LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

Lamb with Franco
likely. For example, a common prescription for good teamwork is to promote
vibrant debate and information-sharing before the senior leader decision is
made, and unified effort to achieve the leader’s intent and objective after he or
she makes the decision. 170 Since information can be used to further the interests
of subordinates rather than leaders (often referred to as the principal-agent
problem), mutual trust is essential to make this general approach work—a
point emphasized in the Chairman’s white paper on mission command. 171 This
is true of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Delegated authority worked best
where trust was most prominent (for example, within some Ambassador–joint
force commander pairings, some interagency field teams hunting high-value
targets, and within the U.S. military chain of command that allowed field commanders
to apply general guidance in specific circumstances as they saw fit).
Trust relationships across organizational boundaries take time and often
prove fragile if not reinforced through relationships, process, and common cultures.
As SOF like to say, “You can’t surge trust.” Yet properly nurtured, what
once was perceived as unhelpful micromanagement may eventually be seen as
helpful collaboration. General Franks’s opinion of Secretary Rumsfeld’s supervision
of his war plans evolved in this manner. 172 Trust relationships also can
deteriorate. Trust levels between CIA Director George Tenet and the Bush White
House fell so far that cooperation between the two was impossible, and President
Obama’s confidence in DOD and uniformed leadership also deteriorated
over the course of his first administration. Similarly, some interagency task forces
chasing high-value targets collapsed when trust relationships were broken. 173
Overall, mistrust was a significant problem at multiple levels of the national security
system and especially during planning and execution of Iraq operations. 174
As we have seen, vertical unity of effort was a problem even though the
U.S. national security system benefits from legal structures that ensure unity
of command and from common organizational norms—especially but not exclusively
in DOD—that support unified command and effort. Generating horizontal
unity of effort across diverse departments and agencies with divergent
missions and cultures was even more difficult and more consequential as well.
Horizontal Unity of Effort
Stated broadly, horizontal unity of effort refers to the way discrete organizations
cooperate for common purposes when they are not accountable to the
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