In security - no one learns more than the teacher

The security industry is unlike any other sector of industry. The difference is that regardless of discipline all are interconnected with one factor - people! That may not make sense as professionals would argue that their industry and all industries are made up of people. Therefore, how different are the people in the security industry to other industries should be the question?

Besides the medicine fraternity - the only other professionals are the security professionals that could handle life&death situations or the situations of life impacting issues such as rape or the theft of assets.

In a training session, the input from the class provides new challenges in theater, whereas questions relating to recent incidents are put forward by participants. An example of such is at a recent workshop for hotel security managers. A hotel security manager related to a theft of the guests room safe missing items. The other hotel security managers asked questions which the hotel security manager acknowledged but none were able to provide the reason to how the safe would of been able to be opened. A month later, another workshop was facilitated in the same city and the trainer put forward the scenario again to another batch of security managers. The Group Head of Risk of another hotel chain was in attendance, and offered how he was able to discover how the theft took place. The solution was a person was able to figure out the password to the safe and had nothing to do with the safe electronics.

There were other issues that came out at the workshop, but, what struck me was the fact that attention was paid to an issue that caused common grief among the class, which was culturally related. Thousands of tour buses pitch up at the hotels where a certain group of tourists from a particular culture arrive. When they leave the hotel, the hotel suffers major water carpet damage and therefore these international guests are not greeted with smiles but rather emotions of disgust, impacting on the investigative interviewing methods and outcomes of such as the interviewer has issues with people from that culture in general.

The facilitator now could present a more productive session with other hotel security managers as he could provide more constructive and productive information into the sessions. Facilitators that interact with various disciplines therefore become more rounded and do find that regardless of discipline - all sectors do have common issues especially with the human element.

This bring about a refreshing realization that the human factor is not the weak link but more so the most formidable asset as it is the person that finds the solution to issues that are created and caused by people.

Conclusion: Security success depends on the level of situational awareness of the decision maker on the ground and the reaction speed. When professionals are not participating or in communication with other professionals that do not get to hear new challenges therefore they are unaware of the situation and therefore lack situational awareness. (knowledge)

The are unable to make effective decisions as they lack the information and base their decisions on insufficient information or unreliable information which brings about collateral damage.

When they know nothing and see nothing then they cannot react to anything.

The teacher knows that they no nothing as each minute that passes - they learn something and can apply what they learnt to the situation.

Sponsored by ISIO Accredited MIM Human Investigation Management for criminology and security - or HIM for non-security professionals