The U.S. National Security System as a "Meta-HRO"

I discovered today a book that might be helpful to researchers trying to understand the creation of a high-reliability national security system: Paul E. O'Connor and Joseph V. Kohn (eds.) Human Performance Enhancement in High Risk Environments: Insights, Developments and Future Directions from Military Research. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2010.

Here is a relevant quotation from the book:

"In many ways, today's military is the ultimate HRO... Unlike HROs, the military is multifaceted and works in many different domains simultaneously -- covering a wide range of operational environments with an extremely diverse workforce (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines). In this way, the military may be more like a meta-HRO." (O'Connor and Kohn, Ch. 1, "Enhancing Human Performance in High Reliability Organizations: Learning from the Military," p. 3)

Several years ago, with the help of George Washington University doctoral students Estella Gillette, David Compton, and Kip Rollins, I came up with -- perhaps -- a useful five-level way to think about the U.S. national security system.

There are five different levels embedded with the concept of a High Reliability Organization: HRIs, HRTs, HROs, HRNs, and HRSs.

HRIs. Much of the research that claims the label of High Reliability Organizations is really focusing on the creation of an organization staffed by High Reliability Individuals. For example, there are big differences between the concepts of individual mindfulness, team mindfulness, and organizational mindfulness, but researchers with a shallow background in the study of complex organizations often are unable to describe those differences.

HRTs. At the Berkeley Workshop on HROs and the Fourth International Conference on High Reliability Organizing two weeks ago here in Washington, it was very clear that there is a trend to explain the middle ground between HRIs and HROs. The spectacular success of SEAL Team Six on Sunday emphasizes the value of focusing on High Reliability Teams.

HROs. Fortunately, there were perhaps 100 government officials represented at the two HRO conferences, all of whom are presumably striving to build organizational-level "safety cultures" that are less likely to stumble into catastrophic contexts than "Low Reliability Organizations" (LROs). Three HRO presentations stood out for me: Pantex, Los Alamos (Todd Conklin), and Marine Aviation Training Group Six (Randy Cadieux). It is not enough to have HRIs and HRTs -- there are numerous additional small wins at the HRO level.

HRNs. Human beings are not evolutionarily capable -- yet -- of managing large organizations. The business strategy researchers make a sharp distinction between Business Strategy, Corporate Strategy, and Network Strategy (or firms, bureaucracies, and networks). In order to fix the U.S. national security system, we equate HROs with Business Strategy (small firms), HRNs with Corporate Strategy (large bureaucracies), and HRSs with Network Strategy (fluid, decentralized, and large networks).

HRSs. O'Connor and Kohn's use of the term "meta-HRO" to describe the U.S. military can be read in two ways under the five-level model we have built here: as a synonym for an HRN (Department of Defense) or as a synonym for an HRS (The U.S. National Security System).

First, the U.S. military as a whole can be treated as a "meta-HRO" or High Reliability Network (Cabinet-Level Department of Defense) composed of numerous High Reliability Organizations (or "Agencies"); some of the people I encounter at the National Defense University are still zealous guardians of the "old school" view that National Defense and National Security are the same thing, and the Department of Defense is the only U.S. government organization that is capable of executing complex national security missions.

Second, the U.S. national security system can be treated as a "meta-HRO" or High Reliability System (National Security System) in which the Department of Defense is only one piece of a larger High Reliability System. The High Reliability National Security System would also include the National Security Advisor, the National Security Council, the National Security Staff, the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, significant portions of the Treasury Department and Department of Justice, and the Intelligence Community.

I have a preference for a five-level model that would clearly overlay the terms nano, micro, meso, macro, and meta with HRIs, HRTs, HROs, HRNs, and HRSs -- nano-HROs are individuals (e.g. the captain who shot Bin Laden), micro-HROs are teams (e.g. the team that infiltrated the compound), meso-HROs are small organizations (e.g. the Special Operations Command), macro-HROs are large organizations (e.g. Department of Defense), and meta-HROs are systems (e.g. the National Security System).

So my bottom line is that I would like to adopt O'Connor and Kohn's interesting term "meta-HRO." ("Adopt" is a more polite term tnan expropriate, hijack, steal, or reallocate.) Calling the U.S. military a "meta-HRO" implies that there is nothing above the Department of Defense, and that's pretty much the problem -- we do not yet have a functional national security brain sitting on top of the national security stovepipes. Calling the U.S. National Security System a "meta-HRO" implies that it will be possible someday to create an effective interagency national security system. The first use of the term locks us into an unsustainably expensive status quo that is prone to large catastrophic errors (9/11, Iraqi WMD, Katrina); the second use of the term creates an imaginative new possibility that could help secure a safer future for the U.S. people.