I will straight out admit to you that every year it becomes more complex as chief of police. Not forgetting our sheriffs, command staff or any executive officer in public arenas, it is just plain tougher than ever. Budgets get smaller, demands increase, and public scrutiny increases along with that technology that reboots itself constantly. I should not repeat the overused maxim of ‘do more with less’, we all have heard this one far too many times. We are improving with the stewardship of our budgets, the taxpayers expect more and deserve more. Gone are the days of spend it or lose it. Overspending today can be career ending. However, there is more to this than budgeting reviews. Today’s leaders need to add strategic planning (and thinking) as a major tool for preserving their departments’ sustainability.
Strategic planning is the planning of all the activities of a business to ensure competitive advantage and profitability. We in criminal justice never envisioned the idea of competitive advantage; after all, we are (were) the only act in town. There are several areas of the country that are reviewing new methodologies of law enforcement delivery with mergers, regional and privatization schemes. Taxpayers and governmental bodies are no longer accepting the way it used to be, the spreadsheet’s bottom line is what counts. Lessened customer service equates to no tax increases. We now have to become guardians of our current culture or we will be absorbed or abolished. So how can we accomplish this – strategic planning and thinking.
For years law enforcement management schools have offered topics such as the ‘gap analysis’, ‘SWOT analysis’, and other forms of tactical planning. Each is slightly different and only you can select the one that is the right for your department or needs. Often times how we got here was with the advent of emerging technology. The life expectancy of a device and the licensing of it lead us into budget planning. The latest widget has a three-year life expectancy and yearly updates/maintenance. This was automatically penciled into the upcoming year’s budgets. Fact of the matter was, in years past when the workstations and computerization of records management system were introduced, many departments failed big in this category. They did not write in life expectancy, new systems, updates, and user licensing fees. Some learned the hard way and others adapted. Our budget was the norm for years. Your budget drove the department and was often the final evaluation of success by its political base and fiduciary.
Now, I believe you must routinely perform a strategic overview of the department. Traditionally these occurred when retirements or unforeseen vacancies appeared. Why did not we positon ourselves better for this situation was asked. Do not wait, start transitional planning now. Reminder is to have exit interviews with retiring staff. When they walk out with untapped institutional knowledge, it is lost. What is your department and staff doing great? However, where are your weak spots and faults? What does our customer base think? How can we sustain our needs? These and many similar questions require truthful, often tough answers. Do not become shocked if some traditional police services may no longer be required, eliminated, or outsourced.
Your departments output (productivity) should be measured. Your department outcomes are more than tickets and arrests. Clearance rates, citizen satisfaction and officer production are classic measures. Try to avoid tracking useless data. I recall one old lieutenant would tell me how many cups of coffee he drank and how many cigarettes he smoked on a case. Do not become over burdened with meaningless data. On the human resources side, have you reviewed your loss column recently? What are the liability exposures you can address – too many vehicle accidents, injuries on duty, loss of work hours and lawsuits. These have a devastating effect on your budget. How much of your budget is consumed by HR before you get to it? Could some safety investments pay off for you in the future?
I do not care what tools and methodologies that you decide to implement. The planning must start before you start your budget. Long-term needs may need to transition into long-term commitments and they could develop into capital projects. Larger projects may require multiple year funding cycles to complete. Intermediate projects and immediate need projects are both different animals all together. Their shorter time lines and lesser budget effects, does not diminish their importance. All projects, regardless of scope have an importance in the grand scheme of things.
The general recommendations are to have your strategic planning completed before the budget process. Some feel that can be concurrent but there are some obstacles to this. Often waiting to launch on a project may be dependent on external funding (grants) and those dreaded governmental purchasing cycles.
What I do see as a bonus is to create strategic thinking in your command staff, this should be a mindset, not be an annual project. To me a project has a start date and an end date; again this should be management level thinking. In closing, perform a critical review of your internal strategic planning process and how you can refine it. All too often, many avoid planning and budgeting sessions like the plague. Let the specialists handle it and we will do anything but that! The problem is you do not have collective thinking. After a project is open, they did not have the input; therefore they will not buy-in as a stakeholder. Strategic thinking and planning are not that difficult and not to be shunned but rather embraced. This is a time to improve the department for tomorrow.
