Chief Jack Cauley  
But one thing that that our profession really hasn't focused on much is is the culture. And when you have, you can buy technology and you can buy equipment and training. But if you don't have the culture that kind of cements all that together, then those pieces really don't work as effectively as they should or could within an organization.

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders might shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. And I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I want to have those conversations with real people about the real world about real issues and businesses and my guest today is Chief Jack Cauley. Jack Cauley was sworn in as the Castle Rock Police Chief on January 3 2012. He began his law enforcement career in 94 as a dispatcher, eventually joining the Overland Park Police Department in Kansas where he served for more than 25 years rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Chief Cauley holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice administration from Central Missouri State University and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Kansas. He's also a graduate of the FBI National Academy. Now in 2018, Chief Cauley was presented with New York Times best selling author and motivational speaker, you may have heard of him, Simon Sinek's igniter of the Year award. This is an award that succinic presents annually to an individual who has taken his vision and use it to transform the culture around them. And Chief Cauley did this through the creation of his one-by -one policing philosophy, which promotes building a safe and secure environment for officers and staff so they're better equipped to serve each person they encounter individually. And this unique style of policing encourages compassion and treating others like family and his department readily embraced it. So you may recognize the story of Chief Cauley's cultural shift at the Castle Rock Police Department in Simon Sinek's 2019 book, The Infinite game. And so I'm very honored and excited to have on the show. Welcome to the show. Chief Jack Cauley, how are you Jack?

Chief Jack Cauley  
I'm doing great, Jeff, and thanks for having me on today.

Jeff Ma  
Absolutely, I I've been very eagerly anticipating this conversation we've talked once or twice before just on a call. But it's been you've moved me each time we've talked because it's just so awesome what you've been working on and doing through your through your career, but specifically over at Castle Rock so far. And so I wanted to start this conversation off, maybe rolling time back a little bit. And maybe I just gave a kind of a high level bio. But can you talk a little bit of how you kind of came into this style of policing or what kind of got you to do something so different?

Chief Jack Cauley  
Sure. So in 2012, when I came to Castle Rock is that Chief of Police, I had an opportunity to, you know, get to know everybody here at the police department I because when I get here, I came from Oakland Park, I didn't know anybody really in the whole state. So I spent a lot of time talking and listening to to our employees to our team members here. And one thing that struck me was that the culture was was not as healthy as I would like to see. And throughout my career, I always found it to be very beneficial to me personally, and to the organization if if the culture within a police or any organization can be one that provides an environment where people can thrive. And I found that just from my personal experience that if if you can thrive at work, it certainly translates into the rest of your life, your family, your health, and then just how effective you are at work and more importantly is you know we're here in the police service to to serve our communities and it's so important that we're our natural best when we're doing that because not only are our team members happier and healthy Earth but the community is also a recipient of that and we all want our our communities to be safe and for thrive.

Jeff Ma  
Well said and You know, we live in a weird time where law enforcement is, you know, under new kinds of scrutiny. And under, you know, just a lot of it's in the media, and all these kinds of things and to hear, you know, yours kind of story and how you've built this up long before all this conversation started. It's just such a timely conversation to have, because I can't help but feel like it's connected, or how do you see the connection between kind of the police and law enforcement optics, and what it is that you've always been working with?

Chief Jack Cauley  
Well, one thing that I realized early on, was that, you know, in the police profession, we've spent a lot of time and effort and have done really a good job of enhancing our abilities when it comes to technology and equipment and training. If you think about all the advances that have happened in the last 20 or 30 years, it's pretty incredible. If you think about the technology piece of it. Now we have body worn cameras, we have computers in the cars, we have devices that you can take an electronic fingerprint of somebody and find their their identity in the field. Well, those things didn't exist when I started. But one thing that that our profession really hasn't focused on much is is the culture. And when you have, you can buy technology, and you can buy equipment and training. But if you don't have the culture that kind of cements all that together, then those pieces really don't work as effectively as they should or could within an organization for both the team members within the police departments or again, the people that we serve.

Jeff Ma  
I love that you have that mindset around it. Would you say that? You know, with your colleagues or with others, you don't have to name them. But is this is your mindset shared by many others? Or would you say it kind of goes against the grain?

