An in-depth analysis of flaws in DHS and ODNI reorganization efforts shows both would have benefited from strong leadership to articulate the mission and the reasons for change, guide the transformation, and meld together disparate entities and management approaches.

Essentially, chain of command is necessary, but not sufficient.

This contention serves as Lesson One in a report released this week by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton detailing four lessons from the creation of and subsequent problems within the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Securing the Future: Management Lessons of 9/11 provides a behind-the-scenes look at the reorganization efforts of a decade ago. The report is based on exclusive interviews with major figures in the reorganization efforts, including Judge Michael Chertoff, former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and General Michael Hayden.

While acknowledging key differences in these organizations, the report uncovers common management lessons in four key areas Breaking Gov summarized Monday and will detail over subsequent days. Authors hope the report serves as a guide for the Obama Administration in government reform and similar pursuits currently under way.

“You can’t just focus on structure nor can you focus on authority,” said Ron Sanders, Chief Human Capital Officer at the DNI during the reorganization and now works for Booz Allen Hamilton. “The key here is to focus on career leadership.

DHS followed the classic reorganization model of merging agencies and functions into a new Cabinet department with a secretary holding formal chain of command authority over a hierarchical organization. The law creating ODNI, in contrast, gave the DNI oversight responsibilities, but not explicit authority over the agencies and elements of the
intelligence community.

The one great lesson I learned was that the biggest mistake people make is that if someone is not on board, they try to move them or come up with some compromise where they’re doing something else. My observation is that never works.” – Michael Chertoff

However, the report points out that a crucial element in this equation involves winning the hearts and minds of the political and senior career executives up and down the organizational
chart who must implement the reorganization. Without such buy-in, the wrong message will resonate throughout the workforce and the stakeholder communities, and the odds of problems
and failure will increase dramatically, the report states.

“For every leadership vacancy you have, you need to make sure the people you select have complete buy-in,” Sanders said. “DHS had so little time to screen, and that’s problematic.”

The first DHS Secretary, Tom Ridge, faced turf wars, challenges to his departmental authority and political pressures from the White House and Congress, all the while working with a small staff and trying to direct members of a management team and agency heads that were not always of his own choosing.

“The notion that everyone was going to join hands and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ I don’t think anybody in our leadership expected that to happen. And it didn’t,” Ridge told the Washington
Post in 2005.

The seeds of this discontent may have been sown in creating the team to lead the department, the report contends. It goes on to point out that by the end of 2004, with DHS still facing serious management problems and President Bush ready to start his second term, many of the top leaders were already heading for the exits. The lack of leadership continuity made the battle for the hearts and minds of the workforce that much more difficult.

Michael Chertoff, who succeeded Ridge, sought to create a sense of shared objectives among members of his leadership team. In the process, Chertoff said, he learned that to
succeed as a leader, he needed to use both the carrot and the stick.

“The one great lesson I learned was that the biggest mistake people make is that if someone is not on board, they try to move them or come up with some compromise where they’re doing something else. My observation is that never works,” said Chertoff. “All you have is an angry person in the tent. If it’s not working, what you’ve got to say is, you know, this
is not working out and it’s time to leave.”

Although the legislation creating ODNI limited the authority of the director, a number of people interviewed for the report said personal relationships and personalities can make a big leadership difference and help overcome flaws in the law.

Hayden said this was the case when he was CIA director and Michael McConnell was the DNI. This was not the case at the start.

There were extensive reports detailing how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld influenced the legislation in 2004 to deny the DNI as much authority over intelligence operations and the budgets as originally envisioned, and how he later consolidated his authority and expanded the
Pentagon’s traditional intelligence missions.

Finally, Sanders offers this:

“Vacancy by vacancy you get the right leadership and if you’ve got someone poisoning the well, you get rid of them…even if it means marginalizing them or booting them into another position. It does take spine.”