Robustness in putting the pieces together

You may not be a nerd, but you are a node and node creator/operator if you are a good CI, BI professional. NYTimes profiles US intel failures re X-mas day attempt by Nigerian to blow up airliner flying to the US. Sounds strangely familiar with what I have experienced in the corporate intel world. Especially in big complex companies.
See: http://tinyurl.com/yf6r2sv

First and foremost as a CI, BI you must create and operate the vision of all critical information flowing through a CI, BI node. That is probably you. It's endlessly time consuming to keep this vision fresh as people come and go but what are the options. You don't want 20/20 vision to be only in hindsight.

Those field sales people, those logistics experts, those visionary marketers and product developers, those number crunchers, those deal doers, etc. They all have a contribution to make to your understanding of the market, the competition, the invention space. Lead them.