Leadership for Intelligence Professionals   

Inter-organizational Teams

in the Joint Armed Forces, Intelligence Community and  for

National Security

Introduction

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) and the former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), now replaced by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI),

…are statutorily designated advisors to the National Security Council, responsible for offering professional, objective advice to civilian policymakers.  Both lack direct command authority over their respective “communities” within the federal structure, but have important roles in shaping overall budgets and the “requirements” against which their respective communities are supposedly sized and organized.  One notable difference is that the chairman eventually acquired a sizeable staff to support his role that has been much larger than the DCI’s community affairs staff

Military Inter-Organizational Teams

The CJCS fills the position as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense and the President. The CJCS has no command authority and is not in a chain of command or hierarchy over anyone except his own staff. Yet,  JCS Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces says, “Joint Warfare is Team Warfare”.  Today “Joint force commanders [such as Joint Task Force Commanders] choose the capabilities they need from the air, land, sea, [service component commands] space and special operations forces at their disposal.”  Thus, at the operational level, warfighting is conducted by an inter-organizational team. 

To assure the availability of this inter-organizational team at the operational level, the CJCS is responsible for insuring that the strategic and operational planning and activities of the Combatant Commanders and the support activities of the Armed Services are coordinated.  He must persuade the Chiefs of the Military Services to recruit, train and provide personnel and develop and provide equipment that are suitable for joint warfare. He must convince the Combatant Commanders to develop doctrine, conduct exercises and operate their forces in a way that furthers joint warfare. He must insure that the trained personnel and developed equipment match the planned warfare. And, he must do so without any command authority and very little bureaucratic directive power.

Thus, to support joint warfighting, the activities of the Armed Forces, top to bottom, are coordinated, face to face in a variety of fora, all of which are inter-organizational teams. There has long been a Joint Chiefs of Staff with a Chairman and supporting Joint Staff.  Since 1988, by the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the role and influence of the Chairman and Joint Staff has been increased and continues to increase, to insure coordinated efforts between the joint planning staffs of the Combatant Commands developing the strategies, plans and operations and the Military Service staffs charged with recruiting and training of personnel and providing equipment and intelligence to support those strategies, plans and operations.  Frequent planning conferences are held, and regular inter-organizational staff coordination by collaboration in inter-organizational working sessions and meetings is constantly occurring.  At the headquarters level, to coordinate Combatant Commander requirements and the acquisition and procurement of systems, including military intelligence systems, groups such as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (PA&E) 3-star board have been formed.   At the level of the Combatant Commanders and their service Combatant Commanders, operational plans, tactical employment, logistic support, intelligence support and other matters are also coordinated as representatives of various organizations collaborate in a variety of conferences, meetings, working groups, etc.  Additional refinements are continually suggested to increase collaboration, for example “to insure coordination at the functional levels below Service and Command.” 

Intelligence Community Inter-Organizational Teams

Similarly, it might be said that “Intelligence Work requires Team Work”.  Originally, the DCI was created by President Truman in presidential memo simply as “a singular focal point” for:

…providing information to the nations’ policymakers.

The president’s memorandum, however, did not state or imply that the DCI would play a significant role in guiding or directing the activities conducted in various foreign intelligence parts of the executive branch outside the unit he himself headed.  This remained the case when the DCI position was re-established on a statutory basis in the National Security Act of 1947. Nothing was stated about any “leadership” or “management” role for him with respect to non-CIA activities and organizations.  On the contrary, intelligence elements other than CIA were explicitly envisioned in the charters establishing the DCI and the CIA as continuing to collect, evaluate, and disseminate “departmental intelligence”.  Their activities and chain of command to their department heads remained unchanged.

Although the DCI was not expected to be in charge of the national level activities of US intelligence agencies other than CIA, he was expected to coordinate them.

Over the years this “coordination” role was expanded by presidential direction.

President Truman’s original memorandum called for the DCI to “plan for the coordination” of the activities of various intelligence organizations.  In the 1947 law, the coordination charge is to “make recommendations to the President through the National Security Council”.  Thus, in the basic charter documents, the DCI is not charged with accomplishing coordination himself, only planning and recommending what should be done…..

It would not be until President Eisenhower’s second term that language directing the DCI to coordinate federal intelligence activities would…bolster the DCI’s authority.

Subsequently the coordination role was gradually expanded, especially in the area of resource management and budget authority, by Executive Order of almost every president.  Several DCIs increased coordination in other areas with the acquiescence of the other community organizations by adding personnel to their staff who were “detailed” from the other agencies.

Thus, in the Intelligence Community,  a wide range of policy, planning, budgetary matters and finished national intelligence products have long been the result of inter-organizational efforts across Services, Commands and intelligence Agencies, Bureaus and Offices.  To carry on those efforts, DCIs have created and maintained a number of top level groups—the Executive Committee (EXCOM) to coordinate Community policy and finalize the Community budget; the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB) to approve National Intelligence Estimates (NIE);  the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to coordinate substantive intelligence positions; and standing committees, such as the DCI Weapons Systems Intelligence Committee (WSIC),  Science and Technical Intelligence Committee (STIC) or the Nuclear Weapons Committee to coordinate community-wide interests; and, at the defense level, the Military Intelligence Board (MIB), to coordinate defense intelligence issues and activities.  Those leadership and top level groups have met as required and have spawned a wide range of conferences, committees, working groups, projects and meetings.

