What Do You Think?

Someone left this in my inbox and it was written too well to chop up and paraphrase, so I chose to cut and paste it on the blog as is, without the persons name. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Thank you to the sender! Here goes:

“As President Obama blames “systemic” Intel Community failures for the near miss on Christmas Day, I wonder how much of the problem is really systemic and how much is cultural. Systemic implies to me that there were insufficient processes and/or authorities to collect, analyze, share etc intelligence that could have prevented the individual from boarding the plane. Cultural implies (at the extremes) a workforce that feels either:
1) their work is either unappreciated or unimpotant and so does the bare minimum
or
2) their work is above reproach and so they disregard any and all feedback that suggests otherwise

To be sure, both systemic and cultural problems could be construed as leadership failures but I feel strongly that leaders impact organizational culture in a profound and foundational way. Even organizations with big systemic problems can succeed if the culture promotes collaboartive, winning behaviors.

So, what do you think? Are there cultural problems within the intel community? Have they always been there? Did the culture change significantly with the change in administration? Am I completely off-base and the problems truely are systemic?

Obviously, those of us on the outside can’t know for sure but opinions are free, so fire away.”

Again, thank you for the comment. I now turn to the readership, what are your thoughts on this well written opinion?

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