Israel reformed its intelligence community in the 1990s in response to changing threats from non-state actors. Reforms included adopting systemic thinking over inductive analysis, restructuring analysis units, and improving relationships between analysts and decision-makers. Systemic thinking looks at interactions between all variables and common patterns across a system. It helps analysts avoid mirror-imaging and develop more comprehensive assessments. Key reforms also focused on recruitment of creative thinkers and leadership training for analysts.

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What We Can Learn From Israel’s Intelligence Reforms
Marangione- Working Draft
While the events of 9/11 lead to a major U.S examination of the intelligence community, Israel
had no major intelligence failures that prompted a reactionary reform movement. The changing
nature of battle, the information age and the tactical and strategic operations of non-state actors
was the major catalyst for Israel’s intelligence leadership to reform its tradecraft. While Israel
began considering improvements after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel took proactive reforms
during the 1990’s when they identified a number of changing threats and growing security
complexities that current intelligence methodologies could not fully address.
Previously, most wars were well defined, had a centralized decision-making process and
operated with a high profile military presence. Increasingly, the new paradigm of engagement
with non-state actors is characterized by:
 Ambiguous decision-making process
 employs a strategy of concealment
 Indicators of success have changed
 Legitimacy and recognition are goals
 Media is used as a tool to win hearts and minds
 Non-state actors are ubiquitous-they penetrate borders and maybe residents of one’s own
country

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 Battle does not occur on commonly agreed on tactics
 Civilians are targets (therefore, non-state actors are rewriting the laws of legitimacy)
 Glorification of suffering, martyrdom and sacrifice
As Yosef Kuperwasser states in his analysis paper, Lesson’s From Israel’s Intelligence
Reforms, “Once [non-state actors] have established that their behavior, as carried out by
them, is the only legitimate tactic, each time they attack…they strengthen their narrative.”
Because of the increasing change of the nature of threats, Israel made significant changes in
its intelligence community from restructuring to improving analytical methodologies.
External variables that were transformed include:
 Altering the Structure of analysis units
 Enhancing the relationship between analysts, collectors and operators
 Improving the relationship between decision makers and analysts
 Redefining intelligence products and goals
 Creating new tools to disseminate information to decision makers
 Forming operation level intelligence
 Strengthened relationships with foreign intelligence organizations
Additionally, they made important reforms in tradecraft on the ground floor. For example,
 Identified new characteristics to look for when recruiting intelligence officers. People
who embraced cooperation and collaboration
 Instill a sense of leadership in analysts
 Recruit analysts who are creative thinkers and possess leadership qualities

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One of the areas that is the easiest to duplicate in the Israel model is the switch from inductive
based analysis to systemic thinking. While induction is an essential component of intelligence
predictions, especially on the tactical level, in many instances on the strategic level it can be
misleading. Induction can be ridged, is linear based and does not allow an analyst to take a
holistic approach or alter assessment. The introduction of systemic thinking was the main reform
to the analyst’s toolkit and helped them cope with the complexities of current intelligence issues
and integrate many patterns into assessments. Systemic thinking, because it is theme based,
increases attention to the cultural surroundings of a subject like ideology, religion, public
opinion, psychology, literature, arts, etc.. Therefore, analysts are able to offer more rounded
intelligence estimates. Systematic thinking provides analysts with a change to a develop a
comprehensive picture of areas of concern by getting a larger picture of tensions, concerns and
conflicts.
Also, systemic thinking allows analysts to improve their understanding of the “other” and avoid
the trap of mirror imaging and helps the analyst to avoid making assessments that assume the
non-state actor is working within the same logical framework as the analysts. For example,
Yoseff Kupperwasser states:
In 1998, the Director of Military Intelligence, Major General Moshe
Ya’alon, was appointed Commander of Central Command and I was appointed as
the Command’s intelligence officer. Major General Ya’alon and I quickly realized
that the intelligence tools available to us regarding situation assessment were
inadequate and Command’s intelligence priorities did not accurately reflect
existing threats.