Chief Jack Cauley  
I would say there are there are a number of colleagues that that are friends of mine that share the same beliefs. But again, as a profession, we really haven't focused on that. So I would estimate that a vast majority of police agencies really don't focus on culture, and it's not for any particular nefarious reason. It's just that that's a profession we have it, which is why I think it's important for us. And one thing that we do is that we look at, outside into the private industry see what's occurring there, excuse me, but I've been trained online about 50 feet from one. But we can learn a lot from private industry and what private industry has done as far as culture and enhancing the culture within organizations. And I think that when we take a lesson, both from the good things that their Prime Minister does, and maybe some some stories that are haven't been so positive, and how that affects their businesses and apply it to us, then we can see the true benefits of how a culture can be something that is very important to the success of police organizations throughout the country.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, I mean, speaking from the perspective of the civilian myself, like, it's very easy to kind of write off police and forget that it is also a job with people working, you know, hours, just like anybody else, you know, the office might be different, but it's still people trying to make a difference and have an outcome working together on teams. And I think it's very easy to just kind of create police as a monolith that kind of just exists and, you know, have no other, you know, traits that that we share. But it's very, it's very interesting that, that you also seems like you're kind of looking to the private sector, in terms of how you what are some of the I guess, what are some of the things that you've already peeled from it? I know, we talked about one to one policing, like what else have you have you found valuable?

Chief Jack Cauley  
Well, there are examples. Historically, in private industry, where we see that culture has created environments that that resulted in, in bad outcomes, you know, I mean, he go through and look at, like, the Wells Fargo example with the fraud issue that they had and paid over a $2 billion fine to the federal government. You get other examples like that, where the culture itself led to bad outcomes. And if you apply that to policing, and he looked at, well, what would happen in policing if we had a bad culture. The bad the bad outcomes in policing, there's there's so much at stake, I mean, lives are literally at stake. And if you take a police officer that is in a toxic environment at work, and that that same officers out in the field in the community, and they're, they're dealing with a high speed, critical, dangerous situation, the chances of something going wrong wise, with the fact that they are working in a toxic environment versus he placed them in a in an environment that is positive, that is supportive, where it's an environment where they thrive. And you place that same officer into the same situation, the the potential of having a good outcome rises dramatically, just because we're people, and and it's a stressful job. And so you want to create the best environment you can and provide the support the best support that you can for, for the police officers and the civilian professionals so that they can, you know, provide the best service to communities. And that's really what it comes down to.

Jeff Ma  
That makes a lot of sense. Can you kind of describe for us what One-by-One policing is?

Chief Jack Cauley  
Sure. So One-by-One  policing is taking community policing, a lot of people have heard of community policing. And it's like taking community policing to the personal level, kind of a concierge level to where it's individualized. So it's about serving people one by one, so that we could create environments that are safe and secure, where people can thrive. And as opposed to having a mindset of serving the community, you have a mindset change to your serving the individual that you're interacting with at that particular time. So Jeff, if if I'm interacting with you on a call, then then my focus is what's good for Jeff, how can what can I do to help you I'm not simply helping a community member, I'm helping a person in need, and everybody is different. And we basically look at it as everyone that we come in contact with, is somebody's mom, dad, and Uncle, brother, sister. And if we can treat everybody like a family member, then we know that everything else will fall into place. So it's really taking that concept of community policing and move it to a personalized level. And it starts within our organization. It's so important that we know that police officers go out every single day to keep our community safe. And they put their lives on the line. And oh, by the way, while you're doing that, we asked them to earn the trust of those that they serve. And one of the thing that I found, it's critical is that as police leaders, we need to earn the trust of our police team members first before they are going to be best equipped to earn the trust of the community members that they serve to have contact with.

Jeff Ma  
So when you're trying to roll out and explain One-by-One policing, to somebody who maybe hasn't heard of before, or maybe in a new hire, or whatever, how do you earn that trust? Or what do you How are you going about showing them that, that you mean this and that you have these expectations.

Chief Jack Cauley  
So the first thing that happens is that I meet with every new team member that we hire within the first week or so. And I talk to them about One-by-One policing, we have a discussion, it's a two hour discussion about our culture, the vision that we have, which is our One-by-One policing philosophy, what it means. And that kind of lays out the expectations to to them as, as the leaders within our organization and what they should expect. And that is to serve them One-by-One. We know it's important that every employee, every team member, that we serve, that we create environments where they can thrive, where they feel safe, both psychologically and physically. Because we know that when we have these environments where they can thrive, where they're psychologically safe, that when they are providing that service to community that automatically translates to, to the engagement that they have with those people that we have contact with every single day. And so, we start off doing that. And then the fact that our entire our entire organization lives our One-by-One policing philosophy every day. So when a new new team member comes on, they are welcomed, they, you know, they felt part of the team, as opposed to a traditional policing organization when when a new police officer starts out A lot of times they're they're treated like, like a pledge, or hey, unless you've been here for six months or 12 months, we really you're not, we don't need to talk to you because you don't have anything of value to, to the organization. And we we turn that around on one ad, we know that everyone that we, we hire here from day one, they have something to give to our organization. And we value that and we we make sure that they know they're a valuable part of our team. Because it all starts with experiences. And we want everyone that that is part of our team here at Castle Rock pleased to know from day one, that they're important to us and are critical to our success. So if they have a positive experience from day one, then that just translates throughout their career. And that was moves into our, our behaviors, our values, and then at the end are the results that we have at the end of the day.

