Thursday; March 3

For the last several years I have been doing some volunteer work for the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office. There are a lot neat things about the agency, but one of the coolest is that it is one of the oldest sheriff’s offices in America. Its roots can be traced back to 1637, which if my math is correct that’s about 385 years of service.
The reason I bring this up is a comment that was made at a recent retirement ceremony where one of the Captain’s lauded the retiree’s spirit of innovation – which is not always viewed in positive light in policing. He noted, “When we say we have done something a certain way from the beginning, being one of the oldest sheriff’s offices in America, we are telling the truth!”. While this comment got quite a chuckle, there is a sense of truth in what he said. The older we get, the more we like the way things have “always” been done. In fact, we make it very difficult for people to change things – and equally as difficult on people who do attempt to change things!
While I would like to say that tradition is merely a problem in public service, it is a challenge for a lot of us. Quite simply, we like to do things the way we like to do them. Yes, this is comfortable, but it isn’t always better. How would things change if we did things the “best” way rather than the “old” way. No, not everything needs to be updated (and some things shouldn’t be changed), but there are a lot of things that could be better if we allowed them to be.
What can be changed to make them better? What’s stopping us?

Think About It!

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