This paper began with the assumption that organizations which are structurally different will be led according to different models. Of necessity, some of their problems will be shared, while others will be unique. Furthermore, solutions sets will also be individualized and yet display commonalities. Interviews were conducted with the chiefs of the Ypsilanti Police Department and the Ann Arbor Township Fire Department. Also interviewed was the director of Washtenaw Community College Campus Safety and a branch manager for Securitas Security Services USA, Inc.

• Ypsilanti is a city in decline. Its population peaked in the 1970 census at 29,538 and now stands at about 22,000. The median household income was $28,610, with family income at $40,793. The large population of young people brings the per capita income for the city down to $16,692. One family in six – one person in four – lives below the federal poverty line.
• Ann Arbor Charter Township is an upside down L-shape north and east of the city of Ann Arbor. Mostly rural and undeveloped suburban property, the township has been fighting growth. Since 2000, the population has increased only marginally from 4,720. Median household income is $86,797 with families at $103,102. While 60% of the residents were married people living together, fewer than half of them had children under 18. Only 4.4% were families with a single female as head. About one family in a hundred lives below the poverty line, not taking into account the difference between income and wealth.
• Washtenaw Community College is in Ann Arbor Township. The school serves about 28,000 students (credit and non-credit), of whom about 12,000 will be on campus during the course of a day. The faculty and staff number about 2,000.. The campus covers 285 acres, officially described as a "picturesque and unspoiled natural environment." Although the college has reported only nine class one criminal offenses in the last three years, lesser events such as stolen backpacks, purses and computers, parking lot fender benders, and interpersonal conflicts bring the total number of all incidents to about 10,000 per year: one for everybody.
• Securitas has 215,000 employees operating in more than 30 countries via 2,000 local branches. Organized as four separate corporations under a holding company, in 2006, the guarding businesses had sales of US$ 7 billion. In 2007, Securitas continued its expansion by acquiring companies in Colombia, Argentina, Romania and France.

Public safety agencies are not normally thought of as leading edge creators of new methodologies. The textbook for this management class, Organizational Behavior by Kreitner and Kinicki, is in its seventh edition. Running over 600 pages, its examples come from hundreds of businesses and other entities, from Borders and Nike to the University of Michigan and the World Health Organization. No examples come from public safety.

Protection services are not normally perceived as businesses. The fact is that for over forty years, more than half of the patrol officers in America have been privately employed and today the ratio is at least 2:1 private to public. Moreover, public agencies face competition from each other as well as from private firms. Absent any private ambulances or guard companies, the traditional city police still compete against the traditional city fire, both seeking tax revenues, based on public perception of valuable service. Today, there is another factor as different public agencies in the same geography bid against each other with regional plans.

Organizational development depends on motivation. We learn that different people respond to different incentives. For some, it is the paycheck, for others it is the opportunity to socialize. Psychologists have identified perhaps ten different conceptual models that encompass about fifty separate factors that contribute to human action. When disaster strikes, most people run away. Those who run toward it are not hoping to earn a $50 shopping card. Something else is within each of them.

A hundred years ago, efficiency expert Frederick W. Taylor said that getting any job done right starts with picking the right people to do it. Aside from some simple psychological profiles (whose effectiveness is arguable), in public safety, we let the job pick the applicants. That goes for both the troops and their leaders. Generally speaking, the chief is a superior trooper. Of course, the chief comes to the job after passing through a grid created by a committee of civilians. Nonetheless, the pool of available applicants begins with those who already are in public safety. This inherent pre-selection maintains the baseline of expectation within the organization.

Leadership defines the manager’s role in getting people to achieve common goals. Ultimately, leadership is always by example. When a new manager comes from outside the organization, the selection process identifies the applicant who most closely fits the existing structure. When change is required, that selection grid is a concept of where the organization should be at some (close) future time. Therefore, leadership in the active present always requires that the manager first know what they want and then be able to communicate it.

