I’ve long been troubled by the police promotion process, and at the outset have to state that I never went through it. It was traffic law, mainly – I really didn’t care one iota about tyre tread depths. Nor did I want to learn about how to deal with the one theft of a deer the CPS ever dealt with (if indeed they ever did). Plus I wanted to avoid the nonsense of a guaranteed ethics failure for the heinous crime of accidental use of the word ‘manpower’ in a Part II station exercise.

I once opined that the promotion exam was nothing more than a filter to avoid everyone doing the practical element – the cost and logistics would have been massive – because every single question asked had an answer that could be found ‘in a book’. In other words, not entirely but predominantly, questions rarely related to the need for an instant decision on the street, outside of the execution of some powers. And even those were subject of ‘mays’, ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’, which allowed for interpretation and error. While the knowledge in the exam was sound, the need to know it immediately and by heart was arguably only necessary as a rite of passage to the next stage. I got a bit of a response to that idea, as you can imagine.

In my defence, it wasn’t a lack of intellectual ability. I topped my force on the Investigator’s exam and got a couple of 100%s in the financial investigator’s process. Direct, relevant knowledge that applied to the service I was providing. Never even  saw a deer until I went to Richmond on a  fraud enquiry. That wasn’t about venison theft.

Meanwhile, I was out there learning some other stuff. I qualified as a Legal Executive, and I could make the argument that the knowledge I gained there – at least in part – would have been, and possibly was more useful in my role as a detective, particularly in fraud. The probate knowledge I studied got more and more useful as lawyers buck-passed will disputes to us, and I bounced many straight back. I dabbled in psychology (and philosophy) and used that knowledge to get an admission from a murderer’s wife that she hid his blood-stained clothing. I read on logic and used that quite frequently!

Mais – je regret. All the missed opportunities because I didn’t want to play someone else’s silly game. To quote Captain Bertorelli in ‘Allo ‘Allo – what a mistake-a to make-a.

Which brings me to the point of this post. In order to be better at what you do, you have to be willing to study, and ‘up’ needs not be the only motivation and focus for that study. ‘Up’ gets you responsibilities and more money. Can’t argue with that. But widening your knowledge base is equally rewarding,  can be financially useful outside the organisation, and will serve your professional competence if you choose the right subjects.

Set time aside, every week, for study. Get a Kindle or other e-reader and keep it with you (if you can) so that down time can be utilised to enhance your competence and character. Consider audio-books as entertainment in your car instead if BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM  hearing-threatening music. (I use the term ‘music’ advisedly in the case of the BOOM BOOM stuff.)

Incidentally, one bye-product of reading is the improved ability to write (and even speak) with correct diction and grammar. Which, oddly, seems to be a character trait of anyone of status who worked for and deserved that status. (Not YouTube influencers and TV presenters who’ve forgotten how to pronounce the ‘T’ in British.)

Don’t – ever, as I did – restrict your potential by a failure to study both the ‘required’ disciplines and in those fields which can enhance your professional competence. Remember – when you retire/resign/get shafted, your Sergeant’s Exam pass won’t be  lot of use outside. It’s a great foundation provided you keep your studies going. So do that.

Start studying. And never stop.

Goal setting. The subject of many a seminar, book and audio presentation. Look it up on YouTube and you’ll be overwhelmed with responses. The ‘accepted’ mnemonic is SMART and, to be frank, this is as good a memory-prompt as any when it comes to this subject. BUT.

SMART applies only after you’ve identified a goal, at least in a general sense. You want ‘X’, so apply SMART to ‘X’. Or you can take the versions developed by those with sufficient ego to feel the need to add irrelevancies and try SMARTEST or SMARTER as your setter’s guide. W’evah. But to identify the goal, you first need a context for it.

I’m not all that athletic. I do want to be adequately healthy, though. I value health and ‘enough’ fitness. So I could set a goal of running a marathon if I wanted to address those values, but as I have no desire to run that far I’d set that goal in the knowledge that I was completely wasting my mental effort unless I had a context for its achievement. I cold SMART-ify it all I liked, and still not achieve it.

In my favourite books on the subject, written by different people who all ‘start on the same page’, as it were, there are two solutions to the challenge that lies between between setting a SMART goal for the sake of it, and achieving the sought outcome. Authors Charles R. Hobbs and his partner (and later court opponent) Hyrum W. Smith wrote the ‘same book by different titles’ (long story). Both opine that goals should reflect our personal values and both seem to suggest that knowing our values should direct the identification of our goals. Stephen Covey differed in his approach, suggesting that goals should relate to our life roles, which include professional but also private roles.

