I read an article several years ago that has really stuck with me regarding business philosophy. The article addressed several questions posed to ten different CEO’s about their individual business practices. The questions varied in nature, but one young CEO was asked about his training philosophy.
The interviewer asked, “I notice you spend a lot of money training your employees. What if you spend all that money on their training and they leave?”
His response was, “What if I don’t spend money on their training and they stay”?
I thought that was a great management philosophy! Anyone that has known me for any time at all knows I have spent the majority of my thirty-year police career working in some facet of training. I have been a believer that stress inoculation training is the best way to get prepared for the challenges of this job. When you put a gun on to go to work, it quickly becomes evident that this might be dangerous. Regardless of the reasons we enter this line of work, there is always a slight possibility we won’t make it home.
That should be motivation enough to focus some time on training and preparing. Security and law enforcement positions require basic and specific training to be able to function in a protective type environment. Most generally the type of training we are attracted to involves tactical skills training such as shooting, fighting and driving. Since those disciplines are generally important to our safe return home every day, we tend to gravitate toward focusing our training time on those specific traits. I am okay with that as long as our tactical training is realistic and dynamic.
In other words, if all we do is practice shooting holes in a static paper target, the benefit becomes greatly limited. While I agree that accuracy is important and necessary, I also believe we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t throw in movement, force-on-force, and mindset to augment accuracy. You get what you put in to it. Get out of the comfort zone when you train.
I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard or don’t know already. What I am saying is that we are constantly being attacked and assaulted because of the nature of our jobs and the violent swing in America. We must really ramp up the training philosophy in every tactical skill we learn. Make a commitment to 2015 that this is going to be the best training year of your life.
If you consider the role in society you have chosen as your life’s work, you can’t afford not to be the best you can be with regards to preparation and training. Get on the mat, get on the range, get in the gym and prepare like you never have. I promise it will pay off. The TriCorps 2015 training schedule will be out in the next few weeks, and I will have you and your training needs in mind.
Lastly, I want to thank all of you for your calls, texts, comments, cards and prayers last month as my family and I struggled with the loss of our son, Jacob. The TriCorps family was absolutely amazing and I will never forget the kindness and friendship we were shown during the most difficult time of our lives. God gave us nineteen great years with Jacob and I am blessed to get to be his Dad. What a great kid!