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Inter-Agency Teams and Culture: Today’s Leadership Challenges.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is intended to be the solution for insuring Intelligence Community cross-Agency collaboration to “connect the dots” and identify the diverse and complex terrorist threats.

The 9/11 Commission recommended the establishment of a National Counterterrorism Center—an interagency entity responsible for “joint operational planning and joint intelligence,” designed to break “the old mold of national government organization.” Soon after the Commission released its report, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 established the nation’s first dedicated interagency counterterrorism planning cell, mandating it to “conduct strategic operational planning for counterterrorism,” “integrating all instruments of national power.”

In February 2010, a report by the independent Project on National Security Reform provided a critique of the NCTC’s Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning (DSOP).

Interagency mechanisms or teams such as DSOP are the way forward for managing complex, high-priority national missions….

An important component of the broader study of DSOP was to assess DSOP’s human capital issues, including: assessing the challenges and opportunities associated with managing an interagency workforce comprised of different backgrounds, expertise, lexicon, and cultures….

The report concludes that:

Overrall, DSOP has made progress in fulfilling its mission to provide the “connective tissue” between national counterterrorism policy and strategy…. It is conducting a broad range of interagency planning, assessment, and resource oversight to help ensure a holistic and whole-of-government approach to counterterrorism.

Notwithstanding this progress, numerous obstacles persist and prevent DSOP from becoming a more efficient and effective interagency entity.

Among those obstacles are the difficulties of leading people who are temporarily assigned from different agencies to function together as a top-performing team despite the differing organizational cultures from which they come.  For example, the report found:

-DSOP faces traditional issues associated with attracting detailees from other agencies….individuals have relatively few incentives to join interagency teams, and departments and agencies have not been provided sufficient incentives to share personnel

-While some agencies such as the Department of Defense have generally been strong supporters, other agencies’ support—in terms of providing sufficient numbers and quality of detailees to DSOP— has been uneven. In addition to the lack of availability of DSOP mission critical competencies in other agencies, DSOP also faces the traditional challenges of attracting employees of other agencies on detail assignments. These challenges include but are not limited to:

• Inconsistent legal requirements governing detailees.
• Reluctance of contributing agency to provide resources for its limited supply.
• Lack of contributing agency buy-in regarding value of DSOP and value of detail.

-…not only does DSOP face considerable challenges in obtaining employees with the needed competencies, but the Directorate also faces high leadership turnover and an overall employee turnover rate approximately three times greater than other federal departments and agencies.

….a turnover rate in fiscal year 2008 of approximately thirty percent. This diverges from federal department turnover rates during the same period of between five percent (Justice) and eleven percent (Treasury) with a USG-wide average of eight percent.

-The majority of federal departments and agencies within the USG do not have parallel planning and assessment capabilities from which DSOP can draw….The significant exception is the military, which over many years, has built a highly skilled planning workforce. This is evident in the workforce composition within DSOP, which is largely made up of current military on assignment or former military who have joined the cadre ranks.

-...as a result of conflicting mandates, authorities, and cultures, the study found selective but critical situations where departments and agencies have stronger incentive to not cooperate with DSOP than to cooperate.     

There are a host of consequences to this reality. Most significantly, this dynamic affects the quantity and quality of department and agency participation at senior-level meetings and within DSOP-led functional working groups. It also impacts the quality and number of detailees and assignees that departments and agencies are willing to send to DSOP….

As a result, there is evidence that DSOP has been forced to develop national plans without the expertise of some of the most important players. In one classified example, a plan was criticized because it did not incorporate CIA actions. In reality, the CIA had not participated in the planning process, so it was no surprise that its perspectives were not fully considered. In another classified example, DSOP lacked the regional expertise to develop a region-specific plan tasked to DSOP by the NSC because of a lack of State Department participation.

The lack of full interagency participation in the strategic operational planning process has other consequences as well. When national plans lack full interagency buy-in, and when departments and agencies don’t feel invested in the plan, implementation of those plans suffers.

While some improvements to this situation which is crippling U.S. counterterrorism planning and proactive operations by improvements to management authorities and processes, real improvement can only come from Leadership.  Leaders are responsible for building teams and creating teamwork by creating a unified culture for the team or organization.

Source: Project for National Security Reform, Toward Integrating Complex National Security Missions: Lessons Learned from the National Counterterrorism Center, Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning, February 2010.  For the full report, go here, click on reports and major reports_____. 

For more information on Leading Teams, go here____.

For more information on the Leader's role in creating an organizational culture, go here____.

For the earlier entries in this series, go here____.