In my policing days, a fellow senior officer was very fond of daily night-patrolling and catching criminals. Sounds cool, right? In fact, the media loved and glorified it.
But here is the problem — that was not his job. His job was to guide his police station heads (SHOs) and make them more effective, instead of being a better SHO.
To an outsider, it looks like ‘catching’ criminals is the biggest challenge in controlling crime — nope. The biggest challenge is getting convictions (95-98% cases end in acquittal).
And this officer ignored the task of securing convictions, which is tedious, thankless, and gets zero media attention. So all the criminals who were caught would soon go scot-free.
Of course, night-patrolling was useful to see first-hand what was happening on the ground. But that’s like the Zomato CEO doing a delivery — one delivery a quarter is good, but trying to be a first-rate delivery guy every day would be disastrous.
Early in my career, my IGP (inspector general of police) told me — don’t be a better sub-inspector, be a good superintendent of police. Today, as I run HabitStrong, that is a lesson I try not to forget.
If you are a manager, your job is to help your team succeed — not to do their job better than them (even if you think you could).
– Rajan