I have tried both approaches and discovered that Hobbs/Smith’s suggestion about setting a goal related to a personal value is difficult. Values tend to be intangible. They provide a motive behind a goal – a WHY – but ‘Excellence’ is hard to achieve unless you have a context in which to apply it. Excellent at what? With whom? ‘Integrity’ is a nice value to possess, but integrity where? Without challenge, how can you experience integrity?

In comes Covey, with a suggestion that in setting a goal we can use the context provided by careful identification and consideration of our roles. I was a police officer, so my goals related to promotion, specialisation, community-projects, specific investigations, and whatever else came to mind. I set a goal – and then I applied excellence towards that goal. I had other roles – public speaker, trainer, writer, family – and setting goals in those roles was easier than trying to ‘Be frugal’ with money. It’s easy to Be Frugal – don’t spend any money. Hardly a SMART-able goal, is it?

But having a context goals then allows you to apply your values to it. Study for a promotion exam? Then be excellent, be disciplined, be organised. Want a sports car? Then be frugal, work planned overtime. Want to specialise within your profession? Then do the study, join the Associations, meet the people.

Context goals. ‘What do you want?’, ‘what role will it serve or support?’ – and then ‘why do you want it?’

Make your goals real by knowing the context in which it needs to be sought, even if your first goal is to obtain the role itself.

Another LinkedIn post by an activist criticising the Police. Arguably with merit, but I sometimes wonder.

The whole world knows what is wrong with the police. They know what is wrong because they’ve seen it on the telly. They know police have been lazy with an investigation because Gibbs’ NCIS team have the ability to press a button and get an amalgamation of phone records, bank records, driving licence records and DNA results all on the screen at once. Just after the incident. They know they’ve been lazy because every case has a team of 5 working on it and they can detect it in a day. They know real cops are incompetent because the Blue Bloods family can get a criminal to confess based on a cheeky fib. And although there’s usually a huge pile of paper on their desks – no paperwork is ever seen being done or moaned about. Just like real life.

What they don’t know is that it takes days to get a routine DNA identification. It takes as much as two weeks to get bank records. and they don’t all arrive in the same digitally-convenient format. We don’t have huge plasma computer screens on the wall. And oddly enough, we know that a confession based on a  lie is inadmissible in court – just as it is in the USA, but don’t let stupidity get in the way of a good plot, eh? And the one-page file I’d submit in 1986 for a minor public order offence is now a ream.

And the final kicker – we do not ever, ever have one case to deal with at a time. Even if we are focused on ‘one’, all our other work is building up in our absence.

Which is why police officers make mistakes. Not mistakes of intent, but mistakes of prioritisation. Bear with me.

When you have a million things to do (okay, I can exaggerate, too) there is a tendency to try and avoid adding to the list. This results in looking at incidents and exploring why we shouldn’t be dealing with it, instead of investigating why we should. Human nature. This tendency is underpinned by the mindset of policing which unconsciously defaults into making everything Urgent even when it isn’t Important.

I know that’s a subjective assessment and two people will see things differently. But it’s still true. Admin want their bit of paper NOW while you’re trying to find a vulnerable misper, and deferring either will create problems. So what do you do – you try to manage work by avoiding what you can.

Mistakes are therefore made in those assessments. And the response is usually disciplinary action, civil suits, bad press, and so on. That’s trying to cure the acute problems without addressing the chronic issues that lie behind them.

Lack of input on how to manage your work. (Vested interest but you KNOW I am right.) Not just on how you manage it, but how the organisation creates it without thought and passes the demands down to the busiest people. I’ve often been bewildered how many ‘partnerships’ mean ‘doing work for our partners because THEY are busy’. And how easily the top echelons, albeit with positive intent, go along with it.

“New Policy!” shouts the Home Office. “We’ll do that,” says Chiefy at conference. Who then says, “Organise that, Super.” Who then says, “Set up an operation, Inspector.” Who assembles the sergeants and enlightens them as to their new project. Who then add that stuff to the work their teams are already coping with – if they are coping at all. Because you can’t say ‘No’, upwards.

The very least we can do is help the front line by managing expectations, both within and outside the organisation. Taking on new stuff? Get rid of some of the old.

The next, possibly more appropriate step is to teach people – by training and by demonstration – that there will be enough time available for what needs to be done, and that they will be given that time. That the default Urgency Mindset is now an Importance Mindset – and not every Urgency is Important. And not every Important thing is Urgent, either. You. Have. Time.

The responsibility of the front line will then be on executing good time management practice, and on helping their managers by telling them what they are doing, how they will do it, and what they need in order to do it. Mistakes will start to dissipate.

This has been argued for twenty years and still awaits implementation.

How about it, Boss?