Clapper - The Great Reorganizer

 "Clapper, whose dislike for hierarchical organizations is well known, outlined a community structure that at least on paper looks relatively horizontal. He is, for instance, eliminating a layer of deputies at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and pushing their jobs down into the organization.

He has created the job of deputy director for intelligence integration to unify the collection and analysis tasks.

"It shows a refreshingly new way of thinking about what this job is about," said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior CIA official. "I'm upbeat about this job for the first time since it was created. It's our last chance to get it right."

Others said Clapper, who has also served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, might be flattening too much. "For his first shot, he's overshooting the mark and will trim back where it doesn't make sense," another former CIA official said. "He's not afraid to reorganize and reorganize and reorganize and reorganize. This is not a secret. Jim must have reorganized DIA and NGA 182 times. He's not afraid to second-guess himself.""  Washpost

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A lot of the intelligence community needs to be smashed flat and re-grown.  The community is dominated by career managerial bureaucrats both in and out of uniform. Organizational and personal ambition and self-aggrandizement are the guiding principles for much of what goes on.  The bureaucrats rule the roost getting in the way of the real intelligence people. 

My advice, knock down those embattled towers.  Purge the bean counters and all those whose main function is to tell the productive what they may not do.

Is it possible to combine and unify the collection and analytic functions?  Yes.  The best people always did that against resistance from the bureaucracy.  Most people can't get their heads around the idea that they should analyse the material that they and others collect.  Solution: Start growing a new work force who can operate this way, and dump all those who can not learn new ways.

Will Clapper last long?  The odds are that the process of undercutting him has already begun, but not here.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/20/AR2010082005272.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Comments

[dh]

Horizontal is definitely the way to go. I've had some good experiences in that position.

[Norbert M. Salamon]

Colonel:

Was not Mr. Clapper involved in the outsourcing/privatization of the image collection/survailance satellites and analysis thereof?

If he was, what is the prognosis to simplify the privatized intelligance collecting monstrosity? I can not see how the present system can benefit the nation [many of the workers' jobs while deducting from unemployment are clearly misappropriation of taxpayers' funds] at a time when the nation is suffering from major debt problems [350+% of GDP, even without counting future entitlement costs].

thanks for your view/ correction, if any.

[Jose L. Campos]

This is off topic but I am beginning to feel as if the USA might see with good eyes that the Iranians might get the bomb because that would bring balance to the present state of disequilibrium in the Near East. Perhaps the US government feels that Israel's troubles are a heavy load and would like to obtain some relief.

[William R. Cumming]

PL has the Joint Committee on INTEL been a boon or bane over the years and what about their willingness to defer to the Executive Branch even while complaints increase of their ineffective oversight? Personally I would almost be willing to give up on the current 20 or so agencies that pride themselves on producing INTEL of value to anyone! But perhaps just ignorant of all their unseen success.

[Cold War Zoomie]

He's not afraid to reorganize and reorganize and reorganize and reorganize.

No better way to kill morale in a workforce than to reorg them into chaos.

I'm not saying there is no place for reorganization. But it's best to get it right the first time because every reorg thereafter saps the morale of worker bees while instilling a sense in them that The Top is clueless and floundering.

[dan bradburd]

The move from 'arm chair' analysis of data collected by others to the marriage data collection(field work) with analysis (in the field as part of the data collection process as well as back in the office) is generally considered the moment my discipline (anthropology) became a profession. It is not that men like Tylor and Morgan did not have great insights, but Malinowski and others showed that a fieldwork based ethnography provided an unmatched depth of understanding others--and in doing so ourselves.

I am sure that there is a logic behind the separation described above, but it seems counterintuitive to me.