National Decision Model

@antlerboy asks does anyone know theoretical underpinning of the (rather good) police decision-making model?

The National Decision Model (NDM) is a risk assessment framework, or decision making process, that is used by police forces across the UK. It replaces the former Conflict Management Model. Some sources refer to it as the National Decision-Making Model.

Looking around the Internet, I have found two kinds of description of the model - top-down and bottom-up.

The top-down (abstract) description was published by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) sometime in 2012, and has been replicated in various items of police training material including a page on the College of Policing website. It is fairly abstract, and provides five different stages that officers can follow when making any type of decision - not just conflict management.

Some early responses from the police force regarded the NDM as an idealized model, only weakly connected to the practical reality of decision-making on the ground. See for example The NDM and decision making – what’s the reality? (Inspector Juliet Bravo, April 2012).

In contrast, the bottom-up (context-specific) description emerges when serving police officers discuss using the NDM. According to Mr Google, this discussion tends to focus on one decision in particular - to Taser or not to Taser.

"For me the Taser is a very important link in the National Decision Making Model . It bridges that gap between the baton and the normal firearm that has an almost certain risk of death when used." (The Peel Blog, July 2012). See also Use of Force - Decision Making (Police Geek, July 2012).

ACPO itself adopts this context-specific perspective in its Questions and Answers on Taser (February 2012, updated July 2013), where it is stated that Taser may be deployed and used as one of a number of tactical options only after application of the National Decision Model (NDM).

Of course, the fact that Taser-related decisions have a high Google ranking doesn't imply that these decisions represent the most active use of the National Decision Model. The most we can infer from this is that these are the decisions that police and others are most interested in discussing. (See footnote)

In a conflict situation, a police officer often has to decide how much force to use. The officer needs to have a range of tools at his disposal and the ability to select the appropriate tool - in policing, this is known as a use-of-force continuum. More generally, it is an application of the principle of Requisite Variety.

In a particular conflict situation, the police can only use the tools they have at their disposal. The decision to use a Taser can only be taken if the police have the Taser and the training to use it properly. In which case the operational decision must follow the NDM.

More strategic decisions operate on a longer timescale - whether to equip police with certain equipment and training, what rules of engagement to apply, and so on. A truly abstract decision-making model would provide guidance for these strategic decisions as well as the operational decisions.

And that's exactly what the top-down description of NDM asserts. "It can be applied to spontaneous incidents or planned operations by an individual or team of people, and to both operational and non-operational situations."

Senior police officers have described the use of the NDM for non-conflict situations. For example, Adrian Lee (Chief Constable of Northants) gave a presentation on the Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

The NDM has also been adapted for use in other organizations. For example, Paul Macfarlane (ex Strathclyde Police) has used the NDM to produced a model aimed at Business Continuity and Risk Management. which he calls Defensive Decision-Making.

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How does the NDM relate to other decision-making models? According to Adrian Lee's presentation, the NDM is based on three earlier models:

• The Conflict Management Model (CMM). For a discussion from 2011, see Police Oracle.
• The SARA model (Scan, Analyze, Respond, Assess) - which appears to be similar to the OODA loop.
• Something called the PLANE model. (I tried Googling this, and I just got lots of Lego kits. If anyone has a link, please send.)

There is considerable discussion in the USA about the relevance of the OODA loop to policing, and this again focuses on conflict management situations (the "Active Shooter"). There are two important differences between combat (the canonical use of OODA) and conflict management. Firstly, the preferred outcome is not to kill the offender but to disarm him (either physically or psychologically). This means that you sometimes need to give the offender time to calm down, orienting himself into making the right decision.

And the cop needs to stay calm. George “Doc” Thompson, who taught US police a de-escalation technique known as Verbal Judo, once said "We know that the most deadly weapon we carry is not the .45 or the 9mm, it is in fact the cop’s tongue ... A single sentence fired off at the wrong person at the wrong time can get you fired, it can get you sued, it can get you killed."

So it's not just about having a faster OODA loop than the other guy (although clearly some American cops think this is important). And secondly, there is a lot of talk about situation awareness and anticipation. For example, Dr. Mike Asken, who is a State Police psychologist, has developed a model called AAADA (Anticipating, Alerting, Assessing, Deciding and Acting). There is also a Cognitive OODA model I need to look into.

However, I interpret @antlerboy's request for theoretical underpinning as not just a historical question (what theories of decision-making were the creators of NDM consciously following) but a methodological question (what theories of decision-making would be relevant to NDM and any other decision models). But this post is already long enough, and the sun is shining outside, so I shall return to this topic another day.

 

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Footnote

I referred above to the decisions that police and others are most interested in discussing. 

Argyris and Schön introduced the distinction between Espoused Theory and Theory-In-Use. Perhaps we need a third category to refer to what people imagine to be the central or canonical examples of the theory. We might call it Theory-in-View or Theory-in-Gaze.

