Introduction

International Intelligence Agency (IIA) has identified sliding cultural norms towards lack of integrity in the form of an emphasis on speed rather than quality. We are instigating Operation Clean Sweep, a training program directed at instilling a culture of integrity with a primary emphasis on quality and secondary emphasis on speed.

The Problems

The International Intelligence Agency (IIA) have recently conducted a study of the Investigative Operations Teams IOTs and other teams within the organisation and concluded that recent entrants from the education system have been educated in a culture promoting competing individuals whose prime concern is to tick the right boxes and achieve speed over accuracy.

The cost of these kind of poor quality speed cultures can be seen in Appendix C where we document three failure scenarios, Annie Dookhan, Nick Leeson and Enron.

Annie Dookhan - who in response to competitive pressures within her organisation appeared to be delivering stellar results but was later found to have severally compromised procedure and thus quality.
Nick Leeson - in 1992 single handedly destroyed Britain's oldest merchant bank, Barrings Bank founded in 1762 through appearing to deliver top results while using poor trading practice more suited to the race track.
Jeffrey Skilling - CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling had all employees in the company ranked every six months. Then he offered lavish bonuses to the top 5 percent while the bottom 15 percent were relocated or fired. This prompted serious corruption.

Although speed is a priority it is always the case that where accuracy is sacrificed to speed, more time is spent in the long run in trying to put things right.

We need a culture of cooperating teams whose prime concern is to deliver and improve quality in ways that can't always be expressed in "tick" boxes, the emphasis being on accuracy over speed.

The integrity of our teams is paramount to their long term effective operation particularly in our primary role.

The Solution

The International Intelligence Agency have determined to use an innovative training approach, directed at supporting recent entrants to make the cultural transition from a competitive "make do" speed culture, to our cooperative "quality" accuracy culture.

Throughout our organisation it is the attention to detail that delivers successful outcomes and makes us effective.

Psychological research has shown that the best way to make the cultural transition is through a game, that is sufficiently real and sufficiently unfamiliar so as to disrupt people's entrenched culture and replace it with the team culture we need.

We present people with, a mission they may believe is impossible, with problems that seem beyond their capability. Problems they thought they could never solve, in forensics, electronics, radio and navigation.

We put people in a position where quality, teamwork and integrity are essential to their success and then we teach them how.

Conclusion

This comprehensive team development program, provided by Science Faction Ltd, will involve team managers and staff. The parts are as follows:

Internal Induction Programme - 1 day: A number of discussions about the role of competition and cooperation in biological evolution.
External Development Programme - 2 days: A cultural change exercise to be performed off site and to involve a number of serious physical and mental challenges that will disrupt embedded cultural norms and demand quality, teamwork and integrity to complete.
Training Review - 1 day: Discussions about the field experience and the resulting cultural changes.

Images: Hinton State Laboritory, Painting of barrings, Witnesses in the Enron Case.