If a solid hiring process is the foundation of your department's workforce, a fair and honest promotional process is the foundation of your department's future. Sadly, many agencies invest a great deal in their hiring process, recruiting and selecting for top-quality candidates, further investing far more in training those candidates to proficiency -- only to later destroy the hearts and souls of those good people when they are eligible for promotion. Unfair, unreliable, biased promotional processes do far more than damage the morale and motivation of good employees, though: they undermine the agency's integrity, professionalism and human resources. Let's look at the subject in candid detail.
So, Chief. Let's assume you do it right when it comes to recruiting and hiring. When you join your fellow executives at academy graduations, you're proud to say you can quickly pick your recruits out from the rest of the pack: they're fitter, more professional, and they're already showing the leadership traits you actively select for in oral boards and backgrounds. You enjoy patting them on the back as you shake their hands and hand them their badges, telling them, "You're going to go far here, officer." You raise these baby cops up to be the best, most capable and competent officers in the region. If they don't cut it -- suppose they lie about something, or they fail to meet the necessary level of impartiality in enforcement -- you cut them loose. You terminate them. You carefully provide the early care and feeding necessary to raise a workforce any sheriff or chief can be proud to have.
Implicit in your relationship with them is that their good efforts, character and competence will open up great opportunities in the future. Perhaps they'll be detectives or motor officers or K9 handlers. Perhaps they'll handle a variety of special assignments in their career lives. The best and brightest, though, often eventually want to promote. They've been spoken to about "leadership" since they were in civilian clothes at the academy. It isn't just a bold blue word in capital letters painted on your headquarters wall: it's a carrot held out in front of their shiny noses. Work hard, keep your nose clean, learn everything you can, and continually challenge yourself to grow: you, too, can be a leader of leaders. You can be a sergeant, a lieutenant, and more. Hell, someday you might even be chief somewhere.
Any contemporary officer can describe the importance of "career development." It's a path, not a destination. It means learning new skills, polishing old skills to their shiniest patina, taking classes, attending meetings, trying new things, and becoming a well-rounded officer. It means continually growing, not stagnating. It often means taking college courses or completing a master's degree, all while working obscene hours and going to court and attending every mandatory training class. It's often seen as the path to stripes, bars and maybe stars. It's important to the citizens on the street who deserve (or demand) the best-trained, most professional police department. It's important to the dialed-in chief who knows that progress doesn't originate in a vacuum. It's important to officers wishing to become that chief someday themselves.
Preparing for promotion is an enormous commitment and requires a great deal of sacrifice to most officers. It means stepping up boldly in front of one's peers and saying, "I want to lead you one day." It means studying, doing role play scenarios, taking tests and completing interviews. It may mean reorganizing one's life by changing custody agreements, sacrificing personal time and goals, and even damaging or destroying certain relationships. Arguably, most newly-promoted sergeants and lieutenants will be returning to the dreaded midnight shift after promotion (and after years of getting comfortable and building their personal life around their current shift).
Preparing for promotion is a weird combination of ego, influence, and upheaval. It's big stuff. Officers put lives on hold -- not just their own, but their toddler's, their multiple ex-wives, their loyal dogs -- to get ready for the process. They may take classes, work on weaknesses, develop new strengths. They put in effort. They polish their shoes and their badge and they look bright and shiny coming in for their interviews or assessment centers or five minutes with the big guy.
Then it happens: the chief rolls his eyes at them, furrows his brow and tells them, "You did great on the test. You aced the assessment center. Your peers gave you good reviews. The citizen advisor on the board thinks you're Superman. But you know, what it all comes down to is a matter of 'fit.' And you know, I just don't think you're a good 'fit' for management." Maybe the excuse isn't "fit;" maybe it's "not ready yet," or maybe it's another vague, indefinable way of saying, "I have someone else I like, even if they didn't do as well as you did in the process."
That whooshing sound you just heard was the heart and motivation of one more hard-working employee going out the door and into the microcosm, never to be found again. That employee operated in good faith. She did everything she was told to do to prepare herself for the job. He paid close attention every time the chief gave motivational briefing-room speeches. They upheld their part of the bargain. The promotional process let them down.
