A group is considered to be any collection of individuals who share a common interest or goal and frequently work or act together to achieve their goals. Similar to individual profiles, group profiles aim to provide a clear picture of the group’s “personality”, emotions and behaviour, as well as their effectiveness as a group in executing their goals. In order to fully understand the group, what they are capable of, how effective they are and how much of a threat they pose one has to understand various factors at play within groups.
Information on contributing factors is gathered
Information utilised to build a profile is usually gathered from research, interviews, open source information (internet sources, media and social media) and other available sources.
In formalising a clear picture of a group as a whole, certain factors need to be taken into account as well as how these factors play out. These factors may include, amongst others:
- Developmental phase
- Cohesion
- Leadership
- Goals
- Resources etc.
Why Group Profiling?
Some groups may pose a certain amount of risk to your organisation through their actions. For example: a labour union, can through their influence on your employees, create disharmony and incite violence that can lead to sabotage and destruction of property. In order to determine the level of threat that a group holds, a clearer understanding of the group as a whole and how they function, is required. A group of interest can be a political party, union, protest group, work team, competitor organisation or crowd.
Understanding how the group functions, and how effective they are can:
Help predict future actions
Thereby giving you the upper hand, allowing you to prepare and put timely measures in place to mitigate against their actions.
Assist in developing strategies to counter threats
Affords you the opportunity to intervene early and put counter-measures in place.
Formulate strategies to increase own strengths
Using a better understanding of competitor strengths and weaknesses.
Build effective and balanced internal groups
Assists you to restructure and manage the group more effectively to ensure optimal performance and harmony within the group.
The overall level of threat that a group poses is provided, along with an understanding of the specific areas that pose a threat
Our group profiles offer an overall threat score. This score tells you whether the group should be taken seriously or not. Furthermore, the specific areas that pose a threat are provided. For example, a group that has significant financial resources at their disposal, may pose a slightly higher level of threat than another group that does not have the resources to execute their plans.
