In his speech to the Critical HR conference, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (formerly the RUC) Sir Ronnie Flanagan OBE gave his thoughts on the future of policing in the province

More than 80% of the police budget goes on salary, a fact that confirms the truism that people are genuinely our most precious resource.

I listen to debates on leadership and management with great interest, and attend courses where people explore whether there is a difference between the two. Im taken by a definition offered in 1957 by Field Marshall Slim, who said, Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision, its practice is an art. Management is of the mind more of a matter of accurate calculation of methods, statistics and timetables. Its practice is a science.

I think the McKinsey 7-S model, based on the premise that an organisation has seven elements structure, strategy, systems, shared values, skills, staff and style can be useful when considering organisational change.

Its easy to sit down and redraw the diagram to look at the structures and systems, and to try to derive the strategy. But we are determined to concentrate on the soft triangle of staff, skills and style which is bearing fruit in the process of managing change.

As an organisation, we have had 302 officers murdered and between 7,000 and 8,000 officers very seriously injured. To glean some sense of the impact that has on a community, you have to realise that the population of Northern Ireland is one and a half million. In corresponding terms with the population of some 48 million in England, you would be talking in terms of 10,000 police officers having been murdered and a quarter of a million police officers having been very seriously injured.

We were therefore very disappointed that Chris Patten made no reference to that degree of sacrifice in the report, The Independent Commission for Policing for Northern Ireland, published in 1999. We were not seeking a pat on the back, but surely an organisation that had suffered that much and yet as far as its possible to do so carried on undaunted, was one with a very solid foundation upon which to build new arrangements.

We are seeking a bridge to a better, more prosperous and peaceful future for all the people of Northern Ireland thats exactly what were attempting to do as we approach change.

Patten came up with 175 major recommendations for change. They include a new badge, a new oath of allegiance, uniform and a positive recruitment policy aimed at increasing the number of Catholic officers in the force. And there were many other concurrent reports involving major change for the police service generally. In terms of managing projects for change, the 175 recommendations became something of the order of more than 1,100 specific recommendations.

Areas of work

We distilled the latter into several areas of work. These covered human rights; training, education and development of officers; recruitment. We particularly looked at how recruitment might be outsourced to an independent civilian organisation that would provide a pool of suitably-qualified candidates in order to increase the proportion of Catholic officers. Currently, membership is 92% Protestant.

Also, we focused on mechanisms for accountability, the creation of a new ombudsman office with independent investigative powers into complaints made against us and, of course, how we might be more efficiently restructured. Also some research had to be carried out with regard to tactics and equipment to be deployed when dealing with public disorder.

We appointed a chief officer, who might be a uniformed assistant chief constable, or a civilian equivalent, to take responsibility for each area. And we created a small change management team to draw together the various projects.

It used be the case, and I think I can say this of police services generally, that we had an ethos whereby we used to say, Were all the same. It does not matter whether youre a man, woman, Protestant, Catholic, black, white what your orientation is you are now a police officer, and we are all the same.

Only about seven or eight years ago, we realised were all very different, thank God we are what a dreadful world it would be if we were all the same. So, we asked, why not celebrate that difference, why not celebrate that diversity, why not celebrate that individual dignity?

We want to create an internal environment where women feel no need to submerge their femininity to feel comfortable or be successful in pursuit of a police career. And where young men and women of any religious belief or political persuasion dont feel a need to submerge those feelings to be comfortable in the organisation and pursue a police career.

Even more important, members of the public must see that the police, in their everyday interactions, behave impartially. I see every new member of our organisation and remind them of an old forensic science saying Every contact leaves a trace. A criminal cannot come into a room and leave it without depositing a fingerprint, footprint, palm print, shedding a hair, picking up a fibre from the carpet, leaving a fibre from their clothing on a chair, a minute particle of bodily fluid... And so I remind every member of my organisation that every contact they have with a member of the public leaves a trace, not only in terms of that impression of that person in relation to that individual colleague, but also the impression of the organisation as a whole.

But policing is a human endeavour and is subject to human frailty, and therefore we get things wrong, time and time again. I recently attended the funeral of a dear friend, a military colleague who served in special forces (such as the SAS) across the world, and had served many tours in Northern Ireland.