Washtenaw Community College’s Campus Safety department, the Ypsilanti Police Department, Securitas Security Services USA, Inc., and the Ann Arbor Township Fire Department vary in purpose, authority, mandate, history, size, financing, marketing and future. How do those commonalities of marketplace (or community), management, motivation and leadership play out in different structures?

According to Ron Schebil, you ask them what their values are. He says that we get our values from parents, church, things we read and we make of all that "a set we carry around with us." When talking to potential patrollers (or shift leaders), Ron Schebil listens not only for the specific statement of values, but, more, he wants to know "if they thought it through."

In his tour as a deputy on the streets and then as the sheriff for 12 years, he has developed an "instinct for body language." He looks at how people react to questions, how they present themselves. A typical interview question is "If I called your boss, what would he say about you?" Unlike other police agencies, at WCC, there are no drug tests and no polygraph and only a routine background check to reveal felonies or egregious misdemeanors.

"Your values are always on display," he said. "Do they show respect and interest? Professionalism is a value. Do you have pride in yourself? Simply saying, ‘I command respect and authority because of the position I hold’ will not work because the selection process continues every day with an at-will employee and you are an at-will employee of the whole community." He needs to know if his campus patrol officers bring preconceived stereotypes and prejudices. "We fight those based on values," he said. "Your attitudes and how you interact with people will determine the value of that relationship." This is especially critical when hiring "the police officer who has more power than the state" as Michigan has no capital punishment – except on the street.

The level of engagement at WCC Campus Safety is much lower than that, however, His safety patrol officers are not weaponized: they carry no sprays or handcuffs. A few full time employees are deputized by the county only to write parking tickets. Active listening, empathetic dialog and peer group pressure are their most powerful weapons.

Most patrollers are part-time employees with personal goals and career goals that have little to with policing. While full time and part-time students at WCC or EMU are common, law enforcement and criminal justice majors are a distinct minority. Campus Safety is an amorphous population. The part-time employee with more than a year on the job is rare. (The department has about 20 employees: 11 full time, of whom three are patrollers and two are EMTs. There is also a degreed environmental safety specialist.)

He acknowledges that is it difficult to satisfy part-timers because pay is low (about $10 per hour) and fixed by college regulations. Paying a good employee more is not an option. There is no healthcare. "With full time, it is different," he said. "Working conditions are great. It is pleasant here. There is lots of time off." Full time employees get generous health care benefits. Therefore, when working with part-time patrollers – who on any shift could one of two, two of three, or three of four active officers – he looks for the keys to the individuals.

Ron Schebil was supportive of education even before coming to WCC. "If a deputy came to me and said that he needed to be 10 minutes late to his shifts because he was working on a master’s degree, we would do what we could to work that out. I can respect that value. It shows motivation, self-worth, and pride." On campus now, he encourages his patroller officers and lead patrollers to pursue their education. Schedules can be accommodated for classes. This is a tradition for Ron Schebil, who, newly elected as sheriff in 1988, was part of a study that was published as "Using Parallel Iteration for Approximate Analysis of a Multiple Server Queueing System" by John R. Birge and Stephen M. Pollock of the University of Michigan (Operations Research, Vol. 37, No. 5 Sept. Oct. 1989). For those employees for whom education is a key value, WCC Campus Safety offers reinforcements and rewards that translate to job satisfaction.

There are other considerations. "The motivations are different for each person," he said, "and there are as many as there are people here. With some people, they give you eight and they skate. They get more for less. They stagnate. When that happens, you weed them out."

Predictably, the evaluation of performance is generally informal. Ron Schebil prefers to talk to people without generating paperwork. "If you are going to get into trouble tell me and we’ll go to the plate together." Reprimands come via memos: there are no preprinted forms. Full time employees get annual reviews only. The evaluations of fulltimers go up to the college vice president for review before being sent to human resources for storage. Technically, there are no evaluations for part-timers. However, the full time lead patrollers do benchmark the part-timer patrollers on their shifts. Those documents remain in the department.

