Policy is a police executive’s primary responsibility. You make it. You test it. You put it in place. You measure its value. You change it. You establish the rationale for it and work to shape the culture of the organization through it. It is the skeleton around which the muscles of the department move. It satisfies the law by providing ethical guidelines for the essential services that the public demands.
Your procedure manual is the who, what, where, and how. Policy is the why.
Constructing policy is serious business. Why do some leaders play games with it? Here are some games that might be fun around the kitchen table, but disastrous in the squad room.
1. Jenga: This policy making style makes and changes policies on the fly, with only the most obvious pitfalls considered. Decisions are made unilaterally and outside of a master plan that would insure integrity so that no policy contradicts another in practice or spirit. This style eventually collapses under its own weight.
2. Clue: Players take turns guessing what the purposes of policies are, who in the world made them, and what they hoped would happen. Line officers get random clues and do their best to guess, but often get distracted by confusing information. The only thing anyone is sure of is that somebody is going to get hurt.
3. Monopoly: Policies become a market place in which some actors are destined to gain power over others. The players all suspect that the cards were stacked in favor of a few and as the game plays out their suspicions are confirmed. This policy making style creates winners and losers, not teams.
4. Candy Land: These policies seem to have no real purpose other than to kill time and keep the players busy.
5. Scrabble: The goal here seems to be making the longest words with the most letters. Obscure words score extra points. In policy scrabble, acronyms are accepted and encouraged, as are trite phrases borrowed from business or the military.
6. Trivial Pursuit: Minutia is the key here. Details of things that matter very little consume this kind of policy writer.
7. Battleship: A problem child in an organization that should be dealt with directly can be attacked one blow at a time. Got a problem officer? Keep firing policies that zero in where he likes to float. You’ll eventually score enough hits to sink him.
8. Pictionary: The policy maker knows what they want, but the articulation is sketchy. Players have to make their best guess at what the administrator really wants them to see. Frustration levels can get high all around the table.
9. Risk. Perhaps the best and most realistic game metaphor is Risk. Know your enemy, chart out your objective, use strategy to achieve goals, and minimize failure. What kind of policy player are you?