This is not quite the same as Prototype Theory, which determines membership of a given category in terms of the similarity to the canonical example.

Update 2022: Reading Annemarie Mol has introduced me to Lolle Nauta's concept of exemplary situation. So perhaps that's the term I should use?

 

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Sources and Links

Michael J. Asken, From OODA to AAADA - A cycle for surviving violent police encounters (Dec 2010)

Erik P. Blasch et al, User Information Fusion Decision-Making Analysis with the C-OODA Model (Jan 2011)

Tom Dart, ‘Verbal judo’: the police tactic that teaches cops to talk before they shoot (Guardian 21 July 2016)

Adrian Lee, Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

Steve Papenfuhs, The OODA loop, reaction time, and decision making (PoliceOne, 23 February 2012)

National Decision Model (ACPO, 2012?)

National Decision Model (College of Policing, 2013)

SARA model (Center for Problem-Oriented Policing)


Related Posts: National Decision Model and Lessons Learned (Feb 2017), Decision-Making Models (March 2017)

Bureaucracy and Risk

@jasongorman Bureaucracy doesn't reduce the risk of making mistakes, it reduces the risk of making decisions.

retweeted by @ashalynd @barendgarvelink @carloslemes @claussni @fabiogasparro @fabio_nb @fpaiano @jerrygulla @jonmholt @keesvandieren @KevlinHenney @mfeathers @MrAlanCooper @Richardgab @rmHeise @rpepato and others.

I think there is a lot of truth in this statement. However, as a general rule of thumb, I hold that when one makes statements about risk one should specify whose risk you are talking about.

Bureaucracies typically evolve procedures for making decisions, which may help to eliminate certain types of error, but may make other types of error more likely. Bureaucracies also evolve responsibility structures that reinforce certain modes of decision-making and action, and inhibit others. At least in the short term, employees take less personal risk when they conform to these procedures and structures, even when the decisions have bad consequences for other stakeholders, and may create longer term problems for the organization itself.

@richardveryard When a person makes a decision within the rules of a bureaucratic system, the system protects the person from risk.

@ashalynd True, but then the success of the whole organization depends on how good are its rules.

There are various ways of viewing the short-term or long-term success of an organization. Again, we need to ask - success for whom, from which perspective. Inflexible organizations may appear to be successful in the short term, but if they lack requisite variety, they will fail to respond adequately to changes in their environment, and may ultimately become non-viable. 

For a rule-driven organization, the flexibility (requisite variety) depends on the degree of agility and intelligence that is embedded in the rules and their interpretation. I guess this is what @ashalynd means by the quality of the rules. It is not impossible for a bureaucracy to have some degree of agility, but rules usually leave a lot to be desired.

@richardveryard The success of the whole organization depends on the fit between the structure of rules and the structure of demand.

@jasongorman What does that mean - "the structure of rules" and "the structure of demand"?

The ability of the organization to behave in an agile and intelligent way depends on whether the flexibility (degrees of freedom) built into the rules and other working practices is aligned with the kinds of direct and indirect value (demand) which the organization needs to deliver. The question of alignment is ultimately a structural question.

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See also Robert Jackall, Moral Mazes: Bureaucracy and Managerial Work (HBR, September 1983)

Complexity: Devious Management and Investment Risk

Cross-posted from System Viability and Corporate Governance blog

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A common feature of much recent malfeasance is the construction of highly complex corporate structures, apparently beyond the legitimate demands of Requisite Variety.

Complexity – whether requisite or otherwise – adds to investment risk. Dodgy management practices may cause a continuous erosion of corporate value, or they may trigger a sudden collapse of value (Enron, Parmalat). Some companies have a sufficiently robust business model that they remain viable even with a certain level of malfeasance. Other companies turn out to be merely pseudo-viable – only remaining solvent thanks to dodgy accounting. Some investors may be willing to tolerate erosion, but do not wish to be confronted with sudden collapse.

Complexity is (or should be) a warning sign. The purpose of complexity is what it does. If it doesn’t serve a legitimate purpose, then it is surely reasonable to assume it is there to serve some other agenda.

Using the theory of complexity, we should be able to construct geological maps of the corporate world, showing (probabilistically) where it might be worth drilling for the next accounting black hole.

For example, it now seems that Parmalat was non-viable, only sustained in pseudo-viability by paper cashflows from a non-existent bank account. But such transactions can only be concealed by having lots of apparently genuine intra-company transactions. There is therefore a control mechanism that forces complexity onto the company at the operational level, and a higher level mechanism that manages the smoke and mirrors. It might not be easy to detect the fraud by looking at the operational company alone; it may be the existence of the control mechanisms that gives the game away.

Conversely, if a management is obliged to construct and present evidence of its bona fides, this evidence needs to include a properly grounded account of the control mechanisms, including a justification of the degrees of complexity and intracompany coupling.