Overview



Shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Director Robert Mueller published a new set of FBI priorities, which indicated counterterrorism as the Bureau’s top priority. Recognizing that a list alone was not sufficient to drive long-term organizational change, Director Mueller led the implementation of the Strategy Management System (SMS), an adapted version of the Balance Scorecard methodology as a tool to measure and track strategic performance. SMS provided us with a framework for reorienting the Bureau towards an intelligence-driven, national security organization in 2006.

This process provides a formal method for defining, communicating, aligning, executing, and assessing strategy, and for making strategy a part of daily activities and decision-making. Our process ensures that entities throughout the Bureau align their activities to the FBI strategy and integrate strategy into program management. The FBI strategy provides an execution framework. Objective performance at the enterprise and division levels are measured, tracked, and reviewed on a quarterly basis.

The Bureau’s leadership team uses quarterly strategy review meetings on objectives, measures, and initiatives. During these meetings, the leadership team discusses performance and makes decisions on how to allocate resources in order to improve organizational execution.

In 2016, Director Comey unveiled a number of changes to the way in which the FBI managed its long-term strategy. His updated process emphasized “where are we going” (strategic) over “what are we doing” (tactical). Reflecting the Director’s themes—leadership, cyber, intelligence, and operations integration, and reduce administration workload— our updated strategy is more simplified and streamlined. The FBI has not changed the direction we are heading or the nature of our work. We do, however, want to ensure that our strategy: