The Illinois Model

I just returned from a multi-day canoe trip. The kind where you pack your stuff into dry sacks, camp each night along the river banks, and have to dig holes in which to poop.  It's a yearly adventure for us old friends to bring our sons into the wilderness -- without microwave ovens, cell service, sports schedules, or iPads.  An aspect that continues to interest me...after years of hiking, camping, boating with them (and various other groups)...is how much variety there is in packing between us.   Personally, I subscribe to a minimalist approach. Let me explain the mindset, given the inevitable tradeoffs, risks, and compromises that go along with this practice. Here are some thoughts that went into my decisions on what to include in our boat:  VOLUME & WEIGHT OF LOAD. First off, the sheer size and mass of the cargo impacts mobility, effort, and workload. Heavy packers have to carry more stuff. Stuff takes up room in your backpack...or in this case...canoe. When s...

I'm not one (1) to shy away from discussions about generalism vs specialism in policing. Heck, I start many of them!  So when Liam Mahon posed this question, I knew I'd need more space than tweets:  Here’s one to consider: Is policing too generalised at Management level and too specialised at the delivery level? — Mahoo (@SystemsNinja) March 10, 2019 My thoughts: Supervisory (management) levels should be more generalized than those below. Operational (delivery) levels should be more specialized than those above. Generalists are those who make connections and jump specialties. They are the bull sharks who can swim in fresh and salt waters. They coordinate the complex work of multiple, diverse specialists by seeing relationships and forecasting implications that a narrow-minded specialist cannot. Specialists have deep expertise in a narrow context or set of circumstances. They understand the complicatedness of the situation...as long as they have edu...

Specialists excel in special problems and opportunities. When you can predict the future, then you are best served by preparing and assigning a person who specializes in that environment and function.  Pretend you manage a hospital emergency department. In your crystal ball, you see the next patient to be rolled into the unit experiencing a massive heart attack. You'd be smart to request a cardiac physician to the floor to await the patient's arrival. And if next Tuesday at noon, you knew a woman having a stroke would come in, be sure a neurologist is staffed.   But that's not how emergency room staffing works. Patients come in with complex mixes of injuries, illnesses, and predispositions. As such, emergency physicians with broad, inclusive backgrounds hold mindsets of   stabilization  and  generalism  during these crises. It's not only a smart financial model for the hospitals; it's the best way to medically care for the patients! There a...

At the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association’s ( ILEETA ) annual conference this past week in Chicago, I started a conversation about the mental and emotional burden of having too many “tools” to do our jobs as police officers. The same theory applies to any industry, field, or business. How can you streamline your organization’s toolbox of processes, strategies, or systems?  There is a popular saying in police training circles (and I suppose in your industry too) that a new technique or procedure or trick is “ just another tool for the toolbox. ” Here’s the problem: Our toolboxes are full. Our brains don’t have the bandwidth to accept any more tools. We need  less  tools…but still need to reach an ever- increasing  level of output. The answer lays in finding those select tools with broad applicability and high adjustability. I have long advocated for  generalism  in life. ...

Most of my seminars revolve around a central theme of  adaptability . It doesn’t take long for the question to arise:  How do we get there? Adaptability, whether organizational or individual, is the ability to respond to change – change that comes in the form of problems and opportunities. Developing adaptive traits in your people (or yourself) is not a step-by-step checklist. Nor is it an elusive organic metamorphosis. Organizations committed to learning surely have a head start. Here are some of the waypoints I’ve plotted on my map: VALUES.  People in your team who share a common set of values will rely upon those principles when all else fails. The philosophic or abstract theories that bind your organization cannot be overlooked. GUIDELINES.  Strict rules are for kindergartners, not problem-solvers. Adaptive thinkers need flexible guidelines, built upon a solid set of concepts. Few issues in your industry fit nicely into pigeon-holed respo...

This is the lesson of a trauma/emergency room physician and his two weeks in police SWAT training. His performance in school caused me to re-examine the training and education I had been giving to police officers...and how culture might be more important than everything else. My friend is a full-time emergency room doctor in a well-respected trauma center.  He was entering into two weeks of police training, more specifically Basic Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) School . The doctor decided to pursue a volunteer position on a local SWAT team's Tactical Emergency Medical Support (TEMS) unit. But this was not an abbreviated familiarization course tailored for doctors, nurses, or paramedics to become "tactical medics." This two-week school was to prepare veteran police officers for an assignment as full-blown SWAT team officers. This course is no joke. Given that he had NO prior law enforcement experience, that his only firearms training was of the self-taught variety,...

What is a universal policing system ? Well, nothing really exists of that nature outside our imagination. We have a vision of a Law Enforcement Operations System (shortened to LEOpSys , lee-OP-sis).  It takes into account the Before, During, and After aspects of any police incident: BEFORE: Policy, Training, Case Law. DURING: Intent, Decisions, Actions. AFTER: Reporting, Testimony, Evaluation. But there are several more aspects to this consistency of policing operations. This model must have wide application, scalability for size and scope, and fluidly adaptable.

There exists a conspiracy against the Generalist. Today's culture rewards those who Specialize: doctors, athletes, teachers, cops. Being labeled a Generalist comes with ridicule of being luke-warm, a moderate, uncommitted, or without passion. Those images are false. They are hallucinations. Time and time again, life penalizes the Specialist. We never learn from our mistakes. Striking a balance between being a Generalist or a Specialist hinges on one factor: one's confidence in the future . The equation is quite simple -- the greater the predictability of approaching problems, the more one should become the Specialist; the less foresight one has, the more benefit in being the Generalist. This axiom holds for any aspect of life: financial investment, medicine, emergency preparedness, physical fitness, backcountry camping, education, gambling, and of course....law enforcement operations. As with most of our theories, this is a spectrum bookended by two extremes. With a ...