think of automobiles, and Zip-Car and Uber are a total rethink of mobility itself. Soon, we’ll have fully self-driving cars. Similarly, is your business stuck running on a finite resource? Is the future already here, and you just can’t see or haven’t encountered it yet?

At RECONVERGE we will have an active debate on the Future of Intelligence. Is it already here? Are we all dinosaurs, soon to be degraded to mere fossil fuels? It promises to be a lively discussion as it has in years past.

So, come join us in Madison this April 19-21. We will be happy to discuss how your business and its intel team can become a finely-tuned, high-performance machine.