Standards for performance are at once informal and easy to understand. Ron Schebil asks, "What would your mother and father say? How would this run in the Ann Arbor News, and how would it read?"

This is an informal organization. It is true that Washtenaw Community College is a public institution whose Board of Trustees is elected by the people of the county. Therefore, operations at WCC conform to a large body of public law. Much of that structure only provides a "moat and walls" within which Campus Safety operates.

Employees are invested with self-direction and wide latitude of action. Patrol officers find that only 25% of their shift is routine. In the absence of a call, they do whatever they want. Each employee forms the job to their own expectations. Malfeasance and misfeasance are the only failure modes. Nonfeasance is a non-issue. That places a greater burden on the patroller to be effective.

Officers break up shouting matches and pushing matches several times a year. Fights and assaults are unusual. Therefore, tact is the only mode of engagement. Public relations is the arena for success.

Given all of that, the intuitive and informal structure is most appropriate. It is also consonant with those expectations that management’s daily metrics derive from negotiation rather than documentation.

Chief Matthew Harshberger is a known quantity in Ypsilanti. He worked his way up through the ranks over the course of 17 years before earning his appointment on August 29, 2006. Nonetheless, before being hired, his track record was scrutinized by the patrol officers’ union, which compared it to the records of competing applicants.

While he was a sergeant, the post of lieutenant was abolished for budgetary reasons. Consequently, his next promotion was to captain. "This was a major reconfiguration of the agency with community policing, a drive to decentralize, to stretch resources." The job of captain suddenly had too many direct reports under it. The department tried to infuse field officer duties with middle management tasking and it did not work. "We realized that we needed lieutenants and we brought them back," Chief Harshberger said. He faces the same problem now. Budgeting will not allow the creation of captain and deputy chief positions. The lieutenants are middle managers and also second level management. "We have been gauging this closely," he said," and we’re making do, but I do need a second in command." His goal is to promote one lieutenant to the post of captain.

The department of about 50 has 40 sworn officers, of whom 30 are patrollers, counting the detective, the school liaison, one for properties, and one for Lawnet. YPD has six sergeants and three lieutenants. Lawnet is the Livingston and Washtenaw Narcotics Enforcement Taskforce. A Lawnet officer was just returned to street duty after being cleared for the killing of an unarmed suspect. "I hope no one ever has to go through the same stuff their first year out." Chief Harshberger said.

However, his longevity affords him a deep understanding of both his challenges and his solution set. "For the last eight years, in the administrative role of captain and then deputy chief, I have been an integral part of where we have been and where we are going and I know that it has been left up to me to lead. The former chief and I envisioned the same goals but I obviously have a few different ideas about how we are going to get to where we go."

One of those goals is to build a regional policing agency for eastern Washtenaw County, including Salem, Superior, and York Townships and centered on the city of Ypsilanti. "Economically, there are a few goals about who should be out there policing," he said. He explained that the sheriff’s department has put in a bid to patrol the city, but their bid is higher than the cost of running YPD. At the same time, YPD is advocated its own regional policing plan. "The level of service is vastly different," Chief Harshberger said. "I believe we are head and shoulders above any law enforcement department in the county and with the leadership position, we don’t have these issues here. We run a tight ship. Our department does not deal with half the complaints that others do. There are rules and regulations for a reason and if you step outside the guidelines every day, then there are consequences. Without leadership that’s where you end up. Here, everyone is on the same page."

At the same time, Chief Harshberger is in the process of transitioning his organization from an older to a younger force. In the last ten years, all those who could retire, did, except one lieutenant. Today, all of the front-line officers are in their mid-20s to early 30s. "The good thing is that the younger, newer staff are highly motivated. The negative is that with police officers who are highly motivated, you have more complaints due to a lack of wisdom and experience. Younger officers, as they learn, they will become more seasoned." To enable and enhance that, his department relies on mentoring. Sergeants and lieutenants ride along with patrol officers to share their daily experiences and offer their insight and support.

