The actual work a police officer is engaged in over the years hasn't necessarily changed to any great extent. Some of the tools and what we're doing have changed. The way I describe it in my own organization is, the raw material for policing is still the same: it's information. That's the business we're in. We cannot do anything without information. Then we need to process it, mine it, and change it, and turn it into something.
The skills required to take information and do something with it, and some of the tools we use in doing that, have changed over the years, but the actual task is the same. So it's very important, in some respects in certain positions within an organization, to still start in front-line policing and patrol, and generate the necessary skills that will eventually let you take information in a more sophisticated way and do something more with it.
There is the thought that we can start civilianizing specialized tasks a little bit differently in policing. For example, in forensic identification, do you necessarily need to be a front-line police officer and work your way through for 10 or 15 years before you go into forensic identification? Again, I think there are many models out there, some in the United States, some in the U.K., where they're experimenting with that.
On your point around the multi-generational workforce we have, and the different people who come in, and how you lead that change in organization, I think it boils down to leadership. That leadership exists at many different levels.
My personal leadership style is to lead from the middle, to build the capacity at the middle of the organization. I can have all the greatest ideas and directives in the world, but if I don't have a cohort of people who are engaged and who want to do the same thing, it gets clogged in the middle.