How the Corporate Culture at the State Department Contributed to Hillary Clinton's Email Server Problem

How the Corporate Culture at the State Department Contributed to Hillary Clinton's Email Server Problem
(A short disclaimer: it is always important to exercise caution when discussing political issues, especially in a heated election year. However, to fail to discuss such an important and noteworthy example of the importance of leadership and organizational culture simply because it is 'political' would be a mistake. This article is not an endorsement of either presidential candidate or party.) 
 
One of the barriers that many executives and business leaders have with getting their heads around the importance of organizationalculture is that it can be difficult to see how culture influences decision making - that is, how it actually impacts the choices, good or bad, that people make as they work.
 
It is vital to remember that culture (aka organizational habits) is a continuum: the people of the organization, particularly the leadership, shapes the culture, but these same people are also shaped by the culture. This can prevent us from recognizing blind spots, enable poor thinking, or, even worse, other actions that could cause serious damage to the organization. 

I was thinking about that this week when James Comey, the director of the FBI, gave his remarks on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email. In them, he said 'the security culture of the State Department in general...was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.' Former Secretary Clinton has, on various occasions, insisted she was, at the very least, in line with what other Secretaries of State have done in the role. If true, this further reinforces Comey's statement about the 'general lack of care' culture. 

And there is little doubt that the outcome has been negative, for basically all parties involved. Though avoiding indictment, Secretary Clinton is now faced with a political headache of huge proportions, already admitting the whole thing was 'a mistake' and alluding to poor judgment. Also, as Comey notes in his remarks, 'it is possible that hostile actors' gained access to information contained on Secretary Clinton's server, which could potentially put American citizens and national interests in danger. Moreover, the ramifications for the State Department itself are not good: loss of public faith, battles with Congressional leaders over funding, disruption of operational objectives due to outside influence.

So here's the nonpolitical point: the leader shapes the culture, but is also shaped by it.  Maybe Secretary Clinton was just doing what everybody else did, and maybe she wasn't. Regardless, the culture wasn't strong enough to prevent her from doing something that has clearly had a hugely negative impact on the organization as a whole. It was a massive blind spot that they didn't even see coming. And if it is common practice (aka a cultural norm) to be lax with security, or allow leaders to be subject to different standards than others in the organization, then there should be little surprise at the resulting damage. 

To bring this home, let's do a little comparison. James Burke was the CEO of Johnson & Johnson in the late 70's and early 80's. At the time, J&J had copies of their founding principles (the building blocks of culture) on the walls of the corporate office, but Burke had noticed that over time they had been slowly marginalized. One of his first decisions as CEO was to meet with his executives and challenge them to recommit and live by these principles or 'tear them off the wall.' Many of his executives rose to the challenge and recommitted, a choice that proved exceptionally important when crisis hit.

In the fall of 1982, someone intentionally placed cyanide-laced pills in a number of Tylenol bottles, causing seven deaths and a swift, fearful reaction from the public. It was important for J&J to act quickly, but what should they do? To pull Tylenol off the shelves would cost the company a great deal of money, and the chances were minuscule that there were other poisoned containers.

The story goes that Burke was on a plane across the ocean in the immediate aftermath of this, but that by the time he landed, his Executive Team had already made the decision: Tylenol would be pulled until the extent of the tampering could be discovered. While more common place now, this decision was groundbreaking and laid the precedent for how to handle situations like this in the future. 

What's the difference between what is currently happening at the State department and what happened under Burke at J&J? J&J had a strong culture that their people bought into. The customer was always the 'first priority', not the executives, leaders, or even the stock-holders. So when the time came to make a really hard decision - to lose millions of dollars over a minute chance of reoccurrence - it wasn't a hard decision at all, because the culture guided the decision making.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. It shapes your thinking, decision making, and behavior. It touches every aspect of your organization. It impacts your bottom line, your reputation, and ultimately your livelihood as a company. Investing in it reaps many rewards and neglecting it causes many difficulties, as Secretary Clinton and the State Department fallout this week demonstrates so clearly.