The Trump administration has endeavored to push back equity, diversity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal US government and The White House has made it clear, that the US intelligence community (IC) is in scope. Though the evidence is patchy, news reporting and court files indicate that at least some programs, offices and initiatives are being rolled back. [1]
While DEI programs are under pressure on the other side of the Atlantic, European intelligence services would be well advised to redouble their efforts to promote staff diversity, specifically gender diversity. [2] This article argues why, drawing on extant research on diversity and organizational performance and a small internal survey carried out in the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS).
Busting the James Bond myth
In 2022, the DDIS ran a number of adds on social media. One of them featured a picture of an unglamorous family car and the text: “If you can remain calm as the kids fight on the backseat, maybe you have what it takes to become one of our new case officers”.
The messaging and the untraditional communication channel were intended to debunk the myth, that case officers had to be James Bond-type action heroes and attract a broader and more diverse group of applicants.
Human and military intelligence have traditionally been male dominated disciplines. [3] This is also true when it comes to the DDIS, which grew out of the Danish Armed Forces in the wake of World War II, and remains organizationally anchored to the Danish Defence. [4]
Previous recruitment drives tended to generate a field of highly motivated and skilled, yet predominantly male, candidates with a background in the armed forces. The idea behind the 2022 campaign was simple: The more internal diversity in the cadre of case officers, the greater the chance to match operational opportunities to exactly the right internal profiles and skill sets.
Arguably, however, the potential organizational benefits are broader and not just in the HUMINT discipline.
How gender diversity improves organizational performance
In 2022, the author of this article carried out a small survey to collect perspectives of female and other minority DDIS staff on the role of diversity in organizational performance. The survey was intended to inform management thinking on recruitment and retainment and to feed ideas into the broader HR-strategies. [5] The questions focused on the respondents’ personal experiences with representing a (gender) minority in their workplace and on their perception of whether greater diversity had an impact on the way their unit or team approached its daily tasks.
Almost every respondent provided rich accounts, shared anecdotes from daily life, and were vocal about their ideas and wishes for the future. It was evident from the accounts, that several respondents had had long careers in the DDIS and were able to describe the changes they had experienced over time, as the number of female staff grew.
Across from the accounts, three cross-cutting themes were evident: The respondents registered a better work climate, stronger bias check, and better problem solving as the gender diversity of their workplace increased.
First, several respondents took care to underline, that they had never personally experienced harassment due to their gender. Yet, they also related how the presence of more female colleagues had contributed to a, in their estimation, more inclusive culture and a decline in “locker-room jargon”.
While an inclusive work environment is likely to be beneficial to staff retention and possibly to staff performance, the second cross-cutting theme spoke directly to a core imperative for intelligence services: Strive to check your bias! The respondents related how, in their experience, more diverse teams were less inclined to think alike and thus less in danger of falling into the trap of groupthink.
Finally, and related to the two previous themes, respondents also indicated that more diversity made for better problem-solving in cases where complexity or novelty challenged existing approaches.
The internal survey was small and obviously not representative. Since responses were written to ensure anonymity, the interviewer had no chance to probe and question the causality of connections suggested by the respondents, ask for additional examples etc.
Yet, extant research in the field of decision making theory, organizational innovation, and organizational performance indicate the same connections as the ones pointed out by the respondents.
Diversity can increase the level of conflict within a group, but it is also a broadly recognized means to improve the quality of analysis and decision-making. Small, heterogeneous groups, where group members feel safe to speak up ensure that more experiences and perspectives are brought to the table and help reduce the risk of group think – a phenomenon by which a group places internal harmony above analytical stringency and avoids asking hard questions – as well as the risk of other analytical fallacies. [6]
Though extant research is ambiguous about the relationship between small group diversity and creativity, it has shown a positive connection between demographic diversity, including gender diversity, and innovation at the organizational level. [7] There is also evidence, that more diverse private sector companies tend to perform more strongly on indicators such as earnings, market value, rentability, and ability to expand into new markets. [8]
In sum, though the internal DDIS survey is small, extant research rhymes with the respondents’ accounts: Diversity, better bias-check and stronger problem solving abilities go together.
Attracting a diversity of talent
How do traditionally male-dominated organizations attract a more diverse range of talent? Popular myths and limits to how open an intelligence service can be about its assets and staff may compromise their ability to convince women that they would fit in.
The “Berlingo-adds” of the 2022 DDIS recruitment drive is one example of how to work around such constraints. While the backdrop of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine might have played a mobilizing role as well, never before in the recent history of the Service did a posting attract such a large and broad group of applicants, counting 3.400 individuals. [9] At the end of the monthlong internal process of testing, training, and selecting, a new group of case officers could join the ranks, significantly increasing the corps’ degree of diversity in terms of gender, age, personal and educational backgrounds.
Three reasons to strive for more diversity
Organizational diversity and inclusion programs have faced political head winds from across the Atlantic.
Yet, arguably, any intelligence service that cares about operational and organizational excellency should strive for more, not less gender diversity. A small internal DDIS survey indicates that diversity rhymes with a better work place culture and extant research underlines that it goes with stronger bias check and more innovation. The DDIS’s 2022 recruitment drive simultaneously illustrates, that alternative messaging and social media channels can enable intelligence agencies to cut through popular myths about what an intelligence officer looks like and attract a broader variety of talent to compete for open positions.
The author is grateful to DDIS staff, who participated in the internal survey and to Annemarie Peen Rodt for helpful comments on this article.
Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen
Director of Intelligence (May 2021-May 2025)
Danish Defence Intelligence Service
Denmark
[2] Organizational diversity have multiple dimensions such as demographic, cultural, social, cognitive, religious, educational etc. The focus in this article is on gender diversity. From a practical point of view this is a dimension that most organizations can track and arguably a good place to start in the quest for a work environment, which is more inclusive also towards other minority groups.
[3] For carefully researched historical accounts of the role of women in human intelligence and military intelligence, see Liza Mundy, 2023, ”The Sisterhood. The Secret History of Women at the CIA”, Gloustershire: History Press; Trine E. Michelsen, 2021, ”Storfyrstinden”, Copenhagen: People’s Press.
[4] ”Intelligence Outlook 2024”, Copenhagen: DDIS, pp. 6-7, available on https://www.fe-ddis.dk/en/produkter/Risk_assessment/riskassessment/Intelligenceoutlook2024/
[5] The sample was generated via a simple snowballing technique and consisted of short, open-ended questions to which the respondents provided written responses. Fourteen staff members contributed, all were anonymous. All respondents were asked for permission to use the results in this article. None objected.
[6] I. L. Janis, 1973, ”Groupthink and Group Dynamics,” Policy Studies Journal, 2: 1, pp. 19-25; R. J. Heuer, 2008, Small Group Processes for Intelligence Analysis, Report prepared for the Sherman Kent School, available at https://pherson.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/02.-Small-Group-Processes.pdf
[7] A. Hundschell et. al, 2022, ”The Effects of Diversity on Creativity: A Literature Review and Synthesis,” Applied Psychology, 71, 4: pp. 1598-1634.
[8] For a summary of this research, see P. Luthra and S.L. Muhr, 2023, Leading through Bias, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 49.
[9] DDIS, Indblik, Beretning 2021-2022, DDIS: Copenhagen, p. 59, available at https://www.fe-ddis.dk/da/produkter/beretning/beretningsarkiv/beretning-2021-2022/
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