As I listened to the homily and distilled thoughts about this person who clearly exhibited qualities of leadership two things came to me very powerfully. One was that he cared passionately about those with whom he worked, and second, they knew that he cared.

In terms of trying to exhibit leadership in an organisation, both elements are absolutely indispensable. They are things you cannot fake you either genuinely care about people or you dont. If you pretend to, you will be seen through in an instant.

Taking risks

It is important that we encourage risk-taking and I remind all my officers and civilian colleagues that I will judge them on the basis of being tolerant of mistakes made in good faith. I will be ruthlessly intolerant of grossly negligent or wilful mistakes.

Thats the sort of judgment I ask the public to make and, I think, in our respective organisations, we have to encourage that degree of risk taking. Theres no point picking out people for responsibility unless we actually give them responsibility, unless we trust them to get on with what we need them to do.

There are many theories about leadership situational theories that we can all subscribe to but certainly in the police service, if we ignore the feelings of our own people, if we dont truly value them and they dont know that they are truly valued, we will never succeed.

And it is of crucial importance that officers who are leaving the police service feel that they are properly valued and are treated with dignity as well. This prompted us to create The Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust, an assessment centre set up so officers can come along and have their needs assessed.

Some need management of physical pain because of injuries they have sustained, and others need counselling for traumatic experiences theyve been through. In most cases, officers who are leaving require some form of retraining, to be bricklayers, pilots, computer programmers, or whatever.

If people are expected to give full commitment to an organisation during their working time there, they have to feel that the organisation values them at every stage. Policing is not actually a commodity that a provider gives to a consumer. It has to be about collaborative working partnerships between police and all communities served.

I say communities in the plural sense very deliberately because in Northern Ireland, we do not have one single coherent, cohesive community. There is the business community, and there are vulnerable communities of minority ethnic groups all of these communities will have differing demands, needs and expectations of their police service.

Listening

Just as your stakeholders will have differing demands, needs and expectations of your organisation, I think it behoves us, as public servants, to listen to those differing demands, to discern those differing needs and work in partnership to do our best to address those diverse expectations. Of course we get things wrong but whats important when we do is that we acknowledge this and, whats even more important, is that we learn from how we got things wrong, so we can be a better organisation as a result.

I recently attended some readings by the writer Seamus Heaney. In reading some of his own work and the work of others, he described the difference between hope and optimism. Optimism he described as more or less a matter of personality youre either optimistic or youre not. Hope he described as something quite different, something which is based on evidence that allows you to be either hopeful or otherwise.

As we stand in Northern Ireland, embracing the changes brought about for policing arrangements, I approach this new millennium optimistically, but also with great hope, because the overwhelming trend of movement is in a positive direction. Of course there are difficulties and we shouldnt ignore them. Of course there are ongoing instances of terrorism and serious public disorder, but life has been transformed in Northern Ireland.

And, historically, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning has recently confirmed that the IRA had honoured a commitment to put its weapons beyond use. Anyone who knows the history of violent Irish republicanism will realise how significant this decision was.

If the overwhelming trend is positive, I am convinced that working in partnerships, between police and communities, momentum can be increased and that positive movement can be accelerated.

If you meet people from Northern Ireland, they would say, Its the best wee place in the world, and it has the best people in the world. If we are going to make it truly the place we know in our hearts it can be, we need to move away from a blame culture where residents blame marchers and vice versa, where unionists blame nationalists and vice versa, where those who see themselves as Irish blame those who see themselves as British and vice versa.

The police service should be forgiven for sometimes thinking that everyone seeks to apportion blame in its direction. We are to blame for many things, but we must all move to a culture of accepting responsibility we are responsible for our future, just as you are responsible for the future of your organisations. If you truly value your people, and your people know you truly value them, I have no doubt that your organisations will flourish.

This is an edited version of a speech given at the Critical HR conference in October at The Dorchester Hotel, London. The conference was organised by Human Resources magazine in association with KPMG Consulting, the overall sponsors of the HR excellence awards. For information on entering the HR excellence awards in 2002, contact Samantha Graham on 020 8267 4145.

Further reading

• Defeat into Victory by Field Marshall Viscount William Joseph Slim, Pan, 1999 (7.99)

  
  

• Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney, Faber and Faber, 1998 (12.99)