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The main threat to Israel was not from the formal forces of countries such as
Jordan, Iraq, or Syria. Rather, it emanated from the West Bank, a complex and
multi-layered environment within which multiple groups were operating.
Although the situation was basically calm—Palestinian violence amounted mainly
to stone-throwing, and Israel was able to contain most Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad cells—and there were no signs pointing to a radical change of the
status quo, we felt that we were unable to perceive a complete picture of the
situation.
We decided to employ the analytical approach of Systemic thinking, which
allowed us to draw conclusions from what would have previously been viewed as
a minor incident. On December 4, 1998, in the northern entrance to the
Palestinian city of Ramallah, a group of Fatah-affiliated students protested Israel’s
refusal to release Palestinian prisoners by throwing stones at passing cars. The
students also wounded an Israeli soldier who was in the area and stole his
weapon. Throughout the protests, the Palestinian security forces did not intervene
and refused to arrest the protesters or salvage the stolen weapon for return to the
IDF. While the incident itself was minor, the behavior of the Fatah activists and
the reaction of Palestinian security forces telegraphed the possibility of greater
danger in the future. Using Systemic thinking, Central Command prepared memos
that pointed to September 2000 as a probable date for an outbreak of violence by
the Palestinians. The documents outlined the way in which the violence would
unfold and indicated a high probability for chaos within the Palestinian Authority.
The memos also presented strategies for Israel and Central Command to

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implement as preparation for the likely outbreak as well as strategies to employ
once the violence occurred. Based on the conflict scenario we anticipated, we
designed appropriate intelligence collection tools and devised operational
response plans. If a new threat emerges, a new system can easily be established
to address the new threat.
Systemic Thinking- In a Nutshell
The fundamental assumption on which the systemic thinking concept is based, is that,
everything interacts with (affects and is affected by) the things around it. Therefore,
analysts must deal with the parts of a situation holistically and not in isolation. All
variables of a situation and how they interact with one another must be examined to get a
complete picture of the threat. A successful solution or strategy indicates that our mental
paradigm (the model of the system in our minds) reflects the situation (real system) well.
A failed solution or strategy indicates that our mental paradigm doesn’t reflect the
situation well. Systemic thinking is as much about troubleshooting mental paradigms as
it is about troubleshooting the analytical situations.
In spite of our awareness that everything’s systemic, the intelligence communities’
primary thinking tool is analysis – taking things apart. Unfortunately, when assessment
is based on the breakdown of a situation into smaller and smaller components, analysts
can lose sight of the interactions between them. According to Kupperwasser,

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It’s a case of when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to
look like a nail – and we end up with analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis is
when a vicious cycle is set up. Analysis makes the interactions less visible, so
insight diminishes, so we analyze things further – and things go from bad to
worse.
To make sense of all the complex interactions, systemic thinking can be a tool for making
sense of how things work together. Yet, synthesis is more than putting things back
together again after it has been taken apart: It is understanding how things work together.
For example, analytical thinking provides methodology to understand the parts of the
situation but synthetically thinking is a methodology to understand how parts work
together. Ideally, the analyst needs both. Systemic thinking is nothing more than a
combination of analytical thinking and synthetical thinking.
Analytical thinking, for most, comes to us as part of our ingrained human nature. For the
intelligence community, it is the very nature of tradecraft. Synthetical thinking is harder
because it is not instinctual and most people have not been taught to do it deliberately.
Synthetical thinking is a lot harder than analytical thinking. Interactions are harder to deal
with because they often are invisible, dynamic and complex. Also, once one piece of the
puzzle changes it enacts change in the rest of the puzzle.
Keys to Systemic Thinking
One of the keys to synthetical thinking is the Fractal Phenomenon that captures that
systems are made up of repeating patterns. The Fractal Phenomenon can be viewed as

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both a commonsensical and a counter-intuitive concept. It’s commonsensical because it’s
easy to think of examples of common patterns (like rules of thumb, mental paradigms and
the benefits of experience). It’s counter-intuitive, because, until an analyst has found the
pattern in a particular situation, it doesn’t seem as if there could possibly be one. For
example, in the story that was based on true events, Sue Glaspell provides for the reader a
clear example of systemic vs. analytic thinking. Two groups of individuals arrive at a
murder scene. Group one is comprised of police, sheriff and a County Attorney-the
analytical thinkers. Group two are two wives of the men in group one- the systemic
thinkers. Group one examines “the crime scene” and reviews bits of evidence but looks at
all the pieces of evidence as stand-alone while group two looks at the evidence, cultural
context, nuances of behaviors and relationships and how this information fits into the
bigger picture of a man being dead. Group two solves the crime.
Thinking is about pattern management. When an analyst can see patterns in things, then
ideas can begin to be formed around these patterns. Then assessments and management
can be made around those patterns, i.e. a management paradigm. A management
paradigm is really a solution pattern for solving a pattern of problems in the situation.
The problem is that, before long, the solution has solved all the problems it can solve and
all that is left are the problems it cannot solve, many of which the solution created itself.
It is notoriously difficult to change management paradigms – to think outside the box –
because humans are more comfortable in set management paradigms. Systemic thinking
enables us to identify the pattern (draw the box) so that we can think outside of it.

