Leading a small or large intelligence team, no matter the specific discipline in this diverse profession, is one of the most challenging roles in leadership. This is due to critical reliance on other teams, the need to communicate for influence, providing focus in complex environments, and the unique characteristics of leading intelligence professionals. But when all things go right, intelligence teams provide an exponential return on investment, helping to navigate the organisation toward its goals and desired outcomes.
All complex situations and each intelligence team will have their own nuances and challenges. However, the below problem areas are the most common for all intelligence leaders:
The need for relationships and co-ordination. Very rarely does an intelligence team gain all the capabilities and expertise it needs to complete its given tasks by itself. The team requires inputs – such as information, direction, access, and authorities – from other parts of the organisation or even different organisations altogether. There are a number of high-profile examples of strategic failures resulting from poor relationships and co-ordination, such as Pearl Harbour in 1941, or the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. But there are countless other smaller examples of poor lateral co-ordination occurring everyday. These result in missed opportunities and inefficiency. Lateral co-ordination relies on individual initiative, relationship management, and establishing good processes to set up and maintain.
Delivering complex assessments to senior leaders. Intelligence products attempt to demystify complex external situations and make predictions about the future. Convincing anybody that you can predict the future is challenging. But more so, intelligence leaders have to present these assessments succinctly, to senior leaders who run complex organisations and who are ultimately responsible for the risk of committing resources or not to the problem based on the assessments. There is often a significant gap in seniority between the decision-maker and the intelligence leader, meaning that not just this assessment, but the credibility of the intelligence team is under judgement with each product.
Priorities and surprises. As outlined in my previous article about building a proactive intelligence system, intelligence leaders need to have a thorough understanding of organisational priorities, and be able to translate these into action for the intelligence team. This is common among all leadership roles, but the unique aspect of intelligence leadership is that decision-makers tend to write priorities for implementation by teams with a focus on the internal functioning of the organisation – operations, HR, finance, procurement – they are not normally written with an understanding of how intelligence capabilities support organisational priorities. Intelligence looks externally and has no control over the subject area. “External,” though, is a large topic area. Consequently, intelligence leaders need to interpret organisational priorities to both narrow down the external environment, and to apply the intelligence system’s capabilities on behalf of the organisation.
Uniquely talented individuals. Most organisations have high standards of selection to recruit intelligence professionals, including psychometric testing, analytical, and communication exercises – intelligence operators in the New Zealand Army have one of the highest sets of selection criteria for direct entrants out of all trades, second only to Army officers. Subsequently, intelligence professionals can be highly intelligent workers, which brings with it unique performance management and motivational issues, both day-to-day and in support of career development.
While a large body of knowledge exists on management in general, the study of intelligence leadership is extremely small (perhaps because the profession tends to attract introverts who relish secrecy as a cover for not talking about themselves or their work – despite this also exacerbating the challenges listed above!) Professional development in practical skills for intelligence leaders is even smaller again. Therefore, general management training can only go so far to prepare and develop intelligence leaders to thrive amongst the complex environments and challenges they will face.
Intelligence leaders need to master the skills of determining priorities and authorities, developing simple intelligence plans, and communicating for influence. The latter skill is one that supports a relatively new trend in general management theory popularised by management consultant Ken Blanchard, that “the key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” Specific to intelligence, leaders are required to demonstrate influence by increasing lateral co-ordination, influencing senior decision-makers, and motivating and developing their team members.
Effective intelligence leaders are more than technical experts. They understand how their team supports the operational side of the organisation, and are able to influence those they lead and those they work alongside to understand the external environment, and with an exponential potential to influence an organisation in the achievement of its outcomes.
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