“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate – some men you just can’t reach…” – Strother Martin as ”The Captain” – Cool Hand Luke

The attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines Flight 253 has shaken our collective confidence in national security, and communication or the lack of communication is once again a central issue.

Retired Army Colonel Ken Allard has written a must-read piece entitled Terror Deja-Vu, which centers on communication failures and the resulting damage:

“When I was in the military, we called the problem “inter-operability” or “stovepipes.” At business school, they’re called “silos.” In plain English, when bureaucracies don’t effectively talk to each other, as we saw over the skies of Detroit on Christmas Day and the killing grounds of Fort Hood last month, trouble—and, often, death—follow.

This was supposed to have changed after the 9/11 attacks, when roadblocks on the information highway killed hundreds of police, firefighters and first responders at the Twin Towers. Yet here we are eight years later and, maddeningly, warnings about a Nigerian engineering student hell-bent on a path of Islamist fanaticism were enough to place his name on a watch list, but not enough to prevent him from boarding a plane. And solid information that an Army psychiatrist at Fort Hood was in continuing contact with a radical Islamist cleric did not prompt preemptive action by his chain of command.”

This was followed by Department of Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano first stating that “the system worked”, and quickly reversed course the following day stating that “What I would say is that the system did not work in this instance...”  This is a shining example of why messaging matters.

On top of this comes intense criticism of President Obama for first not speaking publicly about the Christmas Day attack until the following Monday.  This was followed by Tuesday’s comments (with a marked change of tone) that “…a systemic failure has occurred.”  

The President was on vacation in Hawaii when the attack occurred.  This, coupled with his lack of public comment over the weekend, sent a message as well – not one I believe the President intended to send.   This has allowed critics to successfully pounce– once again, politics 101 – define yourself before your opponent has the opportunity to do so.

So now we sit, at the end of a decade, a decade marked, politically, in many ways by the Captain’s comments – “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate…”  

Failure to communicate effectively plagued the last Presidency, hurt two Presidential campaigns (McCain, Kerry), and in some ways led to a Congressional turnover, a financial disaster, and a societal disaster (the response to Hurricane Katrina).

This is why effective communication is like breathing – crucial.  

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