Climate security: Ways of developing knowledge expertise for new requirements (Post #10)
Adrian Wolfberg, Ph.D.
Organizational Scientist | Knowledge Transfer | Qualitative Research | Phenomenologist | Change Agent | National Security and Intelligence
In the previous article (Post #9), assigning knowledge generation roles had to consider the extent to which existing knowledge in the organization and/or community was close or far from the needs of a new requirement. Here, in this article, we consider the worst case where expertise about a topic is absent or severely lacking. This consideration applies even if some expertise is available, but still far from what is needed.
Figure: How to develop analytic expertise within the intelligence organization
Ways of Generating Knowledge: Informed by Davenport and Prusak, there are six ways to develop knowledge for a topic when an organizational unit lacks such expertise, and these main ways can be accomplished separately or combined:
·????? (1) “Buy” Option: Hire people who have the topic expertise who work in external organizations that currently do similar work fulfilling the required knowledge role, and then hire them to become employees of the IC;
·????? (2) “Rent” Option: Establish a contract relationship with think tanks, consultants, etc. to access expertise to fulfill the required knowledge role when needed; some of these people might physically work within the IC structure and others might stay in their home organization, but, in either case, they would not be employees of the IC;
·????? (3) “Make” Option: Develop one’s own expertise within the organization by finding common skills from other domains within one’s organization and attempt to cross-train the analyst;
·????? (4) “Creative Synergy” Option: Take people within the organization and/or outside the organization and bring them together, but people with different perspectives, to work on an unsolved and/or intractable problem;
·????? (5) “Networks: Option: Let the development of knowledge occur organically without temporal or spatial constraints through people in their informal, self-organizing networks; and/or
·????? (6) “Adaptation” Option: Adapting to the changing conditions in the external environment, establish a relationship with a consumer base whose mission includes knowledge about the topic. Having a relationship would allow one to understand the consumer’s decision cycle, legal constraints, resource constraints, and other relevant decision factors. ?Knowing this type of information would be valuable to the consumer so that the IC agency/office contribution would meet the consumer’s needs.
Well-known and Uncommon Ways: The first three ways of generating knowledge—buy, rent, make—are well-known and commonly used for most knowledge-filling challenges. The last three ways—creative synergy, network, and adaptation—are rarer, more complicated, yet more appropriate when faced with complex and wicked new knowledge challenges.
“Buy” option: The Buy option requires the IC agency/office understand its knowledge producing role sufficiently so that the specification needed for a vacancy announcement can be written accurately to reflect the needs of the agency/office. It also requires the availability of billets to hire subject matter expertise externally. Depending on where the outsourced expertise comes from will determine what level of context transition may be needed to adapt the incoming hired individual(s) into a mission area and/or IC culture.
“Rent” option: The Rent option requires the IC agency/office understand its knowledge producing role sufficiently so that the specification needed for a request for proposal leading to a contract award can be made. The “Rent” option usually fills a gap in billet availability and/or funding, or in the case where the long-term feasibility of the knowledge producing role has not yet been institutionalized. In the latter case, the IC is less likely to devote their resources to what may be an uncertain or risky future. Another challenge with the “Rent” option is that IC employees who work side by side the contracted employees, whether physically or virtually, will find a significantly different pay differential between a lower salaried government employee and typically a higher salaried contracted person. This knowledge may result in the IC member quitting and joining a contractor.
“Make” option: The Make option requires the specification sufficiently accurate to transfer or promote internal to the organization. The major challenge with the “Make” option is that some degree of acceptable subject matter expertise should already be resident in the employee pool so that those employees transferred or promoted can be efficiently trained in order to meet the organization’s goals and objectives. Developing home-grown expertise does take time, and assumes the appropriate level of foundational subject matter expertise already exists. If not, the organization may combine the “Buy” and “Make” options so that subject matter expertise is brought from the outside. The challenge with this combined option is that the purchased expertise may or may not fit into the culture of the organization.
“Creative Synergy” option: The Creative Synergy option typically requires that the organization is confronted with an unresolved challenge. It brings together people inside and/or outside the organization with different ways of thinking under the approval, sponsorship, and oversight of a senior executive. In this option, people are doing things differently than the organizational norm, which means the positive efforts by the creative synergy option could be sabotaged by non-participating members of the organization. It is therefore imperative that compliance by subordinate executives and managers is demonstrated. This option is one of the most difficult of the six options to execute, and is best used for the most difficult knowledge generation challenges.
