The Candlestick in the Corner

Training and Consulting

Leading an intelligence team sometimes feels less like managing analysts and more like running a very elaborate escape room. 

Everyone is staring at different clues. Some of them are useful. Some of them are red herrings. Someone is absolutely convinced that the random candlestick in the corner must be important. The clock is ticking. And every few minutes someone asks a version of the same question: Are we sure this is the right puzzle? 

If you’ve ever watched a group work through an escape room, you’ve probably seen the dynamic. The challenge isn’t that no one is smart enough to solve the problem. It’s that everyone is looking at the pieces from slightly different angles, often talking past each other, sometimes locking onto the wrong assumption. The person who helps the group succeed isn’t always the one solving every puzzle. It’s the one helping the team see how the pieces connect. 

Intel teams aren’t all that different. 

Early in their careers, intel professionals are rewarded for solving puzzles themselves: spotting patterns others miss, building the cleanest argument, making the best call under uncertainty. But as we move into leadership roles—formally or informally—the job changes. 

The role is no longer about solving every puzzle personally. Now, it’s about helping the team solve more complex puzzles together. 

That shift can be uncomfortable. Strong analysts often feel a powerful urge to jump in and fix things themselves—rewrite the paragraph, strengthen the logic, reframe the question, or redirect the product entirely. And sometimes that’s necessary. 

Most intelligence teams require leadership review before a product goes out, and they should. Consistent standards and a shared voice matter. But when consistency depends on one person rewriting every product, the team’s judgment never fully develops. Analysts begin writing to avoid edits rather than to sharpen ideas. And when individuals lack ownership, over time, leadership can quietly turn into a roadblock instead of the force multiplier it’s meant to be.  

In a good escape room team, the most effective person isn’t necessarily the one solving every lock. It’s the person helping everyone see how the pieces connect—surfacing assumptions, redirecting attention when the group is stuck, and making sure the team isn’t wasting time on puzzles that don’t actually move the game forward. 

That’s much closer to what leadership in intelligence work feels like. 

Now imagine someone new suddenly joining the escape room halfway through. 

They’re enthusiastic. They can scan the room incredibly fast. Within seconds they’re pointing out possible patterns, suggesting theories, and handing the team a stack of potential clues. They’re fast, confident, and incredibly productive.  

The problem is, they didn’t watch how the team got here. They don’t fully understand which assumptions have already been tested, which clues were dead ends, or what the real objective of the puzzle might be. 

In many ways, that’s what adding AI to an intelligence workflow feels like. 

AI tools can generate a lot of “clues” very quickly—summaries, patterns, hypotheses, draft assessments. In some ways it’s like suddenly having an assistant who can hand the team a dozen possible puzzle pieces in seconds—including a surprisingly confident theory about why the candlestick is clearly the key to everything. 

But more clues don’t necessarily make the room easier to solve. 

Some of those pieces will be helpful. Some will be misleading. Some will look polished enough that people assume they must be correct. And because the output often sounds confident and coherent, it can be easy to mistake it for insight. 

Which means the leadership challenge doesn’t disappear in AI-enabled teams. If anything, it becomes more important. 

Someone still has to slow things down when everyone starts chasing the wrong clue, ask whether the puzzle the team is solving is actually the one that matters, and ensure the team’s reasoning is sound and consistent with the operational context before they lock in the “solution.” 

Leadership in intelligence isn’t about having all the answers. 

It’s about helping the team ask better questions—and making sure the clock doesn’t run out while everyone is still arguing over what the candlestick means. 
 
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If this escape-room dynamic sounds familiar, we’ll be unpacking it in more detail during the Leadership for Intel Professionals & New Managers workshop alongside the Analyst Roundtable in San Francisco. 

We’ll look at how intel leaders help teams focus on the right clues, challenge hidden assumptions, and keep analysis moving forward—especially in fast-moving environments where AI is adding more “puzzle pieces” to the table. 

Think of it as a chance to spend a few hours getting just a little better at running your own high-stakes escape room.