Likewise in recent years and especially since 9/11, DCIs have established the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), the National Counter Proliferation Center (NCPC) and the Underground Facilities Center, well as reemphasizing the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) and the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) and others. These centers bring together personnel representing appropriate organizations of the Community to work together collaboratively and to “reach back” into their home organizations to insure that those organizations cooperate in providing the intelligence required by the Center.  But those are new large organizations rather than teams and Leading them is different from Leading teams. (The Leader's role in Leading and managing a large organization will be discussed in the next topic.) 

Nevertheless, it is hoped that the requirement to “reach back” and draw on “home-base” agencies for support and having in-house representatives from those agencies responsible for doing so, will eventually foster the development of “virtual cyber-space teams” between the agency representatives at the Center and personnel in their home agencies. 

With the passage of Public Law 108-458, the National Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, and  the creation of the position of DNI and its designation as “Chief Executive Officer” of the Intelligence Community separate from the DCI as head of CIA, the DNI has acquired additional powers. In terms of resource management, the DNI will now “develop and determine” the National Intelligence Program budget and, while not having “execution authority” over the portions of that allotted to other agencies, will “ensure effective execution”.  In addition the DNI will set the objectives and priorities for the Intelligence Community which he does by publishing a set of Intelligence Mission Objectives and by coordinating the development of an Intelligence Community Vision.  The DNI has the authority to approve requirements and direct tasking of collection, analysis and production among agencies.  The authority to participate in the selection and appointment of other agency heads provides some bureaucratic leverage. 

Nevertheless, despite the appearance of the word “management” in the Law, the DNI remains the Leader, not the manager of the Intelligence Community.  As Director Mike McConnell has said: “I am referred to as the Director of National Intelligence.  A more apt term today would be coordinator of National Intelligence because I don’t have the authority to be directive…”

Hence, the DNI has established the Joint Intelligence Community Committee (JICC) as a leadership team, and, given the re-creation of the post of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (DUSD/I)  and the expanding intelligence interests of the Department of Homeland Security, there will be an even greater need for the establishment of top-level inter-organizational groups to coordinate their requirements and activities and resolve their sometimes conflicting interests.  hose top level groups will likely spawn an even greater number of inter-organizational conferences, committees, working groups, projects and meetings. 

Given the need for increased cooperation and collaboration demanded by the WMD Commission and required by Presidential Executive Order 13388-Further Strengthening of the Sharing of Terrorism Information, one recent initiative has been that “virtual cyber-space teams” are being encouraged between agencies.

To this end, the Office of the DNI is in the process of developing virtual communities of analysts who can securely exchange ideas and expertise across organizational boundaries and harness cutting edge technology to find, access, and share information and analytic judgments.  Analysts are increasingly using interactive online journals, such as classified blogs and wikis, to this end.  Such tools enable experts adept at different disciplines to pool their knowledge, form virtual teams, and quickly make intelligence assessments....

National Security Inter-Organizational Teams

Certainly, recent U.S. operations and experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that, as the Secretary of State has observed:

More and more, solutions to the challenges we face lie not in the narrow expertise of one agency acting in one country, but in partnerships among multiple agencies working creatively together to solve common problems across entire regions.

Such operations have required that military, intelligence professionals and other government professionals come together as an inter-organizational team under common Leadership. This is a concept that has been long understood and generally ignored. The concept that all personnel assigned to an Embassy or a Mission, regardless of their government department, constitute a “Country Team” under the Leadership of the U.S. Ambassador was created by an inter-departmental Memorandum of Understanding in 1951.  Since then, however:

Despite long-standing policy to the contrary, the Ambassador often is regarded not as the President’s representative but as the State Department’s envoy.  Thus, personnel from other U.S. agencies tend to pursue their own lines of communication and operation, with inadequate coordination among them.

…Country Teams are ideally positioned as the first line of engagement to face challenges to U.S. national interests.  Yet effective interagency collaboration is often a hit-or-miss proposition…

Given the critical challenges, it is time to reinvigorate the County Team’s role in achieving U.S. national security objectives.  The team must be reconfigured as a cross-functional entity with an empowered and recognized single leader for all agencies. 

Given that military personnel and intelligence professionals, including some from the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security and others, form a significant portion of an embassy staff, by example, you can take the Lead in establishing  and demonstrating the full coordination required for defending and furthering U.S. national security interests abroad.

Sources

Introduction

Douglas F. Garthoff Directors of Cental Intelligence as Leaders of the Intelligence Community 1946-2005.  Published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence.  See pg 23, fn 34.

Military Inter-Organizational Teams

JCS Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces.

For example, see “Changing the Way Staffs are Organized: A proposal for cross-functional working groups" to insure collaboration at the functional levels below Service and Command in  Joint Force Quarterly, issue thirty-nine.

Intelligence Community Inter-Organizational Teans

Garthoff, Chapter 1.

Based on Peter Oleson Intelligence Resource Management in a Time of Change presentation prepared for the Joint Military Intelligence College 2007.

Director of National Intelligence, Vice ADM D. M. McConnell USN (Ret), speaking at Furman University, 28 March 2008.

National Security Inter-Organizational Teams

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice quoted by Robert B. Oakley and Michael Casey Jr. ; “The Country Team: Restructuring America’s First Line of Engagement” in Strategic Forum of the Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University, No. 227, September 2007.

Oakley and Casey, “The Country Team”.