Jeff Ma  
That's truly incredible. I can't get over how how amazing it is that you've been able to kind of develop and foster and maintain this type of, of type of culture. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience? In the Simon Sinek room? I think it's your call to fame. But also, I'm just so curious, like, what was that? Like? How did that happen?

Chief Jack Cauley  
Well, I first heard Simon Sinek give a presentation at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in San Diego several years ago. And at that time, it that was the first time I was introduced to him. And he had, he had introduced a book called leaders eat last. So I read the book, and I thought it was it really struck a lot of chords with me. As far as the changes that we were making here at Castle Rock Police with our culture. And the leadership concepts were very consistent with what we were doing. So decided to use that leaders eat last book to have a book club with our leadership team. So throughout the summer, we, we had a book club, and we assigned out chapters to team members. And it was interesting because not only did we talk about the leadership concepts within the book, and how it applied to our organization, but one thing that came out of it was was unexpected, and that was our team, our team became closer and we were able we we started earning trust with each other just because we were in this book club and we had a safe space. So it was okay for a sergeant to disagree with the chief or a commander rank didn't really make any difference in the room. It was all about having honest discussions, so that you could have those discussions and then walk out the room and everything's fine. And then that allowed us to have more honest discussions when we had other work related things that popped up later on. So fast forward, another year passed that Simon Sinek gave another talk at ICP International Association of Chiefs of Police the next year. And I sat in on that presentation. And after that presentation, I introduced myself and let them know that we had utilized his book in a book club, and it was very beneficial to us. And so he ended up he said, Hey, I'd like to visit your department. So he the next month he came by and and visited our police department, including the team of leaders that we had to actually use the his book. So that was interesting, because they not only read the book and had a book club during this era, but he was they were actually able to ask him questions and talk about concepts in the book with them directly. And then he had an opportunity to talk with our team members about the culture that we had developed. So he can see firsthand what we've done. So that kind of evolved into some and I had a discussion about my wife, because he also wrote Start with Why. And we kind of stumbled on the fact that my Why was to serve people one by one. And then we decided that you know, the philosophy that we've been living here at Castle Rock Police was One-by-One policing, and how that was something that was different, and that it started within our organization and how it benefited not only our team members, but also our community. So that's kind of how everything got started. Just just by chance, really a chance meeting.

Jeff Ma  
That's incredible. I love it. Were shifting gears back what where do you see this approach, in your opinion or your perspective, making the biggest difference like in like out in the community and all these things like where can you give examples or kind of anecdotes around how This is making a difference.

Chief Jack Cauley  
Absolutely. So it, it makes a difference within our organization with employees, organizations that adopt this and with communities, because how we interact with our community is directly related to our ability to, to help people. And to help people we as as police professionals, we have to live and work in an environment that is healthy, and that is supportive, and that provides you the tools, so you can be the best person you can be both personally and professionally. So what we've seen here is that our, our, our employee engagement is high, our retention is high. We're fully staffed here at Cass Rock Police, not a lot of police organizations can say that in 2021, we were actually over hired by most of during most of the year. So we have great retention, we're hiring officers from other agencies that have a lot of great experience. And, you know, unfortunately, they're coming to us, in part because of the environment that they're working in. And as as a, as a person who would, you know, I've dedicated my entire life to this profession. And I don't like seeing other police agencies have environments where, where people don't feel like they enjoy working there or taught toxic, I would prefer that we don't actually have people coming to us for that reason, because I would like every police agency in our country, to have environments that are healthy, because this is a very difficult profession. And it's more important now that we have a culture that's, that's supportive of our team members. I mean, we know that mental health is an extremely critical area for police officers. And, and we and the, the more that we can focus on culture, and providing them in an environment where they can thrive, then the better everybody is, the better the individual police team member is, the better they're their family member, because when they go home, they're coming, they're coming home after a day where they feel like they've done great work, and they had a lot of great purpose in their work, as opposed to coming home, after a day on the job where the the internal environment was toxic, and then they were dealing it's difficult to in those types of situations to reset and, and go home and be positive, you know, and so it's more important now than ever, that we really focus on on our culture.

Jeff Ma  
And you mentioned also out in the community, like what have you seen out there.