Chief Harshberger consciously enacts the virtues posted in the Mission Statement and the Statement of Values. "I’ve been clearly out there with the Mission Statement and the Values, but unless you are out there showing it, preaching it, all the time, it is just words, just a preface. You need to back it up day by day or it becomes hollow. Show respect to everyone – to victim, to witness, to the suspect. Talk with respect. Remember that everyone is equal under the law. The values we have are all there for a reason. It also applies to our staff at the station and to your co-workers."

As a public entity, the YPD is limited in positive reinforcements for outstanding performance. The chief acknowledges that he cannot give someone $100 for doing a good deed. "We have awards, ribbons, certificates. We put publicity in the newspapers. And just in the briefing, it can mean a lot to have your commanding officer say, ‘Way to go.’" More formally, there are mandated annual reviews that come every December. However, these are based on quarterly reviews and other documentation.

The processing of daily paperwork carries significant weight. The general public is not alone in not understanding that a police officer is a clerk with a gun. By filing 15 to 20 (even up to 30) incident reports per day, the typical academy graduate is often disabused of preconceptions. Chief Harshberger arranged for a tutor for an officer who was having a hard time writing reports. The officer was eventually released for failure to meet that single requirement and was recommended highly to another agency with lower demands for report writing. According to Chief Harshberger, a simple suspicious person report might take 20 minutes… as long as you do not actually find a suspect. Breaking and entering requires about a half hour of report writing – if there is no suspect. Processing a crime scene for criminal sexual conduct can take six hours. All of this is for incident reports. Case reports demand more. The officer’s case report will be scrutinized by the prosecutor, the defense, and others. Therefore, sergeants and lieutenants read each report and sign off on them. That in turn becomes a measure of performance.

This is a charismatic organization. Young himself (about 40), the chief is molding a young department into a dynamic team that can meet the challenges of the 21^st century.

If his tenure and promotion are a mandate, then the Vision, Mission Statement and Values statements are his personal credo. One test of his success will be Chief Harshberger’s ability to continue to recruit others who share his vision.

The community demographics are changing. Neighborhoods with traditional deprivation are hemmed in by new affluence, which itself has faced the reality of downsizing in a global economy. His town hosts EMU. Demand for services increases. The tax base erodes. The best real estate is untaxable. Protesters walk the streets with signs claiming that YPD engages in racial profiling – in a town 40% minority. The public microscope will reveal any flaws or defects. The press is fearless.

At the same time, it would be hard to imagine a more perfect fit. His entire career has been here. He worked his way though road patrol, narcotics, and vice. He was the department detective. He served as a SWAT officer, SWAT team leader, and chemical agent specialist. Moving into supervision, he returned to the road patrol as a sergeant.

His duties often demanded that he fill a vacuum. He was forced to skip the rank of lieutenant. When he was captain, the chief announced his own intention to retire, but there was no deputy chief position at that time. Later promoted to that title, Harshberger served as acting chief while his application was pending. In his own analysis, eliminating the lieutenants was structurally unwise. He now seeks to promote one lieutenant to captain in order to strengthen the chain of command. There are lessons in that for businesses that steer toward the siren song of "flat organizations" with few or no "middle managers."

Ypsilanti Police Department Statement of Values

Headquartered in Stockholm, Securitas is the largest private security force in the world with over 200,000 officers in more than 30 nations. They provide basic guard duties, executive protection, government enhancements, and cargo recovery, among many other services. In 1999 and 2000, Securitas acquired the three largest American labels, Pinkerton, Burns, and Wells Fargo Loomis.

The branch manager has 15 to 20 direct reports, including 10 to 15 site supervisors and 5 to 10 other managers. The numbers are variable because the business is competitive and demand-driven: contracts come and go.

It is a maxim that what gets evaluated gets improved. The performance review leads to a performance development plan. For the branch scheduling manager, the evaluation process begins with a performance review. The form requires that the branch manager identify five to eight measurable activities.

The performance review includes an overall rating:

The performance review leads to a development plan for improvement.

