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Showing posts from July, 2014

Risk Management: Urgency vs Importance vs Frequency

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Students of Stephen Covey or Gordon Graham understand the concepts and relationship between urgency , importance , and frequency .  Whether one's duty is managing a project or minimizing risk, the same three issues are constant factors for effectiveness, efficiency, and ultimately...success. Police officers are risk managers. They mitigate threats to protect property and human life. They write incident reports to defend against claims of injustice. They explain and justify their actions to prevent embarrassment or misunderstanding from the community. They develop policies and procedures to reduce civil liabilities and financial exposure. They train to safely perform dangerous tasks and acts. Police officers recognize risks, and then, they make decisions and take actions to manage those risks. It's a delicate balancing act for police officers to operate in this environment where risk is largely unavoidable and unpreventable. Risk is always present. There are ways to reduce

What it means to be Adaptive

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The term Adaptive is gaining popularity, and unfortunately so are the accompanying misuse and misunderstanding of the term. Adaptiveness is a concept that forms the cornerstone of our  The Illinois Model . We take it so seriously that we argue one must accept and understand it to appreciate the rest of our Model.   There is a certain connectivity between  Generalism  and  Adaptiveness . They are not equals. They are not interchangeable. But there is a relatedness. Generalist vs Specialist Generalism is the practice of maintaining a broad set of skills or knowledge. Generalists are decent at everything. They are jacks-of-all-trades. The risk of being a generalist is that one does not "specialize" in any one (or few) topics. Generalists have a pool of training and experience that is broad, but not deep. Conversely, specialists have a narrow skill set, but are expert in that one or few areas. Generalists have an advantage over Specialists in the unknown or unpredictabl