Chief Jack Cauley  
So what we're seeing out in the community is because our officers are One-by-One  policing philosophy that we live in our organization automatically translates into how our police officers serve our community. And example is that when we had a couple of years ago, when when there were a lot of protests throughout the country, we actually had a protest here at a gathering of individuals that just wanted to voice their opinion. And we had our officers out there with them just to make sure everybody's safe. And I had one, I had more than one citizen resident come up to me and say, Hey, Chief, what type of talking points did you get, give your officers before they went out to to the protests, I was like, I didn't give them any talking points. Because I didn't have to, they are going to I knew they're confident they're gonna they're gonna treat everybody at the protest just as they would every other day that we're out there serving the community. And that's because of the automatic translation that occurs between our internal culture, and then how we interact with our community, every single day. So the community benefits as well, because we're getting better service with officers that are positive, they want to help they are purpose driven. And they know that it's important to treat everybody like a family member.

Jeff Ma  
I love that. You earlier you talked about basically saying, you know, some people are coming some officers are coming from less ideal work environments for themselves. How do you how do you view that problem, I guess, or if you view it as a problem, what do we, what do we do about that?

Chief Jack Cauley  
Why do you think it is a problem, and I think it's something that that's something I'm passionate about. And one reason that I was sighted to get to participate on your podcast, because I think it's important to get the message out there, that culture is important. And we can make a difference. So we just have to look at the benefits and and start making those changes as and I hope that our agency can serve as a model that it works. And there's benefits to it. Both for the police officers and for the community. And especially in this time, where it's hard to attract and retain talent, both in the private industry, but certainly in a policing profession, it's very, very difficult. So it's more important than ever to, to have a place where people want to work, that they have purpose, that they're happy that they're supportive. And they they enjoy being there. I mean, you know, our, our team likes come into work. And we have fun doing what we're doing. It's it's serious business. But we also can have fun doing it and support each other. And when you can do that, then everything else can kind of falls into place. But I think that certainly just like other changes in the policing profession over the years, like I discussed that technology. Yeah, look, look of all the advances we made in technologies, because we put a focus on it. We can do the same with culture, we just need to put a focus on it. And, and so we were trying to do our part to, to put a to put a light on that on the fact that culture is important. And that it works. And it's it benefits everyone.

Jeff Ma  
Can I ask one, when, obviously over the last two and a half years or so a lot of the lot of the issues and situations have created all kinds of attention and spin and things like that? How is? How is your team's like practicing this? How's your team's mindset? Or how they how do they handle all the negative stigma? How do they handle the perceptions that that the public may have, in some parts about, you know, policing in general.

Chief Jack Cauley  
We're very fortunate here in Castle Rock, because our community supports what we do. We have built an earned trust with our community. And it's intentional, right? So. And we talked about this a lot here that we have a supportive community, but it doesn't happen by accident. It happens because of the way that we've been serving our community for for years. And I truly believe that all the difficulties and challenges that our professionals had over the last few years, we've been able to weather that storm. Well, because we're more resilient, we have built that community trust, and that that reduces the stress on our team members. And certainly, if you go home at night and watch the national news, and you know, and you see what's going on out there, it affects you. But but our team members know that, hey, you know, our community supports us. I mean, during the worst part of all this post Floyd, we had people stopping by the police department and dropping by goodie  and thank you mister things like that, like they normally do. But what the difference was is that they say we know that you guys are, are there for us. We don't we don't believe what others are saying about you. Across the country. We're here for you. And it's it's almost as you know, they were being empathetic towards us, because of what they were seeing out out nationally. And it's like any relationship that is built on trust, you have compassion and empathy, they were actually showing that empathy back to us because that's how we work in our community that it's important that we demonstrate empathy to others now and they were doing it for us at our time of need. So it's really was really pretty neat to see. And, you know, we're grateful for that.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah. And I'm grateful for for you and all you you're doing with your team. Um, you know, I appreciate you taking the time today to come, come chat. It's truly an inspirational story and just effort that you're putting out there. And I really, really, I thank you, thank you not just for your service and what you do, but also for leading the way on these types of things.

Chief Jack Cauley  
Well, thanks, Jeff. I appreciate that. And, and certainly we're, we're always, we know that every single day that it's something that we have to work at. And I think it's true in in organization, the culture is important, and it's a day by day experience. But it's certainly something that I think has benefited again, our our team members and our community. And that's why we're here.

Jeff Ma  
Well, once again, can't thank you enough for joining me on the show today. And I hope the audience also got a lot out of it. I'm moved by just hearing your story. I hope that other people were had the opportunity to hear this. So again, thank you so much for being here. 

Chief Jack Cauley  
Thank you, Jeff. 

Jeff Ma  
And to the audience. Hope you enjoyed that and continue supporting the show we really appreciate it if you haven't checked out the book Love as a Business Strategy is still available in all the places so please subscribe, rate the podcast and tell a friend and until next week, we will see you later