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Imagine this: The trust level in your place of business is so low that employees and managers wear hidden recording devices to document their interactions with each other.
Think about that for a moment.
And then try to imagine what the culture of your workplace must have been like to prompt such a practice.
Sound unimaginable?
Not so. This is exactly what's happened at the Indianapolis Metro Police Department. A concerned police officer from Michigan made me hip to it.
My kids had a pet rabbit once. Sweet, docile, cuddly.
It got loose in our unfinished half basement one day. This concreted half basement had a crawl space and a big ol' spindly furnace that overwhelmed it from the middle. We only used it for storage.
We couldn't catch the rabbit. There were too many places for it to hide and too many places we couldn't get to.
The rabbit couldn't get outside either. It was down there for close to a year. Every now and again we'd hear it moving around and we hoped we'd eventually be able to recapture it.
The experience, I can imagine, was quite unpleasant for the rabbit.
After a while, after months in this cold, dank, dark, lonely place this rabbit's personality began to change. It's like it was going a bit crazy, kind of like a man might if locked up in solitary.
One day I walked downstairs and it shot across my bare feet. It bit one of my toes and darted off. Scared the life out of me. Strange, it had never bitten anyone before.
Eventually we caught the rabbit and returned it to its hutch in our side yard. But it wasn't its cuddly self. It seemed weird and skittish and paranoid.
The rabbit was mistreated (of course, we didn't mean to mistreat the rabbit, but it was mistreated just the same). It had survived for many months in the strange depressing environment of our basement. Because of that mistreatment it lashed out.
Over the years, the leaders in the Indianapolis Metro Police Department had abused the rank and file. There were witch hunts and vendettas targeting some of the very best officers and employees. The culture became poison, almost unbearable.
To this mistreatment the officers naturally reacted, and to protect themselves the surreptitious taping began.
Enter a new leadership.
Once caught we initially couldn't touch the rabbit without it nipping at our hands. It took a while, but eventually it warmed back up to us and we were able to hold and pet it again.
But our approach wasn't to immediately scoop the rabbit up, telling it to get over its fear and paranoia.
It came slowly over time. We first caressed it gently and slightly on its back and then worked our way up to holding and petting.
Indianapolis Metro Police Chief Rick Hite signed General Order 9.18 earlier this month banning IMPD officers from taping each other or other city employees without another's knowledge.
He says he wants to establish a new culture of trust.
Whoa! Slow down there, Hoosier. Good goal, bad process.
Let me be clear, I think the taping, though understandable under the horrid conditions of the past, should stop. It really is a revelation of a bad culture and curries to the very mistrust we should want to eliminate.
But you cannot take the taping away first. You have to establish the trust first.
By taking the recording away they've created suspicion that the leadership may begin its head hunting again. Thus the officers are resisting the order. Who could blame them?
Instead, after the new leadership's credibility was proven and trust was established, labor and management together could have decided when to stop the taping.
A year after our rabbit came back to us, it was gone. Someone stole it from the hutch I presume. One day I walked outside and the hutch was empty.
What awaits the Indianapolis Metro Police Department we cannot know. But they've stepped out on a backwards road.
After all, the illusion of trust is not trust.
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