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Synthetical thinking is deliberately finding repeating patterns (or common themes) across
a system or situation. Although analytical thinking enables us to find those repeating
patterns and common themes, it does not do so directly because analysis is more focused
on identifying differences rather than similarities. Because it’s counter-intuitive that
there should be a pattern, it is difficult to make a conscious effort to find a pattern
therefore patterns are discovered more by serendipity than design. The important thing
for the intelligence community to realize is that training can provide exercises to think
synthetically. The primary barrier to overcome is the cognitive dissonance that arises
from searching for something before you know what it looks like.
The basic idea in systemic thinking is to list as many different elements of the situation,
then look for similarities between them. Conventional analytical thinking is different.
The basic idea in analytical thinking techniques is to list a handful of elements, compare
them, rank them and then select the most valuable one, discarding the rest. Analytical
thinking breaks things down into their component parts; synthetical thinking finds the
patterns across those component parts. . Within the systemic thinking context, it’s
desirable to list as many different elements as possible, in order to ensure the most
representative pattern possible.
The first step is analytical: list as many elements that comprise the situation- to include
cultural, economic, social contexts. The second step is synthetical: find the common
theme / repeating pattern across those elements. The key differences between the two
thinking techniques are: Systemic thinking lists as many elements as possible (to ensure

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that the theme is as representative as possible), while analytical thinking in the
intelligence community lists only a handful of elements or just a particular part of the
problem because the community is currently structured towards stove-piping.
Performance-limiting problem
Figure 1. The performance-limiting problem

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Systemic analysis helps define a frame of reference (the box, mindset or management
paradigm) clearly, thereby creating a freedom that ignoring that frame of reference can
never create.
Systemic Focus
First, having a systemic focus point enables an analyst to focus on the element of the
situation that will improve the entire situation the most rather than on the element of the
situation that can be improved the most. The parts that can be improved the most – or
most easily – will never include the weakest link or bottleneck. Weak links and
bottlenecks exist because they were hard to find or fix in the first place. The equivalent of
the weakest link in the chain or the bottleneck is more than just a department or person.
It is a systemic issue and so everyone within the situation faces a version of it.
Case Study
A developer of customized software dominated the New Zealand market in its field, but
was battling to secure the same results internationally. Systemic thinking discovered that
the company was being held back by its focus on development speed. Although
development speed is important, the real performance-limiting problem was establishing
the client’s real need in terms of functionality. No two clients use this company’s
software in exactly the same way – and clients can’t possibly specify their requirements
without knowing what the software is capable of. The common theme across the
solutions offered was to involve the customer in the continuous customizing of the
software before too much time was spent refining things that would later be discarded.

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Creative Thinking and Avoiding Cognitive Dissonance
This grouping of things together in stages is the first step for dealing with the greatest
barrier to systemic thinking – the cognitive dissonance from the conditioned belief that
there is no pattern. A second step to develop a library of systemic solutions( database) –
Once an analyst has developed patterns and themes pattern recognition becomes easier.
A simple process for developing systemic thinking is to ask for a possible solution; ask
for alternatives; select two solutions and then ask “What’s the same about solution A and
solution B?”
Recruitment: The Human Factor
Israeli intelligence (AMAN) use to recruit leaders that were in the scientific, military and
technical fields. Now, they try to find analysts with leadership qualities and who will
embrace creative thinking and change. Recruits are now leaders in the arts, history and
literature. Interestingly, AMAN modified training programs that targeted university
students and enrolled them in AMAN led university programs and classes.
Reforms also included existing analysts who were approached to see themselves as both
as part of a collection unit as well as part of a particular system. New responsibilities for
analysts included devoting time to collection planning, operational activities and
management of the system in which they were working. Additionally, various leadership
classes and courses were required so that their intelligence officers could become leaders.
The ability to take risks, be creative and be confident in assessments is critical otherwise

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analysts fall prey to group think and risk aversion. Steps were also taken to ensure that
there is a continual process of self-examination and learning. They established the
Institute for Systemic Studies of Intelligence where lessons learned and in depth study
can continuously examine the intelligence process.
Bibliography
Bartlett, Gary. “SYSTEMIC THINKING a Simple Thinking Technique for Gaining Systemic
(situation-Wide) Focus .” The International Conference on Thinking“BREAKTHROUGHS
2001” (2001): n. pag. Prosdol International. Web. 11 July 2016.
Kuperwasser, Yosef. “Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence Reforms.” The Saban Center For
Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute n. pag. The Brookings Institute. Web. 27 June
2016.