April 8, 2000
David Osborne
Well, the Vice President loved it and the President bought into it, but it did not make a difference. The National Performance Review identified a number of substantive objectives for intelligence reform, and the intelligence bureaucracy was successful in ignoring the White House. I suspect it has something to do with one of the fundamentals: “Unleash-but Harness-the Pioneers.” The U.S. Intelligence Community can't stand pioneers unless they are spending billions of dollars on something really, really secret that has a high probability of failure. Reinvention boils down to uncoupling or deconstructing a whole bunch of stuff, and then allowing the pieces to compete. It requires managers that can “let go” and employees that can “take hold.” Above all, it requires openness and accountability….
