DISSERTATION WHITE PAPER: Leadership Behaviors and Employee Engagement during Complex Change Events: A Qualitative Study of U.S. Defense Joint Intelligence Operations Centers

 

AUTHOR: Karalee G. Picard, Ed.D.

TOPIC: Preparing Leaders and Employees for Successful High-Stake, Complex Organizational Change

PURPOSE: To outline which leadership behaviors should be employed to engage civilian employees during a major, complex organizational change event

FOR: All leaders of complex, bureaucratic organizations, especially senior and mid-level leaders in JIOCs, DoD, and the Intelligence Community.

Abstract: This qualitative study was designed to examine how Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) civilian employees experience leadership behaviors and characteristics during re-organizational changes in U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Combatant Command (CCMD) intelligence organizations, known as Joint Intelligence Operations Centers (JIOCs, pronounced j-EYE-ock). More specifically, this study’s goal was to create best practices for leaders to prepare for organizational change. Fourteen DIA civilians who work in three geographically separated JIOCs in senior analyst or division leadership roles were interviewed, resulting in two major themes and 13 sub-themes. First, JIOC culture must be considered in leaders’ behaviors and decision-making for engaging in multiple areas across the complex JIOC organization with two chains of command, intelligence analysts with high intellectual curiosity, and a transient workforce. Second, the use of a military planning model should be employed for a successful, coherent re-organization. This study resulted in a strong list of best practices for JIOC leaders to employ for diverse member engagement, unambiguous, transparent communications in numerous venues, member buy-in, a diverse planning team, clearly outlining vision, goals, and requirements, and creating champions of change. This study adds to the limited body of work on major, complex organizational change in hierarchical or bureaucratic DoD joint intelligence commands.

Problem Statement: The lack of scholarly research about experiences of leadership during major, complex organizational change in JIOCs could place national security at risk. For organizations to function most efficiently during and after complex change, the experiences of the members were examined to understand leadership through the evolution of change. When organizational change is planned in a complex, matrixed organization and national security is at risk, leaders’ communications are vital for success. Communication with key personnel, including civilian employees, is particularly important when change is coupled with members who tacitly counteract new.

As the complex nature of the themes overlapped sufficiently, the findings of themes and sub-themes have been rearranged and combined into proposed solutions so leaders can easily understand and implement improved re-structuring of their organizations. For this, my decades of experience working in JIOCs was useful to develop solutions that are realistic and welcomed by DIA employees.

Proposed Solutions: Culture, Planning, and Communications

All 14 study participants agreed that leadership behaviors and engagement with employees are important aspects of any re-organization. Based on the findings of this study and the supporting academic literature, I assert the best way to begin the work necessary to address leadership during major, complex organizational change is for senior leaders to adopt a growth, learning mindset so that focused engagement and clear communication with mixed members from across the JIOC can be accomplished. I also propose JIOC leaders be provided leadership training to prepare, plan for, and to implement a re-organization of a complex, bureaucratic, matrixed organization.

Category One: Culture, Including Complexity, Diversity, and Members’ Skills

Culture. All participants described working in a complex organization where their main functions and missions were accomplished through a complex set of processes. Culture is simply “the way we do things around here” (Deal & Kennedy, 1982, p. 4). Like all organizations, JIOCs are affected by the types of people (military, civilian, contractors; supervisors, non-supervisors; formal and informal leaders; administrators, analysts, planners, etc) who comprise the organization and the way work are centralized and formalized through a chain or two chains of command; all of this must be balanced to ensure the workforce is participating in the organization for a positive culture.

Diversity/Heterophily. Over half the participants shared the view that the lack of diversity within planning teams for JIOC re-organizations created low feelings of value and hindered GG-13 and GG-14 DIA civilians from being able to add important perspectives in the planning process. JIOC leaders will want to be conscious of the negative affect of groupthink (or silo mentality) so they can bring heterophilous groups of JIOC members together to tackle tough decisions by engaging in intragroup cohesiveness which will bring out a wide variety of factors to consider for organizational change. JIOC leaders may believe this will slow the process for change, but in fact it will increase the speed at which change can be implemented and completed when a diverse group of people can carry the leaders’ message and vision for the change.

