THE QUESTION
Top Secret America: Too big to lead?
This week's Washington Post series on the government's burgeoning intelligence network prompts the question: Can an organization get so big and so complex that it just can't be managed effectively? Or is "too-big-to-manage" just a cop-out for flawed structure and lack of leadership?
Posted by Steve Pearlstein and Raju Narisetti on July 19, 2010 10:51 AM
FROM THE PANEL
Size is no excuse
Blaming size is a cop out! GE, Google, and FedEx have all thrived with growth. The key is for each element of a large organization to know its common purpose.
Posted by Warren Bennis, on July 22, 2010 12:28 PM
Time to lead by teambuilding
A leader that takes on complex challenges inherent to large organizations needs to transition from being an individual leader with comprehensive knowledge and mastery to one who develops a strong team of individuals to whom significant responsibility and accountability are vested.
Posted by John H. Cochran, MD, on July 21, 2010 10:58 AM
Three strikes against the intel community
It is difficult to get people who don't know of each other nor trust the process to work together, especially if there are some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in about 10,000 different locations across the United States.
Posted by Kathryn Kolbert, on July 21, 2010 10:51 AM
The difference between a secret and a mystery
No, it's not primarily the size of the sprawling intelligence network that makes it flawed, though that's surely a problem; anything that big can't work all that well.
Posted by Ken Adelman, on July 20, 2010 2:30 PM
No such thing as 'too big to manage'
With 'big' comes 'challenging', but definitely not 'impossible'.
Posted by Marshall Goldsmith, on July 20, 2010 11:40 AM
Find the right leaders for the job
Organizations that may be considered "Too big to lead" require leaders who are big enough to lead with others. Such organizations need leaders who are temperamentally suited to handle complexity and, more importantly, who can develop teams of capable individuals to pull and push constituents towards their vision.
Posted by Col. Charles D. Allen, on July 20, 2010 11:31 AM
Where big doesn't have to mean bad
The financial institutions and the auto companies may be akin to our intelligence community, where an inability to anticipate change and poor execution brought them low.
Posted by Benjamin W. Heineman, Jr., on July 20, 2010 10:05 AM
Intel community in search of a purpose
In the private sector, a natural limit to production is determined by customer demand. But there is no natural limit to the amount of intelligence that can be analyzed and put into reports.
Posted by Michael Maccoby, on July 20, 2010 5:47 AM
A bitter lesson we haven't learned
The attacks on the United States through our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and later via a naval destroyer, the U.S.S. Cole, did not register strongly enough on Planet Washington to provoke the interagency review we needed.
Posted by Prudence Bushnell, on July 19, 2010 4:34 PM
Is there a common cause?
While size does add complexity, it is not the sole culprit. A more serious concern is a failure to commit to common cause.
Posted by John Baldoni, on July 19, 2010 4:25 PM
The 'focused factory'
As Wickham Skinner wrote back in 1974, organizations should focus on a specific task and not allow themselves to become distracted by an array of goals and missions that could conflict with one another.
Posted by Yash Gupta, on July 19, 2010 4:06 PM
Not what the 9/11 Commission recommended
The problem is not size, but clear lines of authority, which are spectacularly missing in the intelligence community.
Posted by Slade Gorton, on July 19, 2010 1:48 PM
Beat it down to size
In building an organization, sometimes an axe is important a tool as glue.
Posted by Mickey Edwards, on July 19, 2010 12:14 PM
