CSIS.

What’s running through your mind? Canadian Security Intelligence Service? Dark glasses? People in black suits and trench coats speaking to their wrists? Black Chevy Tahoes? Cloak and dagger? Covert ops?

That’s what was going through my mind when I was introduced to the CSIS agent turned security company consultant who was participating in a meeting I attended. If you saw him on the street and listened to him, you’d think he was an MBA. He was.

We talked about the quality of Canadians in the secret service, and about how [much more] on the ball [than the Brits and the Yanks] they really are. But the more we talked, the more the stereotype I had of people in that line of work changed. He described a boardroom meeting in Chicago where he revealed things he knew about his client’s company, financial and otherwise, that the company president didn’t know. The outsider left the president speechless.

Then we talked about the concept of classified information. CSIS doesn’t protect the bits and pieces of whatever that are readily available in the public domain—because they are in the public domain. What he and his colleagues went to great lengths to protect were the documents and properties that described the results of the deep analyses company employees do of those bits and pieces, the conclusions they draw, and what they plan to do about those conclusions. As he explained it, bits and pieces become an asset called information worth protecting when and only when the analysis of those bits and pieces and its significance is complete. Analyses, conclusions and plans are assets and they deserve to be protected.

If you’ve been following this blog since it first appeared, thank you. You’ll have noticed that everything written here is about information and strategy. In business, knowledge and information are not only about confidence; they confer a distinct advantage on the bearer. If your information is flawed or incomplete, you can’t build and execute a strategy that will work. PDD was conceived to help you collect, assemble and analyze the bits and pieces in ways that other people—your competitors—can’t and don’t.

Advantage you.

Students and people looking to resume an income or change a career are going through a very rough patch right now. The uncertainty we’re living with may be with us for longer than we think. But the world hasn’t stopped spinning and minds haven’t stopped thinking. “What’s new?” as a perfunctory form of greeting is going to take on a whole new meaning because new and different and better are what the world economy is about, and always has been. The 7 people who are PDD will guide you in acquiring the bits and pieces you need to analyze to arrive at conclusions about options others might not.

You’ll want to use your information to make decisions about education and training, choosing one university or community college over another, choosing one employer over another, choosing one occupation or profession over another. Since few things stay the same longer than it takes to change them, accumulating, assembling and making sense of bits and pieces can be the difference between being ahead of the curve, or merely somewhere on it. If you believe in staying ahead of the curve, PDD is here.

Advantage you.

Please note: PDD is in no way connected to CSIS or to any of its present or past employees.