The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | March 2017
Executive Professional Development: A True Best Practice The Best Public & Private Executives Invest in Themselves and Their Teams – And You Should, Too
By Mitchell C. Sklar Part 4: Learning From Experience– The NJSACOP Staff Rides for Law Enforcement Leaders
There are two truisms that cannot be disputed, nor can they be avoided: life is short, and the best learning is by experience. The combination of these two truisms leads to one conclusion – to maximize your potential you must study the experiences of others. Of course, direct personal experience is the best guide, but knowledge is usually limited in scope and is often in short supply.
Theory is one substitute for experience but alone is far from
satisfactory. Not nearly so neat and clear-cut as theory, but far more illustrative of the complexity of human factors, is history, which is nothing more than the experience of others. Changes in technology render some lessons obsolete, but lessons drawn from history and biography are timeless because they spring either from universal principles or from universal human characteristics.
It is with this in mind that the NJSACOP has expanded our highly regarded portfolio of high quality, innovative leadership development experiences. All the way back in 2004 the NJSACOP inaugurated our NJSACOP Staff Rides for Law Enforcement Leaders, adapting the military staff ride concept for the needs of police professionals. Based upon feedback from our attendees and input from our members, we added our one-day, locally and regionally based Staff Rides.
The Staff Ride has a long, distinguished history as an important component in well-rounded continuing professional leadership development programs. Originally developed by the Army for commissioned officers, the staff ride concept has been adopted by both the private and public sector – particularly in occupations where employees confront dynamic and unpredictable situations at work that may result in serious injury or death.
In-depth study of leadership lessons from history – in the authentic landscape and context - provides a dynamic platform from which to explore, discuss and highlight contemporary leadership topics and issues. We follow the well -established pedagogic principle that effectively learning for the future is best accomplished via important case studies focused on real people and events which have left a lasting imprint in a shared cultural memory which transcends time and national identity or origin.
The Staff Ride model has been used for over a century by, among others, the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Army War College, the Marine Corps University, and the U.S. Naval War College. A staff ride is a case study, typically of a military battle or campaign, conducted on the ground where the event happened. It is considered an essential instructional technique in advanced military schools and in field units. Experiential learning is not new, and in fact it has been enthusiastically accepted and adopted by the private sector. The NJSACOP has pioneered the adoption of this concept for contemporary law enforcement management and leadership development programs. Police Executives who participate in Law Enforcement Staff Rides visit and study a select battlefield for the purpose of drawing parallels between that military campaign and their own issues/challenges, including leader training, supply chain management, timely decision-making, effective communications, and resource deployment.
Premier academic institutions have also taken note of the utility of the staff ride in other contexts as well. “The staff ride is no longer for military personnel alone. Over the past decade, the Wharton School and a number of other universities and commercial organizations have adapted the practice for executive management and leadership development training. Aimed primarily at business students and other professionals, the corporate staff ride draws on the popularity of experiential
learning while exploiting the intensity of combat to dramatize decision-making
under the most extreme circumstances…. Studying the life and death decisions of military leaders on the very ground where the consequences of those decisions played out is a powerful experience. When it comes to executive training, corporate staff rides offer an unforgettable set of lessons.”
Still, the question remains: why study the lives and careers of great leaders of the past? For the answer, we need look no further than to, well, one of the great leaders of the past. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked his opinion as to the essence of leadership.
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His response: “Making decisions.” When asked how one develops as a decision Continued on next page
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