Beware New Brooms in Systems and Process

Throughout my police career, even more so towards the end, I was constantly frustrated by aspiring senior officers and police staff managers. Most of them were in relatively unimportant non operational departments but latterly, even operational policing wasn’t immune to their tinkering.

These people often had little or no apparent interest in the police process. Policing to them was little more than a conduit for their own personal advancement.

Many were simply but constantly trying to make a name for themselves by ‘fixing’ things that often weren’t broken. The proverbial new broom sweeping cleaner!

It’s the main reason why so many politicians are wrong to say, the police service is resistant to change, it isn’t. British policing has, rightly or wrongly, been in a constant state of flux for the decades and even more so during the last twenty years.

Changes at national, regional and local level have been implemented for political, financial or personal reasons. But the fundamental core process of British policing has never changed since it’s inception and arguably, neither does it need to.

Check it out…the lesson here is don’t be fooled by flashy new methods or operating models. Look at the entire process, not just the bit that seems the most obvious or impressive, and always asess benefit from the perspective of the customer or service user…(Insp Simon Guilfoyle)

Simon Guilfoyle is a serving police Inspector and academically qualified systems thinker. Simon has written several blog posts on police process and procedures. More importantly, he explains in easy to understand terms, where too often it all goes sadly wrong.

Simon points out that the key tenets of systems thinking is understanding variation. Too often, the changes we see being implemented in the police service (and other public services) are dictated by political decisions based upon suspect statistics, and knee-jerk reactions to that data.

Simon’s Blog is worthy of a follow, always assuming you have any interest in this subject matter.