The branch manager also keeps track of training at each site. Site supervisors report the number of employees and hours trained each month. Training programs include state-mandated (where applicable), industry-specific (campus, hospital, bank), and tactical and emergency preparedness (baton, firearm, first aid, CPR).

The branch manager also collects and reviews patrol reports. In private security, the baseline of property protection is called a "wand tour." Recording "wands" made by several companies are all well-known within the industry and their use is somewhat ritualized. Typically, the client and the security firm determine a path with checkpoints that will assure inspection. (Complicated or difficult tours will require more than one patroller.) The patroller carries a device that records each checkpoint. Two generations ago, that was a large clock with internal printer, with a brass engagement key at each point. Today, "wands" are about four to six inches long with field-ruggedized electronics. These download to computers for generating patrol reports. Front-line supervisors can arrange data by patroller, by point or by time. The branch manager is concerned with the roll-ups, the higher level statistical reporting.

Tracking sales starts with tracking calls for each account representative.

Each seller has known benchmarks that are achievable and allow for extra effort and successes.

The branch manager collects data from the clients in order to improve on the performance of her front-line supervisors. These are some of the questions from a 7-point Likert scale survey.

Note the first two items are fill-in-the-blank. The branch manager polls on specific points defined by the contractual needs of the client site. There are others like this.

This is an efficient organization. A hundred years ago, Max Weber identified a basic fact that seems to have eluded Aristotle, Plato, Locke, and Hobbes: The state is the one institution in society with a monopoly on force. As the a priori basis of government, policing provides the model of bureaucratic efficiency that so impressed Max Weber – and Frederick W. Taylor. Securitas managers develop and deliver exactly the same family of reports that have been traditional with the FBI since J. Edgar Hoover succeeded William J. Burns. Today, private security epitomizes the taylorization of the weberian police force. At the same time, the bottom line says that this is a business. The evaluation of officers is one metric of customer satisfaction. The customer surveys are another. Finally, the branch manager measures the performance of internal staff, including sales.

Those evaluations underscore the needs of an agoric defense agency. Although two-thirds of all patrol officers are privately employed, the police still have the public eye. Cops have their reality television shows. No dramas exist about guards. For the public police, professionalism came from the theories and practices of August Vollmer. In private security, the theoretical framework was erected by Spencer MacCallum’s The Art of Community and Linda Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty. Even in the 21^st century, those ideas are very innovative, and not fully implemented.

On June 18, 2007, nine firefighters died when the roof of a burning warehouse collapsed. One witness called it "a tornado of fire." They entered the building to search for one person reportedly still trapped inside. Although this was the worst loss since 9/11, multiple fatalities are common in firefighting. Teamwork is the basis for operations.

At the same time, their continuous-duty cycles – living at the station for one to three days at a time – means that they have other jobs, other careers, other concerns that take them away. That creates a challenge for the chief who needs to maintain levels of competency and efficiency. Furthermore, the rigorous, on-going education makes a trained firefighter valuable to any department; and that reinforces any desire to move away from a community to pursue those other careers.

All of the men who died June 18 were counted as "career" firefighters. They could have been volunteers. Even major metropolitan departments such as Phoenix depend on these auxiliaries. Here in Michigan, state laws mandate minimum training and the trend has been away from "volunteers" to "on-call" responders.

Locally, Ann Arbor Township has 32 fire and rescue responders. Seven, counting, the chief, are full time. The other 25 are on-call. Chief Rick Ericson has lived and worked in the area for 31 years. He served in Brighton and Hamburg before coming to Ann Arbor Township where he has been the chief for 12 years.

That local longevity helps him hire new team members. He does all the hiring himself. If his intuitions are unclear, he will call in a captain to meet the prospect, but, generally, as long the legal requirements are met, what counts most is impressing the chief as someone who is professional and community-oriented. "We have 32 people here with 32 personalities," he said. His firefighters come from all of the diversity groups in his community. "You take them as they are," he said, "a perfectionist or a slob. You learn their personality and live with it and you get used to it. We rely on each other. Police are trained to be loners. Firefighters are trained to be a team."

