The meeting before the meeting. The intermediary whose interests are unclear. The partner who tells you the truth, but leaves out what matters. The negotiation where the real decision-maker is someone you have never met.
I lead closed-door, in-person workshops on the human and informational dynamics behind these situations.
We apply intelligence methods to the business you actually conduct: building relationships, gathering information, negotiating, communicating and deciding whom to trust.
What we work on
Topics are selected around your needs and may include:
- HUMINT and elicitation: obtaining useful information through conversations, relationships and sources.
- Influence, manipulation and social engineering: understanding how people gain trust, access and cooperation and recognising when those methods are being used on you.
- Strategic communication: preparing what to say, to whom, when and what to disclose.
- Negotiation and power dynamics: identifying interests, dependencies, intermediaries and who can actually commit.
- Intelligence analysis: assessing sources, comparing accounts and testing assumptions before acting.
- Cultural intelligence: navigating environments where the same words, gestures and commitments carry different meanings.
How we work
Each workshop is built around your team, your environment and the situations you face.
We use cases, practical exercises and, where appropriate, situations from your own work. Participants practise gathering information, preparing interactions and checking their interpretations against what they can observe.
The focus and depth depend on your objectives and the time available.
Discuss a workshop
Send me a brief description of your audience, the challenge, the proposed date and the time available.
You can reach me at oriane[at]ocstrategic.com, or via LinkedIn.