At the very beginning of 2020, I got a special treat to see one of my favorite authors speak before everything fell apart a few weeks later. Simon Sinek came to LA for a talk where he went in-depth about his new book, The Infinite Game.
I highly recommend it. It might be the most important book for any police officer to read considering what has happened in policing since then.
Why?
Because the game changed in 2020. It’s just a fact.
The new rules of the game are unfair. I know you feel it and you see it daily. But here’s the deal. We’re playing the wrong game. Not just you or me, the whole profession is. In policing, we’re using the same old metrics we’ve always used to judge our success.
– Crime rates
– Arrest stats
– Response times
– How fast we pick up a 911 call.
That’s about it.
But tracking those things – evaluating those percentages like they’re the batting average of an All-Star – it doesn’t do anything. You can’t “win” crime by reducing the crime rate. There will never be a day where it’s at 0%.
You can’t “win” arrests by making the most in your department. And consider misdemeanor versus felony arrests. Should a felony arrest be the equivalent of a 3-pointer?
It was well-established in the 90’s that response time had zero relationship to solving crime.
So why do we still pour over the data, push our men and women to get there faster or answer the call faster? Why do we measure crime rates by week, month, year, year-to-year, etc.?
Why do we measure these things when they don’t matter?
Because they’re easy to measure. And what gets measured gets managed.
We get to point to our percentages and pat each other on the back for knocking .05 off that response time. We get to look like we’re doing something!
But we don’t get to reduce crime rates for a month and then run out the clock. We don’t get to establish rules that the other team (the crooks) will abide by. There’s no impartial referee to call a timeout to review the footage before a penalty is called.
We’re playing the wrong game. We need to be playing an Infinite Game.
Guys who sulk around saying “the job is dead” are used to the wrong game. They want to see the highlight reel. Watching COPS is like watching ESPN Classics.
That game doesn’t exist anymore.
We need to find the metrics that matter. We need to understand that the rules are not set. That they’re fluid and will change in the middle of the game. We need to expect that the other team won’t play fair. We need to know that there is no shot clock, no bottom of the 9th, no 4th and goal. In fact, there’s no timer and no one can agree on how to score the game!
We need to know that our efforts are to be measured in generations, not months. That our wins won’t always look like an arrest, and more often than not probably look like compassion and service. We need to know that good cops are still out doing good work regardless of the political theater because that’s what they’re meant to do.
When we know all of that, then we’re playing the right game.