“Network” option: The Network option is an interesting strategy for knowledge generation. It depends on the motivation and accessibility of people, committed to common goal, to work together across organizational and knowledge boundaries in a self-organizing way. Doing so requires a balance between the need for timeliness and doing what people think is necessary to reach a goal. The network option can be used in conjunction with other ways of generating knowledge. While strategic goals may be accomplished with this option, the option is not particularly conducive to a time-constrained task-based expectation, but could be conducive to a strategic goal that is not time-constrained, even though it may be strategically tasked.
“Adaptation” option: The Adaptation option is used with any or none of the other options. The knowledge needed by the organization is going to be based on what the consumer needs. Since there are many consumers of intelligence, it behooves IC agencies and offices to carefully identify and engage the right consumer set that matches its mission, structure, and purpose. Sometimes, however, a consumer requirement extends beyond these. Under such a condition, this option forces the organization to figure the best way to adapt. If the external need falls within the mission, organization, and structure, then relatively minimal knowledge adaptation is needed, but organizational adaption may still be required. If the external need falls outside, and depending on how severely, yet the organization is committed to address the need, then a more innovative solution may be required like what Zand and Hawk, and Hawk and Zand, termed as a “parallel organization.”
Climate Security, the typical IC agency/office may not have climate security as a priority, may not be funded for, and may not have climate security expertise, especially in the form of physical science and the social sciences, and the integration of both. Additionally, the IC typically does not use a unit of analysis focal point below the national level of foreign countries. A policy decision emphasis can quicken the pace of the steps discussed so far, but, in its absence, the IC agency/office will start small and limit its focus on big picture aspects of the topics—rather than mechanisms and factors—where external sources of expertise can be efficiently and effectively utilized.
·????? The uncertain future of policy commitment can be a powerful decision driver in which the “buy-rent-make” or “creative synergy-network-adaptation” options are selected, as well as the sequence and timing of option decisions that may be selected. Based on Argote, a more routine requirement can be satisfied by the “buy-rent-make” suite of options whereas a more complex requirement will need the “creative synergy-network-adaptation” set of options. The reason that “creative synergy-network-adaptation” options are appropriate for complex requirements is that, as Carlile has observed, complexity requires transformation in thought, whereas with routine requirements, in relative comparison, do not.
·????? According to Walton and Power, reporting on a 2021 conference held by Harvard University, the IC “talks the talk” regarding climate change. The conference concluded that the IC must take climate change seriously as a threat to global security. The conference recommended that the IC will have to determine its requirements and adapt its workforce to be responsive, amongst other behaviors such as develop new relationships with the private sector, and have a new perspective.
End of Article Question: To what degree can intelligence analysts develop “what” expertise to support climate security intelligence? What are the organizational and leadership factors that thwart and facilitate such development? How can the IC achieve a new perspective?
Previous Articles in this Series: The scheduled topics remaining in this series can be found in Post #1, below. The previous articles can be found in Posts #2-#9 linked below.
Post #1: Climate security: An introduction to the series https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/climate-security-introduction-series-post-1-adrian-wolfberg-ph-d--7pwne
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Post #2: Climate security: A very different concept than “climate change”
Post #3: Climate security: Threats and risks are different concepts.
Post #4: Climate security: “Unintentional threats” and complexity.
Post #5: Climate security: A framework to develop an analytic capacity.
Post #6: Climate security: Where is the demand signal for national security decision support coming from?
Post #7: Climate security: The imperative of policy prioritization and sustainability.
Post #8: Climate security: Structural and organizational challenges in the budget decision process. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/climate-security-structural-organizational-challenges-adrian-y1ece/?published=t#:~:text=link%20to%20this-,article,-Dialog%20content%20end
Post #9: Climate security: The challenges in figuring out the knowledge producing responsibility when responding to a new knowledge requirement.
Notes:
Argote, L. (1999). Knowledge transfer in organizations. In Organizational learning: Creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge (pp. 143-188). Kluwer Academic Press.
Carlile, P. R. (2004). Transferring, translating, and transforming: An integrative framework for managing knowledge across boundaries. Organization Science, 15(5), 555-568. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1040.0094.
Davenport, T. H., & Prusak, L. (1998). Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Harvard Business School Press.
Hawk, T. F., & Zand, D. E. (2014). Parallel organization: Policy formulation, learning, and interdivision integration. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(3), 307-336. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0021886313509276.
Walton, C. & Power, S. (2021). Climate Change, Intelligence, and Global Security. Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. May. https://www.thecipherbrief.com/defining-the-ics-mission-space-for-climate-change; https://www.belfercenter.org/event/climate-change-intelligence-and-global-security#!agenda. ?
Zand, D. E., & Hawk, T. F. (2010). Formulating policy with a parallel organization: How a CEO integrated independent divisions. Strategy & Leadership, 38(5), 33-38. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878571011072066.