New York’s New Mindset

We often talk about inclusion as a means of creating higher performance, how tapping into the diverse experiences, ideas, and skills of people can transform and elevate organizational effectiveness. A great example is seen in Christopher Dickey’s book Securing the City, which chronicles how the New York City Police Department became one of the world’s premier terrorist-fighting agencies in the aftermath of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks.

Post 9-11, the NYPD faced a daunting reality: limited resources, a monumental task before them, and no time to waste. Many believed that the city’s sprawling diversity compounded the problem; with so many cultures at play (40% of the city’s population was born outside the United States), it was hard to see how the police department could effectively connect with all the neighborhoods and populations it needed to protect.

But Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and new Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen saw it differently. Recognizing that the force itself included officers of many different backgrounds, they asked members of the department to come forward if they were interested in anti-terrorism work and spoke another language fluently. Approximately 1,800 officers responded. Kelly and Cohen had the officers tested and found that 700 of them were native speakers in languages considered important to combating terrorism—languages like Farsi, Pashtu, Bengali, Urdu, and Arabic, among others. (By point of comparison, the total number of students graduating U.S. colleges and universities in 2002 with degrees in Arabic was 6!)

The department immediately began training these officers for their new duties. Some were sent into deep cover in NYC communities and neighborhoods; others joined online intelligence gathering efforts. Dickey’s book cites plots foiled, conspirators apprehended, and devious activities interrupted as a direct result of this culturally savvy police force’s ability to reach into new communities. By 2003, the FBI and CIA were contacting the NYPD for assistance in counterterrorism operations.

The force has also recognized the need for a global approach. The NYPD now has officers stationed in Paris, Tel Aviv, London—cities that, like New York, are susceptible to terrorist attack. These officers learn new methods and tactics and communicate them back to their colleagues in the United States. When the Mumbai attacks occurred in November 2008, three NYPD investigators were on site before the siege ended.

There were many aspects of the NYPD’s efforts that made their work successful, but a key component was tapping into the diversity of its workforce in new ways that spurred high performance, and adopting a mindset that saw cultural differences as additive. When leaders began to widen their perspective about what skills were valuable, they discovered a huge reserve of potential in its members that wasn’t being tapped.

Change, Diversity, Fear, global co-creationMickey BradleyJune 17, 2009