Reflecting on 9/11 and The Void Left in its Wake
September 11, 2006
It has now been five years since 9/11/2001. Despite abundant media coverage, one topic has yet to be addressed in any analysis or report. From the 9-11 Commission Report, to the President’s New Strategy Combating Terrorism which was launched last week, I see a void that must be filled - lest history to repeat itself.
The void is filled by a horizontal recalibration of how agencies address the following three intrinsically linked functions:
- The allocation of decision rights (this area has been overly stressed at times given all the reorganization throughout the government)
- Determining and implementing thoughtful rewards systems (baseline compensation and variable components, bonuses for civil servants to incentivize horizontal behavior)
- Administering performance evaluation (what to measure, how to measure and how frequently)
The above elements are akin to what economists at the University of Rochester's Simon School of Business have labeled ‘a three legged stool’. Remove one leg, and the stool will collapse, making it critical to consider the delicate balance between the ‘three legs’. All too often, companies and government organizations tend to attack or reevaluate one leg at a time, failing to consider how they interplay to drive individual behavior and ultimately change.
When we go from talk and testimony, to legislation, to agency implementation without this lens, we fail to address certain underlying aspects of human behavior inside a bureaucracy - which make all the difference in winning the War on Terror. How government agencies deliver against the goals and objectives for the "Long War 'will determine if the 9-11 Commission’s recommendations become footnotes to another government report on organizational failures.
A change agent is called to action to address this model and bring it to life. How often are the three legs of the stool consistently discussed and employed within an agency and then rationalized across agencies? Unfortunately, as the urgency since 9-11 has waned, I envision content from the next commission report featuring lines such as the one below. Let’s hope we never see this in print.
"The attacks on America this time were not so much a failure of imagination as they were a failure in agencies thinking and acting with a coherent and agreed upon framework of: decision rights, performance evaluation and rewards systems."
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