At the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) annual symposium, The New IC, retired CIA Senior Executive, Carmen Medina shared the secret sauce to bringing about change in the Intelligence Community (IC). She asked why it is so hard for the IC to make progress with diversity. She shared that the key to stop having the same discussion each year and evolve as a community is to make diversity (or any other necessary change) mission critical.
Challenges for Change in the IC
Medina pointed out that the IC has often put itself at war with modernity and new technology – the very things that are becoming essential to human life. However, the key to bringing change is to make the change critical to the overall mission. Of course, there are hurdles to implementing change.
1. Challenging the Status Quo
It’s actually hard to change the status quo. Medina explained, “When you’re a change advocate and have an idea for something new, the status quo demands that you have a fully hatched idea.”
The IC has changed over the years. And what we have now today did not emerge fully formed. In fact, the status quo continues to be the incremental accumulation of good ideas that keep growing. It’s how things happen organically. Often, change advocates are either required by others or themselves to produce fully-baked plans right out of the gate. Medina encourages that this is a recipe for failure.
2. Quantifying Analysis
Diversity benefits the mission, but it’s also part of organic good living. However, diversity of thought improves the analysis of the IC. A key challenge in implementing changes that impact analysis is understanding the cognitive processes that lead to good intelligence. Medina shared, “Policymakers want insight from the IC, but that needs to be defined because we can’t reliably reproduce it.” We may all know that diversity of thought is necessary, but without the ability to quantify anything about analysis, it makes it challenging to determine where to even invest resources and time.
3. Maintaining the Workforce
Recruiting a more diverse workforce is only one piece of the puzzle. Medina shared that “You can bring talent in, but they have to be treated so they want to serve the mission. No matter what they look like, they have to want to stay.” Recruiting only works to bring about change if retention efforts are set up to match it. It’s about getting talent to consistently stay, so we can actually achieve diversity of thought.
Make it Mission Critical
We can talk a lot about diversity in the IC. However, until it becomes mission critical, we’re not going to make progress. Diversity of thought is necessary in the IC, but it needs to stop being a vanity statistic. Medina shared, “The advancement of diversity has to stop being the job of people who are minorities. It needs to be everyone’s responsibility.”
Medina also encouraged the audience to be sure to point out when things are wrong. It’s the old – if you see something, say something.
Following her retirement from the CIA, Medina continues to be a change agent for the IC. While she’s been involved in different organizations and written a book, Medina specifically noted that she would love to speak to any school to encourage the next generation in national security.