Members’ Unique Skills. All participants described working in a complex organization, including but not limited to, being critical thinkers, which makes them well-trained to examine their leaders’ words and actions. When leaders’ words and actions do not match, this quickly breaks members’ trust in their leadership. Knowing how intelligence analysts think (and that this is a unique skill) is a strong reason for JIOC leaders to fully comprehend the value that intelligence analysts provide to the organization, not only to intelligence assessments, papers, and briefings, but as analysts and leaders in the middle of the organization. Analysts use these skills daily to analyze foreign leaders and to understand what those countries are doing to damage our national security. Additionally, the critical thinking skills intelligence analysts use daily are heightened when they are excluded from discussions about changing the organization.

Category Two: Communicate for Workforce Buy-In, Building Trust and Champions

Communicate Unambiguously with Transparency. All participants shared the view that leadership should aim for unambiguous communications and inform the workforce of re-organization planning early in the process. Communications in mixed member organizations, such as JIOCs, are difficult between transient military members and civilian subject matter experts, the mainstay of the long-term workforce. When organizational change is planned in a complex, bureaucratic, matrixed organization and national security is at risk, leaders’ clear, transparent communications are vital for success. Communication with key personnel, including civilian expert analysts, is particularly important. While military leaders often want to use the chain of command to communicate, highly skilled, intelligent employees want to know that their concerns are being heard, which was demonstrated in this study to improve loyalty to the organization, prevent conflicts, and reduce tension with and the in-group “us” versus out-group “them.”

Create Buy-In by Building Trust. All participants mentioned that getting buy-in from the organization’s members was also a best practice. Nine participants stated that bringing people together to discuss the need for a re-organization and how to accomplish the goal(s) was a best practice. There are many ways for leaders to build a culture of trust; one way to do this is to create buy-in, which starts with leaders identifying members of the organization who support change and then partnering with them to work together toward the new mission, vision, and goals. Leaders can invite a diverse group of members to meet to discuss plans for change and to weigh decisions, which will create bonds among the mixed member workforce and help avoid inter-departmental rivalries.

Build Champions for Change. The majority of participants believed that identifying and creating champions for change during JIOC re-organizations is a best practice. Leaders will want to be clear on the purpose and vision of change and to build prestige around the role of champion that supportive members can play in advocating for the change. In doing this, leaders will build trust through dialogue, answering members’ questions, and empowering the self-identified and new champions for the change. Leaders will want to empower the champions to work and support each other as a guiding coalition and will want to coach and train them on how to best support the idea for change, the timelines, and how to bring questions back from the workforce.

Category Three: Use a Planning Model for Enduring Culture

Plan for Change. All participants mentioned that planning was important for a re-organization. The organizational change model offers an example for JIOC leaders to consider when implementing revolutionary change. JIOC leaders will want strong, coherent planning methodology to ensure members accept organizational changes, which will bolster members’ trust in leadership. Leadership behavior that insists on methodical and defensible planning is an admirable attribute.

Use a Planning Model for Re-organization. The use of a planning model in a military organization will enable early communications with members who know or could quickly learn the military planning model. Also, as the JIOC workforce includes intelligence planners, a DoD-trained planning expert could lead the planning effort to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of the plan. In gathering the guiding coalition, intelligence planners will take higher level guidance to develop a strategy by organizing the factors compelling change. The planner(s) will help lead the coalition in identifying the tasks to be accomplished, breaking down the tasks into parts and processes, then requesting recommendations from process owners and other members of the workforce. 

Organizational Change Planning Model (by category of catalyst for change) 

Enduring Culture. The leadership will want to generate short-term wins to celebrate the hard work of the members, and to recognize champions for carrying positive messages and conversations of change throughout the workforce. Publicly celebrating near-term wins will visibly demonstrate to JIOC members that the leadership recognizes the hard work toward improving the culture and moving toward the vision.

Best Practices for JIOC Re-Organizations

All participants talked about how their re-organizations could have gone better and mentioned best practices for future re-organizations. To start, JIOC leaders will want to be willing to embrace chaos, ambiguity, and change before tackling a re-organization. They will also want to listen and communicate regularly with members to understand challenges at various levels of the organization.

As a military organization, JIOCs are hierarchical and have matrixed analytic tasks, which involves two chains of command and several managers who want to be kept informed of progress and challenges. While the structure of the organizations does not matter a great deal, the improvements made through organizational change will necessitate an infusion of new knowledge, regardless of who introduces it, and change will add further complexity to JIOCs as changes begin to be implemented.

Next Steps: Thank you for reading the findings of this study. If interested in further discussions, Dr Picard would be pleased to discuss the specific challenges that you face in your organization. 

 

Copyright (2022), Karalee G. Picard

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