An Idea in Good Currency: Collaborative Leadership in the National Security Community Rodger Shanahan

An Idea in Good Currency: Collaborative Leadership in the National Security Community Rodger Shanahan National Security College Occasional Paper No1 November 2011 The importance of collaborative leadership is widely acknowledged in Australia’s national security community. But what is collaborative leadership? How do national security professionals learn about it? This National Security College Occasional Paper addresses both these questions and explores the extent to which a shared understanding of collaborative leadership exists in today's national security community. National Security College A joint initiative of the Commonwealth Government and The Australian National University National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Shanahan, Rodger, 1964- Title: An idea in good currency [electronic resource]: Collaborative Leadership in the national security community / Rodger Shanahan. ISBN: 9780987221018 (ebook : pdf) Series: National Security College occasional paper; 1. Subjects: National security--Australia. Political leadership--Australia. Australia--Politics and government--21st century. Other Authors/Contributors: Australian National University. National Security College. Dewey Number: 355.033094 Editors: Dr David Connery Ms Cathy McCullagh Email address: [email protected] Published and distributed by: National Security College Building 69, 5 Liversidge St Australian National University, Acton ACT 0200 T: (02) 6125 6480 E: [email protected] W: http://nsc.anu.edu.au/ An Idea in Good Currency: Collaborative Leadership in the National Security Community Rodger Shanahan National Security College Occasional Paper No 1 November 2011 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The concept of collaborative leadership has emerged as potentially a new method of operating within Australia’s national security community. With the publication of the 2008 Review of Homeland and Border Security (also known as the ‘Smith Review’) and the subsequent Prime Minister’s National Security Statement, the need for greater collaboration within a significantly expanded national security community has become apparent. As a consequence, collaborative leadership is now regarded as an ‘idea in good currency’ within Australia’s national security community. However, the meaning of collaborative leadership has yet to be clearly defined. Similarly, the ideal method for incorporating collaborative leadership into professional education has also yet to be agreed. These two gaps in the understanding of collaborative leadership have provided the impetus for this research paper. This paper provides a working definition of collaborative leadership — largely for educative purposes since its various applications across working disciplines make coining a precise definition of the concept for universal application largely impractical. Nonetheless, interviews with over thirty senior national security professionals in Australia indicate that there is a reasonably good shared understanding of what constitutes collaborative leadership in the national security setting. Most interviewees also agreed that collaborative leadership is increasingly important as the nature of new security threats become more complex and thus require multi-agency cooperation to address them. As a result, there are more actors involved in national security policy today. There was also broad recognition among those interviewed that cooperation is not a passive action and that effective cooperation requires effort and leadership. Interviewees also agreed that, while collaborative leadership attitudes and skills were usually acquired ‘on the job’, its principles could be taught and reinforced through case studies, experiential learning and tabletop exercises. A key element of collaborative leadership was trust. Interviewees regarded this as best developed through familiarity and shared experience among officials involved in national security. However they also generally considered that professional education providers in this field could fulfill a very important role by providing formal instruction on the nature of collaborative leadership, conducting practical activities that demonstrated the benefits of collaborative leadership, and by providing a forum for the establishment of a national security peer group. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project comprised a joint effort between four agencies and, as such, it is only right to acknowledge the efforts of the other researchers who devoted time and effort to the organisation and conduct of the interviews. Specifically, Jamie Cullens of the Australian Defence College, Andrew Singh of the Australian Institute of Police Management and Kerren Thorsen of the Australian Emergency Management Institute all worked hard to achieve the desired outcome. Eliane Coates conducted an excellent literature review that ensured the project a solid start, while Alan Thomas provided sage advice throughout. Both Michael L’Estrange and David Connery from the National Security College were excellent in reviewing the early drafts of this paper. Finally, the administrative staff of the National Security College were extremely helpful to me in fulfilling my myriad requirements for the project. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr Rodger Shanahan is a former army officer and now a non- resident Fellow at the Lowy Institute. During his Army career he served as a UN Military Observer in South Lebanon and Syria, with the Parachute Battalion Group in East Timor as part of INTERFET, and as the Military Liaison Officer in Beirut during the 2006 war. He deployed as an operational inquiry officer to Afghanistan on several occasions between 2009 and 2011. Dr Shanahan served in the Australian embassies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and has an MA in International Relations and an MA in Middle East Studies from the ANU. He holds a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the University of Sydney and has written for various Australian and foreign media outlets, published several articles in academic journals and is the author of Clans, Parties and Clerics: the Shi’a of Lebanon. CONTENTS Page Introduction 1 Section One: Towards a Shared Understanding of Collaborative Leadership 5 Section Two: Exercising Collaborative Leadership in the National Security Community 20 Section Three: Promoting Collaborative Leadership through Education 42 Conclusion 52 Annexes: A. Research Methodology 55 B. Interview Subjects 57 Bibliography 59 INTRODUCTION The release of the first National Security Statement by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in December 2008 described how the Australian government views national security. This statement effectively broadened the definition of what constituted challenges to Australia’s national security interests to include transnational crime, border security, cyber security and emerging threats such as climate change and energy security. It also recognized that Australia’s national security assets included those in the emergency management areas of the states and territories. This extended agenda formalised what had been occurring in practice over the previous decade or so as more departments and agencies gradually became involved in safeguarding Australia’s national security. This first National Security Statement also announced the government’s intention to implement several initiatives from the Smith Review of Homeland and Border Security. In particular, the Smith Review recommended that a National Security Adviser be appointed within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to ‘… provide a new level of leadership, direction and coordination to our national security agencies’ rather than creating a separate Department of Homeland Security. In effect, the government chose to enhance the national security community’s ability to deal with complex security 1 challenges through cultural change, rather than a wholesale structural re-organisation. While previously those responsible for national security had been largely confined to the Prime Minister’s, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Attorney-General’s portfolios (all of which include key intelligence agencies), today people from many more departments, levels of government and the business and community sectors play vital roles in this policy area. The increase in the number of active participants in national security has resulted in groups that have not normally dealt with one another coming together as partners (to a greater or lesser degree) in dealing with issues now broadly regarded as relevant to national security. This has introduced a new requirement for a more diverse group of actors to work together to achieve relevant policy outcomes, in a manner and on a scale previously not required in Australia. However, the informal decision-making processes that have often characterised methods of operation in the hitherto tight security community have proven more difficult to apply consistently and effectively within this much broader grouping. Centralised or hierarchical management systems were no longer appropriate given the Constitutional division of responsibilities, the structure of ministries and the seniority of the departmental heads 2 — all of whom were senior to the National Security Adviser. The presence of state government agencies more used to service delivery, alongside Commonwealth departments which were largely policy developers, was a further complicating factor. This revised national security architecture requires a different managerial style to the more hierarchical and closed style of previous decades. Some have

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