Police Reform: A Case Study in Leading Change
Leaders need simple, proven and powerful models for organizing their actions on the biggest challenges they face. The current debate on police reform offers a great case study on alternative approaches to achieving deep and fundamental organizational change.
First, let’s define the objective of the police reforms or the “change agenda.” Simply put, leaders want to increase public safety while reducing violence and other inappropriate police interactions with the public. A classic “right results, right way” objective statement.
At the highest level, leaders have two alternative approaches to achieving this objective – that clearly illustrate the “decision-driven” vs. “behavior-dependent change strategies. (See my article “What mistake has created more Ex-CEO’s” for a fuller explanation of these two approaches.)
1. “Defund the Police.” This is a recent rallying cry and a quintessential top-down, “decision-driven” approach. Tired and frustrated with all the time and messiness of training, systems, policy changes, communications? Then just fire or reduce staffing, and start fresh! The key (and underplayed!) assumption is that the 90% of the heavy lifting is just making the decision; the rest is simply “execution….”
2. “Community Policing.” This philosophy gained prominence in 1980’s. It calls for creating a more pro-active and problem-solving culture – where front-line officers are engaged with their communities to identify root causes of crime and lay the ground work to minimize criminal behavior. In business terms, the change objective is “behavior-dependent” and very analogous to a “quality management” approach. This type of change does not happen overnight and requires a multi-year, systematic approach to engaging and redesigning the organization at all levels.
It’s easy to see the superficial appeal of the “Defund” movement – quick, decisive, move on. But the reality is effective and sustained change overwhelmingly requires a blend of both approaches.
The New York City Police Department is a great example. (I had a small role as a consultant to two police commissioners, and draw on that experience for this summary.)
With crime rates rising in the 1980’s, “Safe City, Safe Streets” legislation was passed in 1991 which increased taxes to fund an additional 5,000 police officers. A classic decision-driven change action.
However, adding resources alone doesn’t guarantee a decrease in crime. Recognizing this, Commissioner Lee Brown set out to implement the behavior-dependent “community policing” approach. (See “Crime and Management: An Interview with New York City Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown”, HBR May-June 1991.)
As the program evolved over the next 5+ years, and under the leadership of 3 commissioners (Brown, Ray Kelly and William Bratton) the efforts evolved into a comprehensive integrated approach.
· Top-down direction-setting. As is typical, the efforts started with a lot of top-down actions – setting out the vision and goals, lots of communications, launching multiple task forces aimed at further defining the changes to achieve the vision.
· Bottom-up problem-solving. Over time, leadership recognized that top-down efforts were necessary but not sufficient. And worked to put in place processes that facilitated precincts and other front-line teams in making community-policing a reality. A well-publicized example of this was a precinct team looking to reduce drug-dealing in a neighborhood. After working with community leaders they identified root causes (shot out street lights, traffic patterns allowing quick on/off to George Washington Bridge) and took actions to eliminate these problems. Multiply this example hundreds of times and you get the power of adding the bottom-up dimension to change.
· Cross-functional processes. Commissioner Bratton super-charged the efforts when he took charge in 1993 and introduced the “Comstat” process. This program set out quantitative goals for all precincts and provided detailed and consistent reporting on progress. Importantly, Bratton brought together peer groups of precinct commanders to publicly review their progress. The cross-functional nature of these meetings was provided motivation via peer pressure and promoted learning through exchanging of best practices.
The beauty of the NYPD case study is the integration of the decision and behavior-based approaches. Fundamental sustained change generally requires a mix of both. And is rarely linear, without dead-ends and redirection. And, most importantly, the journey is rarely fully achieved. There is always lessons to be learned, and more to be done!