Accelerating Success: Leadership Insights from Formula One for Policing

By Mark Heyart, Doreen Jokerst and Jack Cauley

“In racing there are always things you can learn, every single day. There is always space for improvement, and I think that applies to everything in life.” -Lewis Hamilton

Formula One (F1) is an enthralling mix of high-performance racecars, elite performance drivers, highly coordinated support crews, and beyond exceptional leadership. The sport’s intensely competitive environment provides invaluable lessons for leaders across various fields. With teams investing millions of dollars and drivers pushing their mental and physical limits under extreme pressure, F1 highlights the importance of teamwork, adaptability, and striving for continuous improvement. These combined factors ultimately affect the culture of the team. But can the policing profession learn from adopting the fundamentals of F1? Absolutely! This article will explore and draw corollaries which demonstrate that F1 racing provides a unique perspective on those leadership qualities that can be transferable and directly relatable to the success of policing.

You Can’t Have Leadership without Innovation: In the high-stakes realm of F1 racing, where every second and even millisecond is crucial, drivers and their teams exhibit qualities that reach far beyond the racetrack. These often-unnoticed attributes may offer valuable insights to police leaders aiming to guide their departments to success.

As a bit of background information, a total of ten teams and twenty drivers make up the current F1 grid, each outfitting, building, and customizing two cars. F1 team levels reveal the extent of their innovation. Two drivers and several hundred people work together to make their car reach maximum speeds. “These teams have from the end of the season in November till the start of season in March to launch a whole new car,” says Shergul Arshad, head of North America for the Aston Martin Formula One team. “The car is a completely custom-built device. Think about it this way: there are 13,000 parts in these cars, and 75 percent of them are redone every year” (Pereira, 2024). This is innovation and teamwork working in tandem to propel an organization forward.

Recent national and international events in the policing profession have compelled police organizations to quickly improve policing procedures in order to meet changing public expectations. To support this swift transformation, agencies must incorporate innovation into police training. Discussions regarding police reform highlight the necessity of investing in new technologies, but they also highlight the necessity for integrating traditional methods with any future advancements. Instead of sticking to the "this is how we've always done it" mentality, police leaders should proactively adapt training to address current priorities. For effective core service delivery, they should utilize both innovation and technology. Modern adult learners expect dynamic, multi-modal training that is relevant to both officers and the public, and these real-life training methodologies have been proven to be more beneficial than traditional classroom-style trainings. By combining traditional practices with new innovations, the police training environment has improved, resulting in better public safety outcomes.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Leadership is a collaborative effort, and teamwork is needed for ultimate success. Leadership without a team is like a racecar without fuel. (No pun intended.) While F1 focuses on the driver, success relies on the entire team's efforts to perform at their best and experts at the peak of their skillsets. The driver must have complete trust in, and coordination with, strategists, engineers, mechanics, the pit crew, and even the meteorologist who reports the weather accurately. In the same way, police leaders should build a cohesive team based on trust and communication. They should empower their team members to exercise their unique skills and align everyone with a shared mission, vision, and goals (Ali, 2023). As Jeremy Lane wrote in, Dearest Son, “There will be a lot of people in the pit crew, and everyone has a specific job. If one person messes up, valuable time will be lost.”

You need to work as a team to not only get the best results for yourself, but also for the rest of your team (Lane, 2015). This same principle applies to policing. Teamwork in policing enhances safety, increases effectiveness, strengthens communication, improves morale, and contributes to the success of a police department. Most importantly it approves organizational culture. Regarding police reform, policing needs to change from the inside out. A well-functioning team demonstrates synergy; members collaborate and improve each other's ideas and actions.

According to Anthony Taylor (2023), in his article, High Performing Teams vs. High Functioning Teams: What’s the Difference?, he concludes that high-performance teams focus on measurable goals, such as output and performance, whereas high-functioning teams focus on dynamics between the team members (ex. Cooperation, communication, and collaboration) (Taylor, 2023). When coworkers and peers learn how to collaborate, communicate, and listen more effectively, job satisfaction increases, relationships improve, and ultimately culture within the organization is enhanced.

Flexibility-The Ability to Pivot: F1 races are highly unpredictable. Fierce competition and constant, unforeseen occurrences prevail. All have one goal….to win! Months before the actual race, teams gather to devise a strategy and a plan. They prepare for every scenario that may arise (such as weather events: rain, wind, heat, etc.) and they discuss any necessary changes that must be made because of the layout of the upcoming track. This might even include making changes to the design of the car itself. For example, “A car tailored for the Shanghai GP, known for its straights, wouldn’t work well in the Singapore GP, which is notorious for its bends” (Wong, 2015).

