Naval Intelligence: End the Cult of Busyness
By Commander Wolf Melbourne, U.S. Navy
November 2019
Proceedings
Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy.
– Søren Kierkegaard
At any naval intelligence center on any given day, analysts rush from meeting to meeting. Briefing slides and intelligence products are produced, edited, reviewed, and published. Senior officers and civilians come in before dawn and leave well after sunset. The day is full of busy people doing busy things. A good question is, what are we being busy about? An even better question for the naval intelligence profession is, how we are busy?
This may seem a strange question. Are we not the same kind of busy we have always been? Are we not going to the same meetings, having the same collaborative discussions, and producing the same products we always have? Yes, but questions about how versus what force us to examine the structure of naval intelligence and think more deeply about the relationships between parts and how they relate to the whole.1 The difference today is us—the naval intelligence professionals who go to these meetings, make these products, and hold these discussions. We have changed. We are inundated with distractions, try to do too many things, and confuse that busyness with productivity. And we are undermining the whole of naval intelligence.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019/november/naval-intelligence-end-cult-busyness
