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CHAPTER 3
special training workshops conducted specifically for middle to senior staff who, in their normal work situations, become the “clients” of strategic analysis. Such workshop opportunities are generally few and far between, with significant differences among the approaches taken by different executive “boards of management.” For example, of the major police forces in the world, very few have had access to the sort of familiarization that is essential to change thinking and open up an opportunistic view of the value of strategic analysis. One major inhibitor to spreading this doctrine has been the lack of availability of managers and executives to participate in training that has been largely described as “unnecessary” because of existing levels of management awareness. It has been interesting to observe that although it can fairly be said that all senior police managers have some familiarity about intelligence and its potential, few indeed have more than a superficial level of understanding about the specific benefits of strategic analysis and, as a balancing element, their obligations (as clients or managers) to help make any strategic research system function effectively. On the plus side, wherever the manager workshops have taken place3 there has been a direct increase in their interest in acquiring strategic intelligence product to aid in operational and policy decision making. Helping the Analysts
As to the preparation and nurturing of analysts to undertake strategic research, there has been a continuing program to bring practitioner-level training to intelligence agencies throughout Europe, Canada, and Australasia. Courses have attracted attendance from a wide variety of agencies, law enforcement as well as others, involving many hundreds of trainees. It is pleasing to note that the course design and teaching strategies used have become increasingly acceptable as “benchmarks” for several agencies of world repute,4 and that the high demand for such training reinforces the belief that the strategic intelligence “message” is getting through. These courses focus on principles as well as application. They are directed toward getting analysts to become skillful at conceptual analysis, relying on other, more quantitative “tools” only as the requirements of any particular case dictate. In terms of applying strategic intelligence to real-life problems in law enforcement and regulation, it now has an established track record of use in examining and