The fact is, they're perfectly competent and capable officers -- but they don't fit. No one put "fit" into the promotional requirements memoranda. No one described it in the official job description issued by Human Resources. Everyone knows what it is, though: it's the look. It's being part of the group. It's the guy who bought a bicycle so he could bike the greenbelt with the chief every day. It's the guy who served in a special assignment with the deputy chief for six years. It's the guy who looks exactly like the last four guys who got promoted. It's the guy who eats lunch with the commander every day and pimps off his co-workers to get brownie points. It's one of the six guys who've been groomed every day for a couple of years by chiefs who know that they're building influence by giving out their one-on-one time sparingly to select individuals.
In such agencies, the higher on the food chain an officer is, the more fit comes into the equation. Lower on the pyramid, competence matters: it matters when becoming an officer, it matters when becoming a sergeant. Above that, it becomes more of a unicorn -- a fantasy animal. The less oxygen available at any given level, the more fit matters. Best of all, that "fit" isn't on paper anywhere. It can be used to exclude women, a minority group, the candidate who continually questions unethical acts, the person who didn't up-suck enough.
Chief, it isn't just those people behind the shiniest stars that are impacted by the partiality in bestowing bars on new staffers. It's the people around them. It's everyone in an organization who has had the dream of working hard and rising to new heights. It's co-workers and colleagues and yes, it's even officers at nearby agencies. It's citizens who bear the burden of embittered officers and its family members who watch their committed, dedicated wife or husband eat, breathe and sleep law enforcement only to be told, "You know, it's really a matter of 'fit.'"
Worse than that, perhaps, is the damage done to that organizational intangible called "integrity" and its handmaiden, "credibility." Many chiefs would promptly point to integrity as one of the important principles of law enforcement; many would count organizational credibility as an asset as valuable as all the line items on the budget spreadsheet. Damage integrity in the ranks, and you've got morale issues, lack of motivation, and a workforce that follows the same example of wiggly adherence to the truth. Damage your top-level credibility and you've got officers who fail to take anything you say seriously -- not just about promotional opportunities, but about everything else. Just try and restore trust. Perhaps, though, trust just doesn't matter after all. Perhaps it's just a tired, obsolete value unworthy of the effort. After all, what will it do for you politically?
Now, let's get back to the future -- the future of your agency. If you've undermined your workforce by offering unfair promotional processes -- where the truly competent people aren't assured of a fair chance for key positions -- what does the future hold? Are the less-competent people who are a good "fit" going to fit the future? Are they going to fit the ever-changing demands and rigors of law enforcement leadership? Are they going to suddenly, spontaneously fit the need to restore trust, integrity, and credibility? Despite their lack of seniority, preparation and excellence in diverse past assignments, are they going to be able to suddenly manage and lead a workforce that is turning against them when the troops rebel against the status quo? Will they effectively lead the new, inexperienced, rookie workforce that comes in to replace the veteran members who leave for those adjacent agencies that offer more fairness and credibility?
Cherish thy promotional process, chiefs. They are the underpinning of your agency's leadership for now and the future. Undermine the perception of fairness in those processes and you undermine your agency. Ask yourself: "If I took personality out of the equation, would I still be promoting the individual? Or am I doing it because they are just like me? Is it a matter of fit or is it a matter of competence and ability?"
Finally, if you do already know who you're going to promote, skip the process. Most people can handle having to eat a turd sandwich every now and then. Don't call it a filet mignon. Just tell them you're skipping the process because you've chosen someone without it. Years ago a chief and I had a debate over the topic. Once again, he'd involved several hopeful candidates in a very elaborate process only to choose the person everyone knew would get the job anyway. His point was, "Well, isn't it nicer to give people a chance?" My contention was that they weren't getting a chance at all; they were getting the illusion of a chance, and it isn't nice at all. They jump through hoops for nothing. They don't show themselves to their best advantage because they have no faith in being fairly assessed -- further eliminating their "chance" as well as damaging their own future reputation. They are misled, because a promotional process implies objectivity. Just tell them up front there will be no process; a selection has been made. At least they aren't being lied to. The example you set for them as an administrator and leader is the example they'll follow in their own actions. Are you setting the best example of integrity and honor that you can set?
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