Artios Leadership

  Many police agencies are on social media -- but are they being utilized effectively as a strategic communications platform? And are agency leaders aware of how important they are, and what opportunities (and risks) they present? An astounding number of people are now on social media platforms; the We Are Social 2022 report for the United States indicates that users on average spend just over seven hours a day on the internet or social media. It may sound like a lot, but compared to some other countries (South Africa clocks in at 10 hours, 46 minutes and Mexico at eight hours, 55 minutes), apparently we do other stuff. Leaders can use these statistics to help understand the social media environment and how they can chart a social media strategy for their agency. Law enforcement can use social media to support many of their activities and operations. Not fully understanding social media, the platforms, and expectations of the public can pose risks to law enforcement agencies a...

  It’s #redflag Friday. Each Friday, I will share a specific indicator to be on the lookout for fraud, waste, corruption, or other misconduct.   🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 Purchase cards are helpful to expedite and obtain needed supplies, repair services, and smaller items that may not need to go through a longer, formal procurement process. But they can be misused just as any credit or debit card. One recent case involved a Director of Maintenance who approached vendors to provide him with regular cash payments of approximately $1,000 to $2,000 per month; in exchange for those payments, the vendors falsely billed his employer using their purchase card system for items that the vendor sold but ultimately never provided (or never intended to provide). Because the false purchase charges covered the cash payments, they also provided a substantial amount of fraudulent income to the vendor. What purchase card controls are in place? Who actually has them (and do they REALLY need them)...

Back in 2021,  I took a graduate course on communication and relationship building as part of my graduate certificate in leadership at the University of Southern Maine . As I began the class, I believed I had a good handle on communication. In college, I worked with multiple national media outlets and reporters who covered our NCAA sports teams . In my professional career, volunteer service, and speaking and writing, I try to think a lot about how to best get my point across. But I was wrong . In reality, I had barely scratched the surface. The communication course crystalized some major concepts that I thought I knew well and enabled me to take things to an entirely new level. Three major “take-aways” for me from that course were: 1) the importance of being strategic in all our communications; 2) the tools and techniques leaders use to effectively communicate the destination; and 3) the imperative of brevity in our world of endless scrolling and distractions. Thinking Big Picture ...

It’s #redflag Friday. Each Friday, I will share a specific indicator to be on the lookout for fraud, waste, corruption, or other misconduct.   🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 Part three of information technology and #fraud.  IT professionals have unprecedented access to information, which they can misuse. For a two year period, one IT manager used his position and access to obtain confidential information and exploited market-moving stock recommendations prior to their release to paying subscribers.  The IT manager then traded on them before they became public and was able to obtain significant profits unavailable to other market participants.  These total gains included at least $3.5 million. What information is so sensitive that its access should be tracked and logged? Have you audited your system logs lately? What unusual or odd patterns can emerge? And who is the independent party who can help determine if there is (or could be) a problem? #compliance    ...

Is your agency conducting After-Action Reviews (AARs) on a routine basis? Are you collecting the best practices, lessons learned, and retaining and sharing them for others?  If not, your agency may be missing a huge opportunity in knowledge collection and retention. AARs can also be an important part of your leadership, including command staff doing it together.  AARs, based on the military's post-battle or training group debriefs , are structured post-event critiques or reflections that enable participants to debrief on what occurred and what went well—and what did not go well. These are non-judgmental, but rather are fact-based observations to better enable and execute future operations.  The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has published a two-page AAR guide that is used to train and debrief fire crews. The resource has three primary elements: (1) AAR purpose; (2) process overview; and (3) facilitator considerations. The guide defines AAR as a post-event process to identify...

 This blog is all about the study and practice of leadership, particularly as it relates to the practical and experiential aspects. Fundamentally, we study this subject not for the knowledge in and of itself, but rather to gain the skills, resources, and tools needed for the application in the real world. Having data-driven, research-based knowledge is very helpful since it makes our understanding of the subject a little less daunting—we can rely on the proven aspects of leadership and utilize those as we move forward. The research isn’t perfect, and it may not fit the actual situation or the people we are dealing with, but at least we have a “fighting chance” to get it right.   Leading is all about practice—in our daily lives, our personal and family relationships, our work, the community, and even volunteer experiences. We must constantly be like musicians, athletes, and others who practice their craft each and every day to get better. We must also reflect and consider HOW...

  When endeavoring to understand a new topic, like strategic communication, I do believe it is best to start with defining the terms. This helps everyone get on the same page (literally and figuratively), but also avoids potential confusion down the road. With many of these concepts, especially as they relate to leadership and organizational development, people have unique perspectives and different paradigms or concepts of terms. Failing to adequately describe terms and concepts in the first instance will generally cause confusion or problems as time goes on. The definition of strategic communication that I find especially helpful is from Professor Hallahan and his colleagues (2007), since it combines aspects of both theoretical communication and practical ones as well. They define it as: “Strategic communication is about informational, persuasive, discursive, as well as relational communication when used in a context of the achievement of an organization’s mission” (p. 17). ...