Police or (Wo)Men at work?

I used the Summer to look over some old projects to pull out some broader learnings. One was on the future of a police force a few years back and was glad to see that most of the recommendations have stood the test of time.

Back then, the client group we were working with were extremely focused on emerging technological threats. These were many and significant. But they were only one dimension and were already well covered by the client team. Hence, for this group, the “surprise” was just how much the changing nature of society (loss of trust in institutions/growing individualism, ageing populations, evolving values and perceptions of younger generations/increasingly multi-cultural populations etc.) could have an impact on their engagement with the community and also on the recruitment, motivation and leadership of the police force itself. They realised that a “business as usual” approach would increasingly lead to an alienation of the population from the police force and risked attracting an ever narrower segment of the population to work in the force itself.

Hence the “hi-tech” wish list that they brought to the table to start with turned out to be only a small part of the solution set.  A much greater focus was on how to reform the internal structures, and especially hierarchical structure, both to be able to engage with the public differently (the idea being, the police should be seen as an emanation of the community, rather than an imposition from outside) and retain personnel, especially women. (A small digression: when we discussed current solutions in the light of future challenges a big issue turned out to be the uniform for women, especially the way in which much equipment was worn on the belt!)

If I were to redo the project today, my only extra wish would be to accompany the implementation and change management processes, something we are now equipped to do today but were not at that time.