Blog
Analysts Must Speak at Their Customer’s Level of Expertise
In my last blog post I urged analysts to become three-dimensional experts, and now I’m adding another critical piece of expertise-related advice: your customer’s level of expertise should be just as important as yours in driving how you present your analysis. You must...
Analysts Must Be Three-Dimensional Experts
You must demonstrate expertise to succeed as an analyst, regardless of what you analyze, but what exactly does it mean to be an expert? My public- and private-sector experience suggests there are three dimensions of expertise, and you gain knowledge in each area in...
Meet Your Instructor: Scott DeAngelo
Scott DeAngelo is the instructor of How to Craft an Insightful Leadership Profile: Assessing Leaders From Politicians and CEOs to Terrorists and Technologists Scott has been pursuing his dual passions of leadership development and intelligence analysis for more than...
Meet Your Instructor: Michael Roosevelt
Michael Roosevelt is the instructor behind Writing for Your Executive Customer: The Keys to Analytic Writing with Impact. Mike took a detour from a PhD program in Russian history to interview with the CIA. That decision led to a 30-year career in intelligence...
Effective Analytic Writing Is Hard… but It’s a Skill You Can Learn
(Michael Roosevelt is the instructor behind our new Proficiency1 course, Writing for Your Executive Customer: The Keys to Analytic Writing with Impact.) For most of the 30 years I spent at the CIA, I was a writer surrounded by others who wrote for a living. At the end...
Proficiency1 Is Helping Instructors Make the Jump Online
Are you an instructor who has great content and wants to reach a worldwide audience but find the thought of moving your courses online daunting? If you’re used to running in-person classes, the detached world of on-demand, online content delivery probably seems...
How to Ensure Your Executive Presence Works for Every Audience
Most literature on executive presence focuses on your need to present a strong, competent persona so your bosses will see you as a capable professional. Unfortunately, not everyone you work with seeks a persona that maximizes competence. Some want a greater sense of...
The Unfair Catch-22 of Executive Presence Feedback
Your executive presence--how you consciously and unconsciously communicate your competence to others--is critical to your career. Unfortunately, although others’ opinions of your presence are what matter, you’ll rarely get feedback about how your bosses, peers, or...
Weak Executive Presence Will Constrain Your Career, but You Can Improve!
Throughout my career I’ve encountered people who excelled at the technical aspects of their jobs but lacked the executive presence required to be taken seriously, to advance, or to be seen as leaders. Some of them were oblivious to how their weak presence was holding...
Learn to Purge Your Analytic Writing
One of the most effective ways to overcome a potential customer’s skepticism about taking the time to read your analytic product is to purge your prose of unnecessary words. This mirrors my advice in an earlier post for analysts to be as concise and clear as possible....