The DHS organization resembles the wiring of a very large and complex homemade machine. It did not come with an operations manual. It does not have a wiring diagram, and no one knows exactly how it works. Rather than try to work with the big clunky homemade machine, DHS employees rely on their individual organizational silos which provide them with better-understood and more “knowable” support mechanisms, protocols, and points of contact with which to operate.
As a result, DHS has become infected by bureaucratic inertia and has faced other impediments (low morale, poor relationships, high scrutiny, etc.) that have made performing a cross-cutting, dynamic mission very difficult. The various impediments seem to be separate and distinct, but in reality, they are just unique symptoms of the same disease. The disease in this case is the inertia that results from the continuous application of vertical, bureaucratic, or formulaic approaches to all of DHS’s leadership, organizational, and mission-related strategies that often require more dynamic, cross- cutting, “networked” approaches.
A persistent theme from the interviews, especially from the DHS executives, has been that there is an acute absence of “glue” (organizational cohesiveness) or strategic direction that is needed to connect or align the larger DHS organization in a meaningful way. In essence, it was proposed that connecting DHS’s strategic direction must be resolved before effective leadership in DHS can occur. This is because: how one leads is
the “so what” of this research was that resolving this lack of organizational connection is a likely prerequisite to making effective organizational leadership happen in DHS.
DHS’s form of organization can best be compared to a large global conglomerate with a centralized “holding company.” As a flat and broad organization, the senior-most leader directly oversees some twenty-two component organizations that are generally “silos” – or command and control independent structures. It was suggested that one way to resolve the “lack of glue” or lack of strategic connection was to be through a more streamlined, yet more rigorous organizational structure (as was a theme in the DHS senior leader interviews, i.e., having a few highly qualified Under Secretaries with requisite authority to oversee multiple component organizations that seek similar effects, threat management, or outcomes). It was also suggested that this connectedness could come about by way of broader integrated budgets, research and development collaborations, integrated service bureaus, or joint policy-making units.
Nonetheless, the point of this research was not to pursue a new organizational structure for DHS, or to propose detailed mechanisms to streamline and integrate core functions. Even so, in the interviews, it was continually voiced that the functionality of the organizational design is critical to communicating and modeling its leadership in a diverse and complex operating environment. If DHS cannot communicate effectively from top-down (vision and leadership modeling), or from the bottom-up (strategic and operational planning), or from side-to-side (matrixed collaboration and communication), then the organization will have difficulty in reaching out and effectively meeting the needs of its stakeholders (Executive, Congress, and the public) - the first time, every time. In short, at first glance, the seemingly obvious “so what” of this research was that DHS leadership cannot maximize its impact on performance given an unaligned or disconnected organizational structure—which may be the principle cause of DHS’s lack of organizational “glue.”
Given the importance of organization alignment and cohesiveness to effective leadership as provided by the literature and the interviews, dealing with this “glue issue” seems to be significant enough to enable or disable effective organizational leadership in DHS. However, after significant reflection and examination of each and every interview
transcript along with every piece of literature that was reviewed in this study, it became clear that the real “so what” must be centered on how leadership strategies, actions, or behaviors can help DHS to “deal with the situation they are in” (also a key theme from the interviews). In other words, while a reorganization or consolidation of budgets and oversight might be a useful undertaking to help connect the foundations of the organization, the core to better connecting DHS and achieving organizational excellence in DHS is about the leadership strategies—the leadership strategies that can help
DHS and its components work together better to “connect the dots,” accomplish its missions, and achieve effects – better, faster, and as cost effective as possible. This is
illustrated in the following quote:
The country does not at present have the luxury to patiently wait while agencies take their time to adjust operating procedures and protocols: progress in achieving a protected homeland needs to be quicker and deeper than what would occur in the normal course of governmental change and response.181
In other words, “bureaucratic excellence” of DHS or “expediting” DHS’s organizational legacy, culture, or brand is more about the leadership strategies, behaviors, and actions that can enable this recently-formed alliance to achieve effects.
The answer is leadership. Organizational change occurs slowly and it offers solutions to problems in the long run, as a gradual, evolutionary process. Individual people—leaders—however, can and should be more agile and adaptive in the short run, and are able to prompt the sort of resilient and flexible organizational response required for quick and immediate change.182
181 Thomas Inglesby, Rita Grossman,. and Tara O’Toole, “A Plague on your City: Observations from
TOPOFF,” Clinical Infectious Diseases 32 (2001): 436-444 in Marcus, Dorn, and Henderson, “Meta- Leadership,” 43.
182 John Gardner, On Leadership (New York: Free Press, 1990) in Marcus, Dorn, and Henderson,
C. KEY ISSUE 3: WHO ARE THE LEADERS IN DHS THAT CAN AFFECT