The Spy Factory

NOVA, the sensational public tv series ran a special on The Spy Factory, detailing how the National Security Agency had enough information to hinder or prevent the 9-11 terrorist attack and yet did not take the steps necessary. In the program, James Bamford, author of 'The Shadow Factory' details how with almost unthinkable technological capability, the NSA had been tracking the 9-11 terrorists many months before the attack, yet due to human characteristics, failed to take what action was possible. Incredibly, although Osama Bin-Laden's satellite phone had been tapped, the details available on the 9-11 attack were not adequately relayed to the US authorities who could act in our own protection.

My point is not to criticize any agency charged with public security. Rather the lesson for us is a clear indication that having cutting edge technology, even knowing how to use it to its maximum, STILL leaves every organization's leadership with the glaring need to understand and effectively influence human behavior.

Personal and Organizational development are the professional arenas where human behavior in the workplace is studied and techniques are developed for leaders to understand and accept their role in influencing that behavior.

I believe the key organizational leadership role is to have the insight, interest, skills, tools and capabilities to positively affect human behavior toward a worthwhile Mission, using a defined set of values as a behavioral guide. However human characteristics like resentment, entitlement, jealousy, power, authority, anger, empathy are all issues that can be well hidden, but which can have profound effects on organizational effectiveness. So it was with the NSA and individual an departmental values may have led to withholding information that may have saved thousands of American lives. Hardly ever do our decisions as organizational leaders hold a life or death result for our followers, but the meaning here can certainly be applicable to all organizations.

In my practice, I do not advocate that leaders need to practice a kind of "C" grade psychology.
Most of us are not qualified, but organizations cannot assume that technology is all that needs good management, because the appropriate behavior will follow. I maintain that the key organizational resource is not people, but more specifically human behavior. The great American thinker, Williams James said, "What we do, matters."

In the NSA, apparently what they did not do also mattered. A great deal.