The drivers must be highly flexible and agile, often making split-second decisions, constantly responding to changing and ever-evolving circumstances. For example, on any given day in F1 racing the type of roadway, the types and number of turns, and the weather all play a significant role in how a pit crew tunes the car and what type of tire they may select. Depending on current conditions, should they select a hard compound tire, intermediate tire, soft tire, or a rain tire? Teams must decide quickly which tire choice to use based on the expert assessments offered by their teammates. Those teammates best know their car and drivers’ unique strengths or limitations. Though under stress, effective collaboration with each other assures that proper procedures are communicated and carried out by the pit crew—hopefully for the best outcome possible, but they are always aware that they may need to pivot again shortly.

Does this sound like the policing profession? When does anything go as planned? It’s commonly said that the only thing consistent in policing is change. In policing no matter how well we plan and prepare, often something gets derailed and alters those well-intended plans. For police leaders, it is especially important to be flexible enough to react effectively in the face of unexpected setbacks. Moving quickly and decisively past these setbacks and steering the team toward the predetermined set of goals is a hallmark of a true leader. Throughout their careers, police officers will meet people from different backgrounds, professions, socioeconomic statuses, and cultures. They will also possess diverse opinions and views. The success of policing truly depends on the ability to adapt and be flexible to all individuals when change can occur at any moment.

Constant Improvement-Get Better and then Get Even Better: In the quest for victory, F1race teams are relentless in their pursuit of constant and continual improvement. They analyze data, fine-tune various strategies, and invest in innovation (Ali, 2023). “For example, Mercedes' response to their WB 13's (car) porpoising issue showcased the importance of continuous improvement. Incremental changes led to significant advancements, and the team went from the back of the grid to competing for wins by the end of the season” (Adebonojo, 2023). When we examine this journey, it’s easy to imagine the Mercedes-Benz team felt pressure to perform at a much higher level than they were exhibiting. The team’s effort to focus during a tough time so they could fine tune, correct, and improve the car was necessary, and this did ultimately occur. But, getting there didn’t happen overnight and was not accomplished without frustration.

Similarly, police leaders should make continuous improvement a priority while encouraging a culture of learning. They should invest in research, technology, and development to stay ahead of trends, while employing evidence-based policing methodologies. Police leaders should be incorporating data to make better, well-informed decisions, while not excluding a humanistic view or thought. Police leaders should expect that in some cases the improvement needed in the organizational machine may have to be a journey taken by the entire team.

It’s safe to say that individual team members possess different capabilities and differ in their capacity to pivot. This may be a quick win or a slow struggle depending on their past experiences with change and their perception of the current culture. Within a policing agency, police leaders play a critical role in fostering a culture of continuous improvement. The commitment, culture, actions, and behaviors of leaders set the tone and provide the necessary guidance in order for continual improvement efforts to flourish. Rafael Vela, in his article, The Role of Leadership in Driving Continuous Improvement, outlined nine areas leaders can improve upon to create a culture of continuous improvement (Vela, 2023). These same nine areas apply to policing:

1. Setting the Vision and Direction

2. Leading by Example

3. Empowering Employees

4. Creating a Supportive Environment

5. Continuous Learning

6. Resource Allocation

7. Measurement and Accountability

8. Recognition and Rewards

9. Strategic Prioritization

According to Professor Mark Jenkins at the University of Melbourne, in his article, Organizational Culture, Organizational Learning, and Focus: The Three Secrets of Formula 1 Success, organizational learning is really the key. He further explains that “winning teams think in terms of ‘plan, do, and review.’ They figure out a change—a way to shave a fraction of a second off a lap time, say—then execute that change, and then review how it went. And the trick—aided by that winning-centric organizational culture—is to carry out those ‘Plan, Do, and Review’ cycles faster and faster, delivering and bedding-in small improvements each time” (Jenkins, 2005). These teams boast a culture of continuous improvement.

One-By-One Philosophy and F1: The One-By-One Policing philosophy is one example in the policing profession that embraces many of the same leadership attributes utilized in Formula One racing. One-By-One Policing focuses on creating environments that are both physically and psychologically safe so that people can thrive. This leadership philosophy creates a culture where, strategically and intentionally, innovation thrives as well. Just as F1 race car drivers provide critical feedback and ideas to the F1 leaders and engineers so that continuous improvement occurs, in policing, police officers and professional staff must do the same if police leaders are to expect innovation and continuous improvement to occur.

