# CSIS Director Aims to Overhaul Toxic Agency Culture Director Dan Rogers implements direct feedback loops to address systemic trust issues within Canada's intelligence agency. - **Source:** [National Post - RSS Feed](https://nationalpost.com/) - **Published:** 2026-10-28 - **Topic:** [Leadership](https://brifing.si/c/leadership) - **Original article:** - **On Brifing:** https://brifing.si/s/98b056d1-6c7f-4dc8-8694-c18d4b4b66b0 ## Systemic Trust Deficit The Canadian Security Intelligence Service faces significant internal challenges, including low morale and a lack of trust in leadership. Recent survey data reveals only 51 percent of staff believe senior managers lead by example. Furthermore, reports of harassment and a toxic environment persist, consistently underperforming compared to the broader federal public service averages. ## Direct Leadership Engagement Director Dan Rogers is actively bypassing traditional management hierarchies to gauge real sentiment. During regional office visits, he conducts meetings without managers present to encourage candid feedback. This strategy aims to bridge the gap between faceless executive communication and the workforce, ensuring employees feel heard by the agency’s highest leadership level. ## Accountability Metrics To ensure cultural shifts, Rogers has mandated 360-degree reviews for every executive. These assessments gather comprehensive feedback from subordinates, peers, and superiors to provide a holistic performance view. By integrating team environment goals into performance reviews, the agency now links executive bonuses directly to their ability to foster a healthy workplace culture. ## Recruitment and Bottlenecks Human resources head Jesse Schwartz is focused on accelerating hiring to address critical staffing gaps. The agency is streamlining the notoriously slow top-secret security clearance process by hiring more polygraph operators and removing redundant steps. These efforts aim to build organizational capacity, with increasingly ambitious recruitment targets set for the coming year. ## Operational Recognition Rogers emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the unrecognized work of intelligence officers. Because much of their success in foiling threats remains classified, employees often feel invisible. Simple gestures, such as direct praise or informal team recognition, are being introduced to boost morale and validate the high-stress work performed by dedicated staff. ## Addressing Internal Deception A unique challenge at CSIS is that employees are professionally trained in deception and concealment. This creates a culture where colleagues may view each other as sources to be exploited. Rogers acknowledges this risk and actively works to mitigate it by creating direct communication channels that bypass potentially obstructive middle management layers. ## Performance Expectations While Rogers avoids assigning blame to specific past leaders, he maintains that current executives must meet new cultural standards. He has not disclosed specific disciplinary actions against non-compliant managers, citing privacy rules. However, he emphasizes that setting clear expectations is the necessary precursor to holding individuals accountable for failing to improve. ## Long-term Cultural Shift Transforming a deeply entrenched culture is a slow, iterative process rather than an overnight fix. By prioritizing transparency, faster recruitment, and executive accountability, the agency aims to restore its operational effectiveness. Success depends on whether these structural changes can genuinely replace the existing atmosphere of suspicion with a more collaborative, trust-based environment. ## Sources covering this story - https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/to-fix-a-toxic-culture-csis-is-trying-to-build-trust-in-a-world-where-no-one-trusts-anyone — --- _Summary written by Brifing from the original reporting. Copyright in the original article belongs to its publisher; read the full piece at the link above._