Loosely Coupled

Nova's episode this past week was titled "The Spy Factory" . It wasn't quite what I expected, but it was fascinating. Basically, it was about the NSA and how it was tracking Al Qaeda members and their movements (in the US), long before the September 11 th attacks. It also touched on the CIA and how they also tracked Al Qaeda movements into the US. The CIA approached the NSA to share information (since they couldn't legally conduct a domestic investigation on these potential terrorists) but the NSA refused to share any information. Once Al Qaeda activity came stateside, it seems neither agency alerted the FBI. It all seems so foolish. All of these agencies are supposed to work together for our common safety. Was their unwillingness to work together driven by ego, politics, the desire to be national heroes, any or all of the above? Obviously, this sort of behavior is not limited to government offices. I've seen this same behavior on teams and in org...

Why are these three words so hard for some people to mutter? The fear of being caught without an answer is so scary, that some people will say anything to avoid having no answer at all. It's a big problem. Consider this: you ask a question and you get an answer. You accept the answer as true because you think, "why would someone mislead me?". And you're right, they're not intentionally misleading you, but they have an intrinsic need to give you an answer - any answer - so that they don't "lose face" or something. I just can't wrap my head around this behavior because most likely, you'll take some course of action based on the answer to your question. But when you start to notice things - things that don't make any sense and couldn't possibly happen if the information you got was correct -you'll spend a lot of effort reevaluating your beliefs and doing your own research. Eventually (and after some frustration), you'll fin...