Police leaders who don’t reinforce the value of innovation and who don’t create environments where innovation can occur will risk not tapping into solutions and ideas from their team members—ideas that not only benefit the entire team but also the communities they serve.

For example, let’s consider how one mid-sized police agency in Colorado responded to the post-pandemic increase in auto thefts. In 2021 Colorado became the number one state in the U.S. for auto thefts per 1,000 population. In response to the increase in auto thefts, police officers and professional staff worked together to create a solution that reduced auto thefts in their communities by 40% over a two-year period. Together they built the ultimate solution incrementally, over time. Some of the ideas worked as planned, some needed adjustments as lessons were learned, and some ideas did not work at all.

The key to success was the fact that prior to the pandemic, a culture had been created to allow for innovation to occur, but also, and maybe even more importantly, an environment had been set in place that allowed for failure. The organizational norm was to try new ideas, learn from what didn’t work, and then move on to new ideas.

Without this mindset, innovation cannot occur. The solution to the auto theft problem ultimately included many ideas that were eventually threaded together, such as the development of a real-time crime center, use of license plate readers, a robust town-wide camera system, drones, and the implementation of vehicle containment techniques.

Just like in F1 racing, without the intentional focus of creating a culture where innovation is valued and can thrive, the ideas and solutions implemented by the police team wouldn’t have resulted in such a positive outcome.

Conclusion: From racetrack to workplace, police leaders can learn a great deal by studying the leadership principles of F1 and emulating their philosophies. At the end of the day, it’s about organizational culture. F1 creates and fosters a culture and environment where everyone strives to do things better rather than point fingers or place blame for things that may have gone wrong. It’s best to learn from all circumstances that led to failure in order to mitigate and prevent those failures from happening again. “F1 teams realize that if people are not allowed to make mistakes, people will play it safe. In a sport where milliseconds matter, successful and thriving teams need everyone to work together to make the car go faster” (Varol, unk.). Varol further writes, “To create a culture rooted in psychological safety, one that benefits from continuous improvement, you cannot punish failure. When you punish failure, people will hide failures and the entire organization loses the opportunity to learn and become better. As racing engineer Rob Smedley says, ‘When you have a blame culture, people spend 60–90% of the effort covering what they have done rather than doing anything positive and understanding the problem, making the car go quicker or making operations slicker.’ People playing it safe will no longer push the limits of innovation. This play-safe culture will hurt the long-term competitiveness of your company” (Varol, unk.).

Now, imagine your own police organization. If everyone is afraid to do their job because of fear of retribution, you probably aren’t fostering a culture of psychological safety, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Remember, everyone is a Chief Culture Officer. This position is not defined by rank.

References:

Adebonojo, R. (2023). Corporate Leadership Lessons from Formula 1. Achieve Resilience the Intelligent Way. https://resiligent.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/RESILiGENT-F1-Leadership-Article.pdf

Ali, F. (2023). The Fast Lane: What Formula 1 Racing Teaches Us about Leadership. LinkedIn. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/fast-lane-what-formula-1-racing-teaches-us-leadership-ali/

Jenkins, M. (2005). Organizational Culture, Organizational Learning, and focus: The Three Secrets of Formula 1 Success. Cranfield School of Management. https://blog.som.cranfield.ac.uk/execdev/organisational-culture-organisational-learning-and-focus-the-three-secrets-of-formula-1-success

Lane, J. (2015). Dearest Son: Become who you were Created to be. CreateSpace Publishing. ISBN-13: 9781515359609

Pereira, D. (2024). Leveraging Innovation to Win Formula One Races. Innovation in Sports https://www.innovationleader.com/topics/special-features/innovation-in-sports/formula-one-innovation/

Taylor, A. (2023). High Performing Teams vs. High Functioning Teams: What’s the Difference? SME Strategy Management Consultant, Leaders Digest. https://www.smestrategy.net/blog/high-performing-teams-vs-high-functioning-teams-whats-the-difference

Varol, K (Unknown). What Can Formula 1 Teach Us about Culture?” Kathy Varol. https://kathyvarol.com/what-can-formula-1-teach-us-about-culture/#:~:text=For%20each%20race%20team%2C%20one,or%20if%20they%20didn't .

Vela, R. (2023). The Role of Leadership in Driving Continuous Improvement. LinkedIn. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/role-leadership-driving-continuous-improvement-rafael-a-vela-juure/

Wong, K. (2018). How F1 Shapes my Formula to Success. LinkedIn. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-f1-shapes-my-formula-leadership-ken-wong/