That training begins with 240 hours of schooling, usually over seven months, at one of the community college fire academies. That will be followed by the 250 hours of EMT education. Those two achievements meet what Chief Ericson calls "the bare bones." To be more usable to the department – and to earn more money – a firefighter has to know all the equipment, all the trucks, how to rescue from ice, water, and trenches, and how to extract someone from a vehicle. There even are new methods for deploying innovative hoses. His department is one of the few with a canine ("K-9") unit. "The training never stops. There are new challenges every year," the Chief said. "Can you, your family, your other job all handle that?"

Firefighting is a shared, international community. Chief Ericson is fully confident that he could stop at any fire station and know that they would put dinner on the table and give him a place for the night. Shared education is the woven fabric of that community. "Trainers work with other departments through agencies," the Chief explained. We have different state-licensed instructors from Washtenaw and Livingston counties, from Schoolcraft College and Green Oak Township, and these are sponsored by Henry Ford Community College, Lansing Community College, and others. "The nice thing for an instructor is you never run out of students," said the Chief, who is a Paramedic Instructor/Coordinator. While this interview was in progress, Captain Lewis Kempf was working with three on-call responders who needed certification in truck driving. "Tuesdays and Thursdays are training days," the captain explained. Chief Ericson said that it is common to find firefighters meeting at the station to study together for examinations and certifications. "There is nothing like going to a scene and meeting someone you trained and watching them do it right," the Chief said.

That training can begin in high school. The National Junior Firefighter Program is sponsored by the National Volunteer Fire Council. Chief Ericson said that they don’t seem to send him the kids from the debate team or the football team. These are kids who don’t fit in but who have potential that is not being tapped in other ways. Like other uncertified on-call responders, the juniors are kept to the nominal "cold zone" which is a radius only 1.5 times the height of the structure, or about 50 feet from a three-story building. They fill air bottles and carry equipment, according to the chief, and after the fire is out they help with salvage.

An on-call firefighter is paid $10 per hour up to $18 per hour depending on their certified training. According to Chief Ericson, they have a job life expectancy of 2 ½ to 3 years and they move on, giving the community one full year of service in return for the experience gained with the job. In the "old days" before the firefighter standards of 1988, most on-call responders started as volunteers in order to help the community. After all, they were not getting paid, so they had to be motivated by other needs. Now, in the Chief’s view, the emphasis is on finding a part-time job with flexible hours. "On call" means exactly that: they do not have to respond to a call. "I have no idea how many are going to show up," the Chief admitted.

That can be problematic and requires that departments rely on reciprocity agreements with other locales. However, the distances involved are true barriers. A fire will leap to life in an instant; and once a fire is the size of a standard 8x10 room, it will double every two minutes – assuming that it finds no new oxygen or fuel.

The larger array of on-call responders rests on a cadre of career firefighters with longevity. His captains have 20 to 25 years in the area with this and other departments. However, that dedication does not preclude the other activities that bring a wealth of talent to a brigade. One lieutenant works with Medflight; another is a critical care nurse; and the third is an ATF agent. "I always have a talent pool of trained people," the Chief said, "including carpenters, electricians, computer people and even a Ph.D. chemist. They serve while they can and after 2½ or 3½ years they move on."

Full-time firefighters staff the station. In Ann Arbor Township, there is one person on duty at each of the two stations. The six fulltimers work every third day for 24 hours. They both respond to all calls, few of which are fires. This is a fire and rescue department.

They help people who are locked out of their homes or cars. They rescue children locked in cars. They respond to flooded basements and the clichéd kitten in a tree. Chief Ericson said that being able to help people is "the neatest feeling" and it makes fire and rescue "the best job there is." His department has no mission statement, no vision statement, no values statement. Chief Ericson said that he has never read one that he could not quibble with, except that of the Phoenix Fire Department: "Nice begins with me."

This is a highly effective organization in the model of the Lockheed "Skunk Works," and the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake. The employees have a high skill level at a task whose outcome has irreversible consequences. Despite obvious and measurable differences in rank, the need for close teamwork overrides any superficial distinctions. Competence counts.

The department thrives on a shifting population of nominally temporary resource people who surround a smaller set of stable, local residents. The chief and his two captains bring 20 to 30 years of experience within the region, having worked for neighboring brigades before coming to the township. Here, they have worked together for over a decade. Successfully intertwining those two modes gives the department a strength and flexibility not found in other organizations.

In the movie, The Right Stuff, astronaut Gordon Cooper’s wife, Trudy, says that she went to a college class reunion. The other girls talked about their husbands’ careers on Wall Street and Madison Avenue and called it "dog eat dog." She said that she wondered how they would feel knowing that when their husbands walked into a boardroom that there was a 25% chance that they weren’t coming out alive. Safety officers face the potential for death as part of their job. Therefore, while trendy, fashionable and faddish management theories come and go, the actions taken as a result of them have consequences.

In each of these four cases, a different mode of management brings about success. Two organizations – Campus Safety and Ann Arbor Township Fire Department – are relatively unstructured. The other two are highly structured. All four of them run about equally well, facing their threats, risks, opportunities and rewards within their own contexts. No organization and no department is pathological or dysfunctional. There seems to be a wide range of successful behaviors. There are many ways to be right.

Is any way "more right" than any of the others? Chief Harshberger may have to reprimand an officer for failing to treat a member of the public with appropriate respect. That requires a formal report, signed and then countersigned, dated, duplicated and archived. Ron Schebil can achieve the same result with a chat. The inherently ritualistic nature of a public police force requires a symbolic interaction with tangible cultural artifacts. Without those, the interaction has no meaning: the officer doesn’t take it seriously. An informal word would be the wrong way to operate and when police departments devolve to that level, they become corrupt.

The privatization of security services is an important debate in the 21^st century. Only a third of our peace officers are publicly employed. Today over, 250 privately operated prisons house nearly 100,000 offenders. Public police departments turn to private providers for meter enforcement and towing, school crossing guards and dispatchers. Private fire companies provide services to Rye Brook in Westchester County, New York, and Elfin Forest/Harmony Grove in San Diego County, California. Corporations such as Boeing and General Motors have long depended on internal safety resources as their needs would overshadow those of their civic communities. Yet, despite ancient roots, both police and fire departments were invented in the early days of the industrial revolution, in a time of near laissez faire. Were they the last vestiges of guild socialism, or is there something inherently public about their core service that must remain responsible to the people, to the res publica?

How that question is answered shapes the choices that managers make for training and development. The broad framework of an organizational culture ultimately becomes the things that someone who never read (or wrote) the mission statement must do when the boss is not around to fill out a form.

According to criminology professor Tom O’Connor, the police uniform conveys a direct, yet subliminal message that the officer will give his life to save others. Even firefighters and security guards who carry no weapons nonetheless wear as their badge a shield. It is not for self-defense. In a dressed line, your shield protects the person next to you. The shield is a single-point symbol whose rays touch the epaulettes, buttons, tabs, stripes, ensigns and boards. Any public safety officer from any service could be transported to any other modern culture and be instantly recognized for their social role.

More to the point, rare is the safety officer, who so transported, and suddenly seeing others in great need would not rush to their rescue or at least find someone to report to for orders. Counterexamples such as the New Orleans police officers who acted reprehensibly in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are perceived as egregious for a reason. When other looters are apprehended, they are not reported as "shipping clerks" or "receptionists." No one comes to public safety suddenly surprised that they are responsible to and for other people.

Building a team based on values requires identifying first what values that team is expected to advance. In order to do that, the values of each team member must be identified and where they are not consonant with the ultimate goal, something has to change. The four organizations presented here, and each of their managers, epitomizes a different way to solve that problem.